Fast Food Nation: chapter 7

1. What changes did IBP introduce to the meat packing industry?

- IBP introduced a new IBP plant with a disassembly line, which is a slaughterhouse. "Each worker stood in one spot along the line, performing the same simple task over and over again, making the same knife cut thousands of times during an eight-hour shift. The gains that meat packing workers had made since the days of The Jungle stood in the way of IBP's new system, whose success depended upon access to a cheap and powerless workforce." (pg. 212) IBP also started fabricating the cattle into smaller cuts of meat. "In 1967 IBP opened a large plant in Dakota City, Nebraska, that not only slaughtered cattle but also "fabricated" them into smaller cuts of meat-into primals (chucks, loins, ribs, rounds) and subprimals (such as chuck rolls). (pg. 212-213)

2. Why were newer meat packing plants located in rural areas rather than in cities?

- Newer meat packing plants were located in rural areas because paying wages were lower, than paying wages in cities. "One by one, the packinghouses in Chicago closed down, and slaughterhouses were built in rural states hostile toward labor unions. The new meat packing plants in Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and Nebraska followed IBP's example, paying wages that were sometimes more than 50 percent lower than what union workers earned in Chicago.