That's not an unpopular opinion at all. The issue with the Chicago meat plants is that they were using vile stuff that would be laying on the dirty and bloody floors and they would flush it to a new level below to be processed as something else, and than do that again a make it pickled products.

@@whatabouttheearth Yes, but people are grossed out by "pink slime" even if it isn't contaminated. Snobs like Jamie Oliver point to it as decadence instead of being ethical and responsible like it really is. I think a lot of people see it as greed on the part of food producers to make food out of organs and beaks and whatever else.

@@MakerInMotion I'm a Libertarian Socialist from the Ozarks, I can give a shit less what some bourgeoisie chef guy thinks 😂. Of course it is the right and moral thing to do to try to use ALL of an animal or plant, it means you would (hypothetically) not take as much life. Those animals and plants died so that we may live, it's only just that we attempt to use all of it. But this isn't even addressing the millions of tons of waste that capitalist enterprises throw out instead of giving it to those who feed the poor. I've been homeless and dumpstered dumpsters that had chemicals sprayed all over the food just so the homeless can't eat it, and that not even as bad as the mass waste they do.

@@whatabouttheearthdamn dude. I’m so sorry. Here we are allegedly “the richest country on the planet.” But we can’t feed the poor (typically kiddos and old people) place a safe roof over everyone’s head or have any kind of jobs which give hope to the hopeless. We are capable of so much more than this. Take care, my friend

How bout just don’t eat crap? For centuries people survived without over processed non nutritious food.

I am so glad you found it and loved it! We are all very proud of it,, and it recently won an Emmy. Hope your students find the material compelling as well.

Your Emmy was richly deserved. Your efforts could serve as an exemplar of how historical documentaries should be produced. Thanks again.

@@rickkistner1218 Just out of curiosity, where do you lecture? Or at least, what part of the country.

@@danielandries6998 I lecture for the Osher Lifelong Learning Program (O.L.L.I.) which is a national program for senior learners. My branch is based out of Eckerd College, a Liberal Arts Institution in St. Petersburg, FL. I also lecture independently to a cadre of organizations. You can check out a UKposts video "Meet the Instructor - Rick Kistner" for more details if you'd like.

@@rickkistner1218 Excellent! I shall check it out.

WOWW!....GOD BLESS YOUR GRANDPARENTS

Yea i get that.

I guess he had a conscience

I feel like the mob coulda fixed this

I worked as a young child in a slaughterhouse in Ireland for a short time, and never ate beef again after I hit 14 years old, and realized what that process was all about. I swept the blood and cleared the entrails and heads from the floor. It all got dumped in a pond

Ha haah!! A guy in my trade school class worked at a Burns meat plant up here in Canada. We got talking about hot dogs and he described the process. I said "so you don't eat hot dogs then?" He replies "Are you kidding, I love them! They give us three packs a week for free." Takes all kinds, I guess.

Nasty shit

@@tpxchallenger Lol

We had a pickle plant I'm our town. Everyone said "don't eat the relish".

Everyone needs to help remove restrictions of the EPA. THEN look into the personal bank accounts of inspectors, there extended family's too. With audit powers. Which all leads right back to causing prices to raise on the mystery meat. Please !! Like do as your conscience is telling you to. GET BACK IN THE LINES OF ZOMBIES & FOLLOW LIKE USUAL . " RIGHT NOW " 😂

My father told me his elementary school class was taken there for a field trip and he could never forget the sounds of the hogs squealing as they were butchered.

It is spelled ricocheting. How ironic! One would think it would be from a stampede.

My grandfather was the first american born to Irish immigrants in Chicago. He also worked the stockyards. He was an unhappy person, mostly depressed. His children were born in the 1940s and grandma was stay at home for all those kids. He worked long hrs in those conditions. Not a great story.

@@libbyhicks7549 It IS a great story, although sad.

​@libbyhicks7549 I can imagine. Horrible working conditions terrible pay long hours. 😪

Was that the rapid transit line that went around the circumference of the stock yards? If so, it was removed in 1957.

