Muckraker

A muckraker is, primarily, a reporter or writer who investigates and publishes truthful reports involving a host of social issues, broadly including crime and corruption and often involving elected officials, political leaders and influential members of business and industry. Upton Sinclair is considered to be one because he reported on the unsanitary procedures that were going on in factories. I think the most disturbing of the passage was the fact that farmers liked the cows to have tuberculosis because it made them fatter.