Meatpacking Industry, large industry involving the slaughtering, processing, and distribution of cattle, sheep, and hogs. It is one of the most important industries in the United States and has its primary concentration in the Midwest. The packing industry has tended to decentralize in recent years, and slaughtered livestock are now generally moved directly from farms, ranches, and feedlots to meatpackers. The cattle-slaughtering sector of the industry, in particular, has become concentrated in cattle-raising regions to the west—namely the western Corn Belt and the Great Plains, where beef is shipped to wholesalers and retailers primarily in the form of fresh primal cuts. Hog slaughtering is still carried on chiefly in large plants, where the hogs are processed into numerous cuts and products.
The industry has also become concentrated to a handful of companies. In 2003, five
meatpacking firms—Excel, National Beef Packing, Smithfield, Swift, and Tyson—slaughtered more than 80 percent of the nation’s beef supply.
In accordance with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1978, all livestock are made insensible before they are killed. Hogs often are immobilized painlessly through gassing. For cattle and sheep, a captive bolt, a type of gun designed for stunning, is generally used. Air-injection stunning, in which air is blasted into the animal’s skull to render it unconscious, was banned in 2003 to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a fatal infectious disease that can be passed to humans in a form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Air injection can force brain tissue infected with BSE into meat tissue used for human consumption.
Many parts of the slaughtered animals are shipped for consumption as fresh meat; other parts, especially of the hog, are cured and smoked. The fatty portions are converted into lard and commercial grease by rendering processes. Bones are converted into glue, fertilizer, animal feeds, and other usable products, including pharmaceuticals; hoofs and horns are used or sold for other purposes.
In the late 1990s and early in the 21st century, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a variety of measures regulating the meatpacking industry to prevent the spread of BSE in the wake of a BSE epidemic in the United Kingdom and the discovery of a BSE-infected cow in the United States. In addition to banning the use of air-injection guns, the USDA prohibited using meat from downer cattle (cattle unable to walk) in meat products for human consumption and banned the use of brains, skulls, spinal cords, vertebral columns, eyes, and certain nerve tissues from cows older than 30 months. Older animals tend to be more susceptible to BSE.
- Encarta Encyclopedia
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