@@WAL_DC-6B No not that one, although I don't know exactly what line it was. I was a kid in the '60s, usually escorted around by my mom, so didn't pay much attention to the train line names.

And that smell was still around well into the 80s when I was a kid ..

We have a waste treatment plant in my area and right now with the heat, it is a whole new level of awful 😞 I imagine what you smelled was somewhat similar. 😣

ABSOLUTELY I remember passing thru there I was a kid then ,but it was very bad . It's sad but this is still going on somewhere. I stopped eating steak ,pork and winging myself off chickens. Nowadays it's not real meat it's ALL LAB EXPIREMENTAL .

I have NO doubt, it stinks enough around farms here where they pack in maybe 30 or 50 cows on a small fenced lot waiting to be transported out, the ground is always dark brown mud, only, its not MUD- it's years worth of piss liquified shit and the cows are walloing in it, even with the windows in the car closed the stench gets in just driving past, and the farmer has his house right there! Can only imagine what the stench was with those tens of thousands of cows, pigs, sheep coralled in those pens in Chicago, with decades of piss and shit ground up into a mud that in summer dried up and was carried as dust everywhere. Then the blood, waste etc that wound up discharged into the stream to fester and rot, attract flies by the millions! the flies must have been horrendous! The 375-acre site had 2300 separate livestock pens, to hold 75,000 hogs, 21,000 cattle and 22,000 sheep at any one time

In 84 I moved to Chicago, and while riding my Motorcycle with my friend , I said to him hey how come I can smell cow shit? He said because that's the remnants of the stick yards

It STILL smells like that til this day.

If you have ever been near a slaughterhouse or a rendering plant then you, too, can confirm this. It is one of the most repulsive, disgusting scents you will ever smell. Utterly horrid.

@@BeranM Actually I have,theres a place like that in Aurora, Illinois. It's a hog rendering plant, and it's awful. 9ur guys were complaining that they need a break, and send someone else over there to work.

The Jungle.

Yes. I read "The Jungle," at The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, while studying "Sanitation in Food Processing." I often referred to it during the trading sessions that I gave the employees on cGMPs at the various plants, where I was Quality Assurance Manager. I worked with a large manufacturer of Chocolate candy, a bookstore who had a cafe where readers could buy wrap or panninni sandwiches and a pizza manufacturing plant that made pizzas for a large national food conglomerate and a grocery store chain.

Training not trading!

cGMPs=current Good Manufacturing Practices

@@-oiiio-3993 I read that book written by Upton Sinclair. It is an exposé about the unsanitary, unsafe conditions in the slaughter houses and meat packing industry.

Agree

Do you eat meat?

@@mullman I’m an involuntary vegetarian or damn close to it. I live remotely and everything comes in by truck on essentially two lane roads. I can not afford meat anymore. With gas prices in the $5-6 range, it has become a budget buster. Produce is a bit cheaper but how I would love to eat a decent steak just once more before my imminent death.

@@tundrawomansays5067 look into veganism as the dairy and egg industry is cruel and funds the meat industry

If you force children to watch this please take out the killing floor. There is such a thing as humane slaughter and I live now where it’s done.

What a waste

Dam that's a story there

A life of shlepping for beggars pay. Horrible.

@@libbyhicks7549 actually it was Organized Labor that lifted ours and many families from grinding poverty and drudgery of the time. Firemen of Local #2 now probably average around $150k yearly for 84 working days and much improved conditions.

@@danichicago9140 Most female dominated service jobs are still fighting for $15 hr. Fireman (like police) is a male dominated occupation with lots of power and control attached to it, Those jobs have been paying very well for a very long time. Industrial Line workers (which the stockyard is an example of) are still fighting for minimum wage and that's even better than the conditions of line workers for US corporations in other countries who make more towards $5 a day. No, I don't tnink the union has quite saved the labor class yet.

