What do you find so surprising in upton sinclair's account of the meatpacking industry around the turn of the century? why?

People falling into vats and being ground up with the meat. Rat droppings scraped into the sausage. More people dying from our foods than from the war in the Spanish American war. 

We can argue as to whether or not this was from a lack of government regulation but one thing is for sure: the rights of victims to sue for being wronged were not honored or enforced by any government program. If they had been, regulation of labor and the meat packing industry would have been a moot point.