American Meat: A Threat to Your Health and to the Environment

Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America. By Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway. Belmont, CA: Thomson/ Wadsworth, 2003. Pp. 172. In 1923 Mrs. Cecile Steele of Delaware received 500 chicks instead of the fifty she had ordered to restock her flock of laying hens. When she decided to keep all 500 chicks and found she could turn a profit selling them as food, the era of big chicken was born on the eastern shore of Maryland. In Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America, anthropologist Donald Stull and social geographer Michael Broadway team up to investigate the impact of the unprecedented changes that followed in the poultry industry and similar changes that occurred in the beef and pork industries. Slaughterhouse Blues is an important book and should be of interest to all who care about sustainable agriculture, the future of rural communities, and the health and environmental consequences of the current industrial agricultural system. The book is an excellent introduction to the important links between public health and food production