Thanks Captain obvious

@@kurtdorr8080 what % of US and WORLD population are familiar w The Jungle? (can even read? sarc) done a poll? survey? statistically prob the inverse of the # of this doc viewers. just sayin'. or: maybe 5X the above # viewers - are geriatric and don't surf the web and thus haven't seen this doc - but being geriatric, they likely READ this book in their American Classics studies. Is this book part of educational curriculum in the last 3 decades?

I like the smell of cow shit but don't ask me to clean the gd chicken house.

@You're just a nasty person, so just stop trying to sound like you're nostradamus goofy.

I know right, most Americans are so oblivious to the actual process of eating food, have no idea how hard it is just to grow a garden, butcher a hog, deer, or cow. the amount of effort it takes to proces and save even small game. If they survive the coming changes they'll soon figure it out.

It is hilarious the reactions of people that know we Butcher and eat our animals. And not from the store. But yet they don't feel sorry for their cheeseburger when they eat it , or the meat they buy at the store. I told a lady the other day the eggs are chicken embryos. I don't think she'll ever eat another egg again. Just oblivious and blissfully ignorant. My friend's daughter told a school mate that they butchered their cow. The kid was so upset she had to go home for the day. I can't imagine the snowflake parents behind that

Oh yeah my grandfather used to kill a pig for us when we visited is a big process

Who cares

@@Will324 don't be racist.

Well, I'm happy for him, but.. a lot of hard work also goes unrewarded so....its a crap shoot.

Sadly those times are in the past. I find it disturbing that a family of 3 just gets by on a salary of 120,000.00 annual.

That's what's up, because my grandfather did the same in K Town on 14th and Karlov after the Greeks left

What's a 3 flat home? A home with just 3 walls?

@@JM-yx1lm three story home

@@JM-yx1lm that would be a 3 upright

Does someone thought of as chattel buy/sell? The cow can also be thought of as chattel.

Chicago has the most heartless people. It's ALL yours !

Well stay there Lmao you’ll be the next victim

Love your city even through the ups and downs. A true Chicagoan.

how ironic ... butchers from Germany ... Came in handy in Germany in 1930s-1940s ... but instead of cattle, it was PEOPLE

Are you American?

Skilled craftsman no doubt.

@@rhuephus that was an asinine statement

I agree with you. We moved from Southern California to a meat packing town in Iowa in 1994. I was in middle school and remember seeing a sea of mainly Mexican immigrant employees come and go from that plant during shift changes. Today almost 3 decades later it’s mainly Asian immigrants that work there. The Hispanics remain in the town but found better jobs in other factories or in construction. It’s all generational, place in time.

@@mimusic1853 growing up did your city in Iowa experience any crime ?

Each successive wave of immigrants provide cheap labor and that isn’t going away anytime soon particularly now that we have no unions and little to no oversight. This country is becoming more urban and darker skinned. In the future we’ll all be bilingual out of necessity. Corporations are well aware of this: P&G and many other large corporations have had bilingual instructions on their products and have now for at least a decade plus. We all do what is in our best economic interests. Immigrants are doing the same as you are: Trying to provide an income for themselves and their families. I wish them well.

You can still get cheap labor from White Europe. Not allowing immigration from Europe is why America is being turned brown on purpose. Browns and blacks are so much easier to control. Robotics will end the need for even them. @@tundrawomansays5067

Very sad....but true

follow the money

It would not say enlightening as much as it was extremely biased. It ascribes the very worst of motives to people. There were never people who were "native" to America. Everyone traveled to the continent via ship or land bridge. When two civilizations compete for the same resource, the more technologically advanced typically wins the argument. This has remained true around the globe throughout recorded history. This is no more cruel than Mother Nature herself. Humanity has been at odds with nature since building the first campfire. Reshaping the natural world is how humanity survived without benefit of fur or fang or claw.

Sounds about White 🤦‍♂️

@@valkyriesardo278 This is a huge pile of bullshit. There were zero reasons for European settlers to eradicate the indigenous people of North America. The United States engaged in a program of wilful eradication, sterilization, and eugenics targeting Indigenous tribes. It's not about competing for resources. At the time there was plenty to go around. It was all about white people thinking they were superior both due to religious reasons and faulty science. It's not about humans being at odds with nature or any of that bullshit.

