For Isabelle Astier, Séverin Muller’s work on the slaughterhouses deeply renews the conception of the State in France, which has since become crazy cow crisis a body of control and traceability. Between the health injunction and that of profitability, the workload has increased considerably.
Nothing will be any more as before following the epidemic of the mad cow in March 1996. The story tells Séverin Muller makes the light spring to an ignored place, apart from the XIXe century, far from the city center: the bloody slaughterhouse. The animals arriving at the slaughterhouse, the professional killers, the rendering, the cutting, the transport of ice meats, the animal flesh in vive: who would have had the idea of investigating this chain of indifference ? Which, above all, would have imagined that an animal epidemic would upset the old ordering of the labor ? Suspecting to harm the health of the population, the slaughterhouse arises at the front of the denunciations of the retransmission of the disease. From then on, professional scenarios are turned upside down. From now on, nothing will escape control, reconstruction, the decomposition of gestures. Two watchwords are essential: traceability and self -control. Now everything will be scripted, if you dare to say. As in a film, the workers, the chefs, the executives will be subject “ visible and audible », Say everything they do or don’t do, the least gestures.
From 1995 to 2000, the author became a worker and then executive in a slaughterhouse to work there and simultaneously conduct the investigation. The richness of the book allows multiple readings, and for my part, I read it as an analysis of the methods of renewal of the State design in France.
Let us resume the investigation and his observations on the work of the workers. The new health constraints transform the working conditions on the slaughter chain of “ rough “, Former agricultural workers and experienced workers. Further on, in the cutting workshops, old butchers work according to the logics of the profession, with what it involves danger, pleasure in handling the knives and well -sharpened blades and exclusion of women.
But knife tasks will transform under the effect of the crazy cow crisis which requires traceability and thereby a modification of the production method to deal with the crisis. The workload increases considerably. The workers are caught between the health injunction and that of profitability. Everything is new. And in this great upheaval, the rules are invented, float, contradict themselves. To maintain cohesion, the elders and the workshop managers invent a “ adjustment solidarity ». The new recruited adapts worth that is worth or are put on the sidelines.
In management offices, two logics compete. That of legalism planning the procedures against that of haggling which adapts the ways of making the way. The quality service, hitherto neglected in the slaughterhouse, suddenly takes a central place and disturbed the old order which abandoned any concern for recording risks. Of course, it is by law that this mutation will impose itself. Practices judicize at all levels of the sector. Litigation will arise with customers and administration and induce a multiplicity of controls which must guarantee health security. The classic and Routinier administrative regulatory control is tension with a principle of individual responsibility of manufacturers who are forced to self -control on the basis of private standards. The commercial service loses a large part of its activity and its prerogatives for the benefit of the quality service.
The last chapter alone sums up the drama played within the slaughterhouse: enforcing the regulations is a challenge. Monitoring requires the cooperation of controllers, veterinary agents, and controlled, workers and executives ! It is the thorn in the foot of the company. Too much control over the controls irresistibly produced discreet bypass. The authority that rested on the word given becomes obsolete in the sense that its fragility is called into question. It is the bypass of the controls that matters. The staging of work during visits and controls concentrates all the strata of standards that are overlapped and sometimes contradict. We discover that there are several ways to do ! The application of the rule sheds light on real exercises, ways and gestures, travel and techniques, transport and schedules. The slightest gesture can be deviant. Everything is judged there since observed from very dense and constantly discussed standards. This is all this register of incompatibilities that is remarkable. The author depicts us with finesse the different types of visits and the staging of work orchestrated on every occasion. During courtesy visits, it is a question of giving in the spectacular. There is not really any stake and visitors being unimportant, we show them the harshness and dangers of the profession. The visit of the official bodies requires that we put forward respect for legality. For the company it is “ be well By respecting very strict instructions. Visit customers and certificate organizations leads to general mobilization of staff. These certification visits are real passage exams and everything must be respected: performance standards, legal prescriptions, specifications. We have to do with contradictions. Small internal routine visits are the only ones not to be announced ! The workers then activate a whole gestural code to warn of the unexpected arrival of a team leader or a master’s degree.
What remains of the crazy cow crisis ? The human epidemic announced did not take place, but the traceability procedures, the self -checks, the health risk management model remained and apply in 78% of companies. This book shows us this silent conversion, so little visible, but that matters for those who work there.