Good Essay About William Cronon

The Packing Industry in the Ecosystem

Chicago is one of the cities that struggled with the issue of environmental pollution for a long period. This problem was prevalent in the 19th Century mainly due to the meat packing factories that operated in the region. In his article “The Packing Industry in the Ecosystem”, William Cronon detailed on the operations of meat parking industries and how their activities contributed to water pollution in the city and how the menace was dealt with. Meatpacking was the dominant industry in Chicago, thus contributed the largest amount of effluent they were responsible for the pollution of Chicago rivers. This was a problem to the city dwellers because the river provided most of the water used for domestic purposes in the city. The meat packers did not have a set mechanism to dispose of unused parts of the animals they slaughtered. Thus, most of the unpalatable parts of the animals found their way into the river. Decomposed animal parts did make river water not only unusable but also contributed immensely to air pollution. This rendered some parts of the city inhabitable. An outcry from the city dwellers, which threatened the survival of the meat packing industry, accelerated the process of getting a solution to the pollution problem. One ingenious solution that was proposed and quickly adapted was the reuse of the unwanted animal parts. It was discovered that most of this unwanted animal part like the hooves, bones, cartilages and blood could be used to make other products that could enhance life. These unwanted animal parts were used as raw materials for products like glue, buttons, oleomargarine and fertilizer. This discovery was initially received with a lot of enthusiasms because it considerably reduced the effluents that were choking Chicago Rivers. This discovery however presented other unforeseen problems to the whole meat packing industry, the people and other meat related businesses like butcheries. The first problem was brought about by the meat packers. They would take diseased, weak and malnutrition animals were slaughtered and processed then packed as alternative meat products that were sold to customers without much government inspections and scrutiny. These products were well received because they were cheaper. Dispute of their popularity, these products were considered unhealthy because they were not scrutinized so parts like the intestines, which could not be sold in the mainstream market, were used to makes products like sausages so that they may be accepted even though they may not be sold in the mainstream market in their original form.
The meat packers brought about a lot of changes in the meat industry. On one hand, they provided the population with cheaper meat products that were reached well by the people but on the other hand they caused a negative effect on other business entities in the meat industry. Butcheries that were offering cheaper meat were essentially faced out by the meat packers. This was a move that was viewed as unfair because these smaller butcheries offered higher quality meat that was safer for consumption compared to what the Packers were offering. Butchers underwent health inspection checks. This was not the case with the meat packs because their auxiliary products did not undergo health inspections. This gave them a leeway to process unpalatable animal parts and sells them to the people at cheaper prices, cheaper than what the butchers were offering. It came to a point where meat packers were making more money from selling a product than the meat products that they were initially packaging. This however caused a different economic problem that caused trade imbalances in the meat industry. This economic problem was because meat packers monopolized the industry due to the large amounts of money they were getting from their ‘side’ trade. Monopoly also came about due to the mergers that meat packers formed in order to protect their trade.
In conclusion, it is of the essence to denote the fact that pollution just like any other region in the globe experience pollution. In the article under scrutiny, the author details the effects of pollution to Chicago, due to the many meat packing factories that operated in the region during the 19th century. Owing the fact that this became a huge issue of concern, the concerned parties developed new ways of curbing the increased pollution effects in the region, one of the most apparent way was to provide alternatives to meat products and the other way was to use meat products like born to make new products like glue.