And we all lived and thrived through it.

Bet the fish loved it!

I lived at 63rd and Central and during WWII I remember the smell every summer evening as you tried to sleep and the stench was terrible. We were miles and miles away and it was terrible.

Did you get to meet Bruzzy Thompson...he was a man from the community known as Canaryville and was always in and around Morris Mens Western Wear. Also, he too was dressed like a Cowboy.

Lived there from 1974, to 1987... I love the childrens' ghost stories of the era. Aka Time Kin, 42nd & Emerald... Great documentary here thanks. Great book, and still have it. Good day.

Now the Slough is filled with homeless excrement and trash, and stolen car hulks

The exbo center replaced the stockyards in Portland

and i'm the guy that accidentally destroyed the Grand Piano in the auditorium in 1974---did u ever hear anything about that?

Born 68’ it still smells a bit ripe around there in the summer. Hormel here now.

I'm glad to see Chicago became modernized and got rid of the stockyards --- so much cleaner now

@@fredwerza3478 Oh, yeah! The pearl of the Midwest.

It was actually your fart

@@ramencurry6672 Duhhhh It was actually your breath blowing back in your face. And go…….

I'll never forgive Daley for the idiotic parking lease deal. Literally sold off for pennies on the dollar so he could patch a budget for 1 year.

Chicago is statistically still much safer now than it was in the 70's, 80's and 90's. There is a very sad spike in crime that peaked in 2021 but things are slowly getting better. It is perfectly safe to go out to lunch and dinner in the loop.

Some parts of Chicago are dangerous. Others are not. Crime has boldly come to "the Magnificent Mile" and people do on occasion get robbed in broad daylight. Chicago has neglected some parts of the city for decades. A lack of full service grocery stores, vacant lots and houses, underfunded schools, inadequate public transportation, and little to no support for small businesses has created an "Other Chicago". What is happening is to be expected.

@@BenjaminCommet the reputation that Chicago has been given is not accurate. Chicago is not even in the top ten of most dangerous cities. The powers that be in Chicago had better start building up some of its long neglected neighborhoods.

Police should be allowed to do their jobs with the left handcuffing them!

About the same story here in northeast Texas my friend. I grew up milking cows. In its heyday there were 800 dairies in our county. No more. I doubt there is still 100. I can't say the same for loving it, though it was a good way of life. Everyone now has gone to beef cattle. A lot more to my liking. Take care my northern neighbor. 😁

When do you think the smell would go away ?

I remember going to old Comiskey Park in the '70's, it smelled like the stockyards and cheap cigars.

@James Sheppard on chigacgo south side boi that saying has a whole new meaning

The jungle by Upton sinclare book describes the stock yards,which brought about major changes. Good book,will scar you.

If you liked this documentary, you should read 'The Jungle - Upton Sinclair'. A very good book about the stockyards, specifically about the ones in Chicago.

Its bullshit

I’m not from the Midwest but I do like a Chicago hotdog

It's a good documentary but don't really care about reading a book about meat packing that much.

@@JM-yx1lm It's an excellent book and it's not just about meat packing, it's about human struggle.

@@JM-yx1lm Aw C'mon !

@@paulrogers5559 it is a human struggle to survive economically due in no small part to the so called “Reagan Revolution.” Thank St. Ronnie for destroying unions and living wages, outsourcing by *supporting corporations to go offshore to make their products tax free.* (Yeah, very low to no taxes on goods produced overseas.) There are many factors that have led to economic decline in the US but in my lifetime boom and bust cycles are back again. We learned nothing from the Crash as the safeguards that were put in place to ensure no more Great Depressions occurred were systematically dismantled. And here we are: A gig economy and minimum wage part time jobs.

Yes, I read that book in the early 70's when I was a young teen - left quite an impact on me!

