Beef U: How Big Business Ruined Your Dinner

The story of a young man and his journey to becoming a beef boner, the most highly skilled trade in the beef industry, chronicles the last years of an era before independant packers were eliminated all across America by big business tactics. Now a ghost town, Detroit's packinghouse district was a dynamic colorful community crushed out of existence by large corporations destroying hard won careers and negatively affecting us all. Today's profit before quality and dollars before fairness mentality has increased the cost of the beef we eat as much as it has reduced the quality, in the most insidious ways.Filled with funny and dramatic stories of a salty old working man and well seasoned with fascinating characters, BEEF U brings to life the packinghouse district where it was an adventure to work. Broader than just the beef industry, it serves as an example of what has happened in virtually all business and industry taking the joy out of our jobs and lowering our standard of living. BEEF U is the first true insider's look into the beef business and a reminder of how good life was for the American worker back before corporations acheived "wage slavery"

William Carlton was born and raised in farm country of Southeastern Michigan. At age twenty he moved to Detroit to learn a trade in the packinghouse district where he worked over 15 years until changes in the beef industry eliminated his trade. He went on to new trades and careers in several industries living and working in Fairbanks and Anchorage Alaska, San Francisco and San Diego California, then back to Detroit. Currently semi retired he’s pursuing his dream of changing writing from a hobby to another new career.