Do you know where your food comes from? Who makes it? How much it really costs? How the animals you eat are being treated and taken care of before they get on your plate? How about what the labels on food products actually mean? I used to not know any of the answers to any of these questions. I did know that many cows live in feed lots some on farms, pigs live in pens, and that chickens live in coops. That is pretty much the extent of what I knew about how our food is treated and cared for. Of course I have seen some of the recalls on tainted meat, in the media but I never really bothered to find out more. Did I know that four-hundred cows and hour are slaughtered in a large slaughterhouse? Or that there are five-thousand seven hundred slaughterhouses in America to kill around twenty-eight billion pounds of beef a year, and that's only cows? Or that the Smithfield Packing Company can butcher up to thirty-two thousand hogs a day? These things are all true and I found this out after watching a little documentary call "Food Inc.".
Food Inc. is about how food industries try to cover up how they really take care of our food and what's in it. Food Inc. also shows how food industrialism affects the lives of Americans and their health. The movie shows cows jammed together with thousands of other cows in feed lots like sardines in a can. The cows stand knee-deep in their own excrement all day and night. Imagine living like this and having to eat something you can barely digest, like gravel. Gravel to us is like corn to cows but we don't have to eat gravel, cows have to eat corn. Grass is what cows have eaten for thousands of years and it's what they love, so why are they forced to eat it by large food companies? Corn is cheap, easy to make, last a long time when stored, and are made in colossal amounts(about two-hundred bushels an acre). When some cows eat large amounts of corn a bacteria builds up in their stomachs called E. Coli. This bacteria can be harmless and even help it's 'host' but sometimes they release potentially lethal toxins that well, can be lethal. It sort of makes me nervous that the meat or the veggies(vegetables can have E. Coli too) I might eat could be riddled with bacteria from the darkest corners of a cows' stomach. There are about one-hundred different cows mixed into a single hamburger and it is extremely likely that at least one of those now diseased cows had E. Coli.
Take the case of a young now diseased boy named Kevin who ate a hamburger from a burger chain called "Jack in the Box" and suffered from E. Coli poisoning. They should change their name from "Jack in the Box" to "E. Coli in the Burger". One day Kevin is playing around, having fun and eating snacks as children do. Eight days later he wasn't able to drink water and had to suck it from a sponge. Twelve days later his parents had to bury his cadaver in a child-sized coffin. His mother and grandmother made it their goal to pass a law that gives the USDA power to close plants that produce meat contaminated with E. Coli or other potentially deadly pathogens. Kevin's law has not yet passed because the food industry is protected by laws and bills. The food industry in protected by our government because many congressmen have worked in these large food corporations and still "look out" for them and make sure it's nearly impossible to sue or make laws that put them in situations they rather not be in.
Do you know who works in Americas slaughterhouses and assembly lines? Or who loads the chickens onto the trucks, and "takes"care of them. Who works at the C.A.F.O.s? The answer to these questions were the least surprising thing to me in all the movie. It's usually illegal immigrants that do the work that no one else wants to do. Illegal immigrants have to do the same mindless labor day in and day out to earn minimum wage. In a way the food industries blackmail illegal immigrants in order to keep them in their grasps. One of the many ways food companies "blackmail" illegal immigrants to continuing working for them is telling them that they will go to jail or worse, back to their home country(usually Mexico). Some illegal immigrants work for a food company for years and if they get deported the company doesn't get into any trouble at all. Why do companies use/hire illegal immigrants? They do this because immigrants work for little pay, are desperate, it's hard for them to find a lasting job, and they have no rights. At all. I don't know exactly what the countries that these immigrants come from are like and I don't know how hard it is to get a green card. But I still think that if they want the rights then they should do what's needed in order to become citizens. You can't go somewhere your not supposed to be and expect to have what the people who are supposed to be there have. Even though these immigrants shouldn't be here illegally they are still people and it is still hard to have your life pulled out from under you.That is why I sympathize for them.
One question of Food Inc. raises is "Whose responsibility is it to make sure our food is safe?". There are many answers to this question. Some people would say it's the governments responsibility to make sure our food is safe. They pass the laws, they have to protect our rights, the government says what can and can not go in our foods and their labels. Other people say that it's up to our parents to make sure our food is safe. They say young adults and children do not completely understand what they are eating and what nutrition is. If parents aren't a hundred percent sure that the food their child is going to eat is safe then they shouldn't feed it to them. I personally think it's our responsibility to make sure the food we eat is safe. If we want to make sure our meat, poultry and vegetables came from a "happy farm" and are healthy we can go to a local farmers market or order it from a validated website. If we do not want to eat something then we usually don't have to eat it, we are not force fed like the poor bacteria filled cows. It's up to us as consumers to change or keep the way our food is being grown. I don't know how I feel about chickens not being able to walk on account of them growing too fast for there bones to catch up or cows having to be fed corn. I think I feel more sorry for the cows because they are bigger so you see how sad they look more. I believe that cows belong in pastures and barns. I also think pigs shouldn't just be overfed and in overcrowded pens but able to play around in the mud like in the book in Charlotte's Web. I don't really care much about chickens, they are kind of annoying but at least deserve to be able to walk. I know that since consumers demand so much products and goods to live and because we are used to it that these companies need to save money to make money and that means saving space and expenses. We can't exactly complain about the treatment of these animals and how safe our food is when we still buy and eat the food in question. We have to change and question ourselves before we try to change and question others. I think that's what the makers of Food Inc want us to do, change our lives to change the world.