Early free enterprise was rough compared to standards it grew as it did. It was all it could afford in the early days. But still, you mention Imagine, "HAVING to work in those conditions". They did not have to work by physical force like slavery. The had the opportunity to work, and get themselves out of poverty, and even gain opportunity. It was a start and offered a better living then they had before employment, so they gladly choose it. I have been through a of of employers in non-union manufacturing, and even gained a couple engineering degrees while working full time, (that did not pay off for employment). I have found new jobs for more money, got laid off because of relocation of the manufacturing, and got fired enough be be fun hobby, still all just above poverty,----before I started my own business. I may not have liked all my employers and I am sure the feeling is mutual to some extent, but they all turned out to be an education I actually got paid for, to help me start my business, and I thank them all for hiring me. Now I realize that about 80% of the 20 places I worked were all owned by guys who worked for somebody else before they started their own business. Notice how you never learn about such opportunity in an economics class. They always talk about "the worker", (like communism does), and never about the opportunity we get from our employers. When I first started my business, I had a partner and it was his idea to go to this meeting, ran by mostly retired businessmen, to give advise to new business ventures, (S.C.O.R.E). I will never forget some of their advise. "If you want to compete in an industry,---work for them first." Heck---"complaining" is what motivated me to move on. :) I am glad I never worked for a Union now, because I discovered freedom when my business took off.

@@EarthSurferUSA I didn't mean to say they were reduced to slavery, I meant that they had to work to make ends meet and this was the only job for them. They were all taken Advantage of by the owners. Of course the owners were tight with there wallets and only paid what they had to also. Barely a living wage. Never has a worker created any wealth for himself working for others, it's only when he starts his own business can any of us really succeed. That is unless your highly educated or work for the government like a damn Pelosi.

Amen!

@@roofermarc1 I was going to endorse your comment until I got to the part about Nancy Pelosi. It's interesting you didn't mention someone like Chuck Grassley who has been a governmental legislator since 1959.

Snowflakes and Woketards need not apply.

Manhattan still stinks and is ridiculously overpriced now..

@@jasonallen3678 Was always pretty expensive. Stink? Yes… but believe me, it WAS far worse when the city actually had a functioning “industrial” waterfront…which included slaughterhouses. The Hackensack Meadows in New Jersey had feed lots and I believe slaughterhouses. The whole region had awful water and air pollution that many have lost sight of today. A population born after the mid-1970s can’t appreciate just how much better things are today environment-wise. Yes…”bridges and roads” are looking more beat up and in need of repair/renewal/repainting…but the air and water IT most definitely better. BTW…in the 1910s my great grandfather loved hunting in the Hackensack Meadows.

@@josephhuether1184 In the 50s one of my uncles worked in a slaughterhouse up in New Jersey. A cow got loose from a stall that hadn't been closed right, ran him over, and kicked him in the head. He was unconscious for three days. After that, his family said he was never quite right. I remember him coming over to visit one Christmas and he had this huge dent in his forehead still where it had caved in his skull. He didn't talk much and the eye under where he'd been kicked was always looking off in the same direction. He had to be hand-fed and sometimes he'd start shouting unintelligibly. My aunt said the company never acknowledged he'd been hurt and when he wasn't able to work they fired him.

Thanks I shall look for this movie.

It was about human trafficking where girls and women were drugged and auctioned off to the highest bidder like prime beef.

And of course, you noticed how the book was featured heavily in the last 1/3 of the same video you are commenting on....

@@email4664 well I am 47 years old and only 2 years removed from suffering 2 simultaneous ruptured brain aneurysms. glad you can feel high and mighty in a comment section on you tube..

wow, did you sit next to me when it dawned on me that this was basically a documentary of "The Jungle." you are fvcking phenomenal along with your creative handle of E mail. where did you come up with such a catchy hancle? were you working hand in hand with Al Gore when HE invented the internet?

Man just shut up,you're doing too much..

@@joshualangdon3070 hahaha ha nice!

