When you set out to purchase a new sweater for the onset of the fall season, or the new clear blush you saw on your favorite beauty influencer’s social media page, you can pinpoint exactly whether your product is coming from Taiwan or Sweden. Strangely, the same cannot be said for a T-bone or ribeye steak. The meat industry is riddled with unethical practices—including the abuse of animals and various environmentally taxing processes—but perhaps their worst crime comes in the form of the secrets they keep from their consumers.
Of course, these meat corporations are not the only ones complicit in this deception. No, there is another accomplice at play here: legislative negligence. According to the New York Times, In January of 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A) stopped regulating or verifying claims about products, such as meat being “humanely raised”. A month prior to this, Congress repealed the country-of-origin labeling (COOL) requirements that were originally in place on beef and pork, giving meat companies the legal right to not declare where their meat comes from. While there are extenuating circumstances at play here, such as International Trade Laws, at the end of the day, the people bearing the brunt of these laws are everyday Americans. The basic liberty of knowing what we are consuming is snatched away from us and the meat industry is not doing enough to rectify this.
However, this is not the only way in which the government fails to protect its citizens from the insidious goals of the meatpacking industry. A 2017 documentary, What The Health, describes the possible corruption of multiple health organizations by meat corporations as the “largest health cover up of our time”(Anderson, Our Hen House 347). This exposé reveals that many health organizations including the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Society, and most notably, the American Heart Association, take hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships from meat and dairy companies like Tyson and Kraft. Fast food companies like Pizza Hut or Taco Bell are also huge financial contributors to these associations. In turn these organizations fail to warn people about the dangers of these foods, and some even actively promote recipes that contain them. For instance, currently, the American Heart Association has around 40 recipes containing beef on their website, and around 27 containing pork. However, according to a 2020 article from Northwestern medicine, beef and pork are unequivocally harmful for heart health. Until the meat industry has its billion-dollar hands around these organizations’ necks, Americans will be tricked into consuming foods that are proven to be disastrous for their health. So far, the US government has taken few definitive measures to help mitigate some of these lies and misconduct.
When considering the impact of these decisions on the everyday lives of US citizens, it is appalling that the government does not find it vital to step in and pass legislation that can prevent these moral transgressions from happening. However, the government is not the only party responsible for preventing these misdemeanors. From the underpaid factory workers that help produce the beef to the industry tycoons that reap the rewards, everyone is simply a cog in the machine that helps to deceive the American public. This misinformation results in people losing their autonomy over making decisions about how ethically their meat was produced or what economies they are supporting by purchasing it. In fact, the constant manipulation and greed of these companies and health organizations might lead to disastrous impacts on the health of many individuals. The only foreseeable solutions to this are complete honesty and transparency from meat companies or laws that mandate it.
Until this, the “steaks” for government reform regarding the meat industry remain staggeringly high.