Food Inc. is about how food industries try to cover up how they really take care of our food and what's in it. Food Inc. also shows how food industrialism affects the lives of Americans and their health. The movie shows cows jammed together with thousands of other cows in feed lots like sardines in a can. The cows stand knee-deep in their own excrement all day and night. Imagine living like this and having to eat something you can barely digest, like gravel. Gravel to us is like corn to cows but we don't have to eat gravel, cows have to eat corn. Grass is what cows have eaten for thousands of years and it's what they love, so why are they forced to eat it by large food companies? Corn is cheap, easy to make, last a long time when stored, and are made in colossal amounts(about two-hundred bushels an acre). When some cows eat large amounts of corn a bacteria builds up in their stomachs called E. Coli. This bacteria can be harmless and even help it's 'host' but sometimes they release potentially lethal toxins that well, can be lethal. It sort of makes me nervous that the meat or the veggies(vegetables can have E. Coli too) I might eat could be riddled with bacteria from the darkest corners of a cows' stomach. There are about one-hundred different cows mixed into a single hamburger and it is extremely likely that at least one of those now diseased cows had E. Coli.
Take the case of a young now diseased boy named Kevin who ate a hamburger from a burger chain called "Jack in the Box" and suffered from E. Coli poisoning. They should change their name from "Jack in the Box" to "E. Coli in the Burger". One day Kevin is playing around, having fun and eating snacks as children do. Eight days later he wasn't able to drink water and had to suck it from a sponge. Twelve days later his parents had to bury his cadaver in a child-sized coffin. His mother and grandmother made it their goal to pass a law that gives the USDA power to close plants that produce meat contaminated with E. Coli or other potentially deadly pathogens. Kevin's law has not yet passed because the food industry is protected by laws and bills. The food industry in protected by our government because many congressmen have worked in these large food corporations and still "look out" for them and make sure it's nearly impossible to sue or make laws that put them in situations they rather not be in.
Do you know who works in Americas slaughterhouses and assembly lines? Or who loads the chickens onto the trucks, and "takes"care of them. Who works at the C.A.F.O.s? The answer to these questions were the least surprising thing to me in all the movie. It's usually illegal immigrants that do the work that no one else wants to do. Illegal immigrants have to do the same mindless labor day in and day out to earn minimum wage. In a way the food industries blackmail illegal immigrants in order to keep them in their grasps. One of the many ways food companies "blackmail" illegal immigrants to continuing working for them is telling them that they will go to jail or worse, back to their home country(usually Mexico). Some illegal immigrants work for a food company for years and if they get deported the company doesn't get into any trouble at all. Why do companies use/hire illegal immigrants? They do this because immigrants work for little pay, are desperate, it's hard for them to find a lasting job, and they have no rights. At all. I don't know exactly what the countries that these immigrants come from are like and I don't know how hard it is to get a green card. But I still think that if they want the rights then they should do what's needed in order to become citizens. You can't go somewhere your not supposed to be and expect to have what the people who are supposed to be there have. Even though these immigrants shouldn't be here illegally they are still people and it is still hard to have your life pulled out from under you.That is why I sympathize for them.
One question of Food Inc. raises is "Whose responsibility is it to make sure our food is safe?". There are many answers to this question. Some people would say it's the governments responsibility to make sure our food is safe. They pass the laws, they have to protect our rights, the government says what can and can not go in our foods and their labels. Other people say that it's up to our parents to make sure our food is safe. They say young adults and children do not completely understand what they are eating and what nutrition is. If parents aren't a hundred percent sure that the food their child is going to eat is safe then they shouldn't feed it to them. I personally think it's our responsibility to make sure the food we eat is safe. If we want to make sure our meat, poultry and vegetables came from a "happy farm" and are healthy we can go to a local farmers market or order it from a validated website. If we do not want to eat something then we usually don't have to eat it, we are not force fed like the poor bacteria filled cows. It's up to us as consumers to change or keep the way our food is being grown. I don't know how I feel about chickens not being able to walk on account of them growing too fast for there bones to catch up or cows having to be fed corn. I think I feel more sorry for the cows because they are bigger so you see how sad they look more. I believe that cows belong in pastures and barns. I also think pigs shouldn't just be overfed and in overcrowded pens but able to play around in the mud like in the book in Charlotte's Web. I don't really care much about chickens, they are kind of annoying but at least deserve to be able to walk. I know that since consumers demand so much products and goods to live and because we are used to it that these companies need to save money to make money and that means saving space and expenses. We can't exactly complain about the treatment of these animals and how safe our food is when we still buy and eat the food in question. We have to change and question ourselves before we try to change and question others. I think that's what the makers of Food Inc want us to do, change our lives to change the world.
Amanda, this is a fantastic post. I think you state your claim very well in your conclusion, that "we have to change and question ourselves before we try to change and question others." It is clear that you are upset by much of what you learned from the movie and other research that you did, but I like your openness to the different possibilities of approaching this problem. I tend to agree with you that we have to change ourselves and be educated about our food, but I wonder if that is enough. In our increasingly busy and expensive lives it is simply too easy to go for cheap and convenient food. And even if we just "slip" once in awhile we are still supporting this industry.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I hope you don't get too many angry emails from the chickens :)
Yes, a great post. I was also struck by one of your final lines: "We have to change and question oursleves before we try to change and question others." However, like Locker, I wonder if the consumer always has the power to do this. Are healthy foods equally available in all neighborhoods and if not, why not? What role do you think the government should play, if any, in managing the quality of our food? For example, what do you think about the possible soda tax proposed by Mayor Bloomberg in NYC? Your post raises lots of great questions!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'm with you with the cows. Those big, sad eyes get me every time.