Sounds like Olde Philadelphia, particularly the Infamous Kensington Neigjborhood. Not too many people are aware that all the streets head downstream to Kensington ave where they could easily hose all the sewage down to the main street where the storefronts were, easily washing the day away with the last door shut for the day. Bars on every corner, six churches in my neighborhood for each nationality. The Polish, the Irish, the German, the Lithuanian, the Italian, and the Baptist. Every kid went to school at the church their family went to service at on Sundays. And the Gangs that worked the alleys and the docks, scimming taxes, running the daily numbers, protection rackets, burglary, theft, liquor, the after hours social clubs. Each 2 square mile area was like its own small town. The good old days, days we likely will never see again in our once great nation.

@@stephenbishop355 all those gangsters in Philly ran that whole town --- the good ole days

@@stephenbishop355 We will see them again. This is a human problem, ie a political problem. I think it has grown in the recent past. No easy solutions. Exploitation is still a huge thing.

@@glenn6583 There is a solution. Not sure how hard it would be to perform, but the solution is pretty much the same solution we came up with when we formed the USA; Living under the philosophies of individual liberty protected by law and all people (all free), to participate in free enterprise, (I just defined human morality). But this time, it is the founding of the USA that will be the New World Order. Not communism. Politics,--is the application of philosophy, and the philosophies being imposed on us through Politics is collectivism/communism. There is a reason why your philosophy course in college was a mixed bag of garbage, by mostly insane people who probably would have been institutionalized with that talk after the age of reason, with you still getting a good grade having no idea why, and just glad it was over, never to be thought of again. It is time we brought philosophy, (how man should live), back into the political argument, (or for the first time if it never was), and drag the commies into the light. Yea! :)

@@stephenbishop355 ah yes. The good old days of exploitation and extortion. Lol wtf is wrong with you boomers.

You can work “hard” or you can work “smart” I don’t feel bad for low earners who think they are doing something by working” hard”. I worked hard milking cows and that will never make you rich. Why? Because most people with hands and half a brain can milk a cow and this is why working hard doesn’t guarantee high pay and high quality of life.

@@suitedsuperhero3155 people dont know this your right

You can tell a fool, but you can't tell them much. No incentive.

Always go union . I don’t work without a contract

@@tonyrizzo615 if unions are so grate then why force them on those that don't want them? I always laugh when those who claim to be conservative and still are pro union when your extortion I mean dues go to protect lazy worthless workers, the union bosses and democrats

Them rats was probably just moving out to search for food since their easy meals were probably gone

yes! Back Of The Yards my neighbor... not long ago, you still smell wired smell. in 70's we would sit by the sidewalk on 47th Bishop street and we would see the trailers passed by with pigs. Yes, they would make lost of noise. We would feel bad... the rats us the problem... peace

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

It also resulted in the passage of meat inspection laws in 1906. Teddy Roosevelt said that reading those few pages that described the working conditions sickened him. P. S. I'm Lithuanian myself. A lot of Lithuanians worked in the yards. Many of them settled in Bridgeport and Town of Lake. St. George's was the first Lithuanian parish in Chicago.

Read it too,great book,nice to hear someone else found the book a great read

@@darrylpringle1499 It was required reading in English class during high school, I forget which year.

@@tilesetter1953 Well, whenever or wherever it was a very good book, examining a lot of things. Too bad kids don't really read anymore

A "swift" knock on the head

💪

Well said Marv!

Depends on your family. We eat lamb a lot.

Every other country was just as rough or worse . than the industry here.

Lithuanians were, and still are, incredible people with integrity and a work ethic that will always impress.

seems like a whiny labor union documentary. looking back, it is easy to see the workers as exploited. However, the workers would have more than likely starved to death with no work, as so would have many other workers in other Industries who depended on cheap protein.

@@jeremyperala839 Absolutely!

@@jeremyperala839 Unionizing the yards wouldn't have raised the prices to consumers nearly as much as the price fixing by the companies did. The Golden Age of America in the 50s, 60s, and 70s was the high point of organized labour in America.

Found the Fascist 🤷‍♂️

You completely missed the point of this documentary if thats what you think....