Behind The Scenes
When imagining a farm, we picture a vast lush pasture with several cows here and there grazing the fresh green grass. Amidst the meadow stands a red barn housing nesting chickens, plump pigs and shaggy goats. Unfortunately, most farms in the United States today are far from this image. Farming has taken a gloomy down turn and now operates like factories. Not only has farming become mechanized, it has also become a horrifying sight on behalf of the animals. Few consumers stop to think about the harsh cruelty an animal had to go through to make it between the buns of their burger. Besides the merciless acts put against these poor, defenseless creatures, the other ingredients that comprise fast food products is not as
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Many companies in the food production industry fail to reveal vital information about their practices, blinding consumers to the brutal techniques used against defenseless animals. Cost and efficiency seem to be fast food companies top priority. Traditional farming techniques are far gone and mass production has taken its place. The film Food, Inc. opens with a depiction on how the fast food industry has transformed over time. One example of the transformation is shown in the first chapter of this film. This chapter focuses specifically on how the food industry has altered the way chickens are raised. Carole Morison, an industrial chicken farmer featured in the film Food, Inc., was under contract with Perdue, “a leading international food and agriculture business” (Perdue Farms, par. 7), and offered a look into what an industrial chicken farm looks like. Sadly, chickens raised to be sold for meat and eggs are unable to engage in their natural activities such as “form friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another and develop a pecking order, love and are for their young, …show more content…
Chickens raised for their eggs experience just as much abuse as those raised for their meet. It is estimated that about 305 million hens are raised for their eggs in the United States each year. Many egg producing factories practice battery-caged egg production techniques. The process of raising these chickens is forceful and violent with workers paying little consideration to the care of the animals. Chickens are able to live for more than a decade, however, hens raised for their eggs get their life cut short. “Spent hens”, a term used for hens who have lived up to two years and are no longer able to produce a profitable amount of eggs for the industry, are forcefully thrown into metal containers that are later gassed with carbon dioxide. This process is used to quickly get rid of the useless hens with the lowest cost possible. Over 90% of egg producing hens in the United States are forced to spend their lives in wire cages, stacked in high tiers in windowless warehouses. These naturally clean animals are forced to live in the filth of their other cage mates. Many suffer from major feather loss due to the constant rubbing of their bodies against the cage wire. Weak and sick birds are trampled
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
The article highlights and includes the documentary Food, Inc. which exposes the inability of the profit system to provide safe and healthy food for the vast majority of the population. Eric Schlosser investigating journalist quotes, “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000…now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are deliberately hidden from us”. Schlosser also quotes, “Birds are now raised and slaughtered in half the time they were 50 years ago, but now they’re twice as big”. He believes they not only changed the chicken, but they changed the farmer implying that capitalism has taken the place for the need of small scale farming. In addition, Michael Pollan also a journalist believes that the vast array of choices which appears in everyday supermarkets is nothing but an “illusion of diversity”. The advancement of technology and how consumers react to products has been further developed and continues to be in this generation. Food scientists are now genetically modifying and engineering products to satisfy and manipulate consumers to desire more of these unhealthy product choices. The biggest advance in recent years has
Chickens have to endure suffering that no living thing should have to go through. The egg laying chickens have to be forced into tiny cages without enough room to stretch their wings. Up to 8 hens are crammed in to a cage that is the size of a folded newspaper, about 11"-14". Stress from the confinement leads to severe feather loss so the chicken will be almost completely bald in the cold cages. When the chickens are of egg-laying age, there beaks are cut off without any pain killers to ease the pain, they do this so the chickens don’t break their own eggs and eat them because the chickens are hungry.
‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser traces the history of fast food industry from old hot dog stands to the billion dollar franchise companies established as America spread its influence of quick, easy and greasy cuisine around the globe. It is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism that looks deep into the industries that have profited from the American agriculture business, while engaging in labor practices that are often shameful.
Slaughterhouse workers constantly face the risk of serious injury or even death. Many have dealt with blood, animals, and sharp knives. Along with these conditions, the absurd speed of work further increases the chances for injury. While corporations were regulated in the early twentieth century, lax of control in previous years has caused them to return to dangerous methods of production for efficiency. Animals are in a far greater amount of pain than workers since corporations have bred them for the main purpose of fast food. The inhumane treatment of animals, such as one worker’s method of stomping on live chickens, has caused some to argue for better treatment. However, corporations have fought hard to keep policies the same, and as result, their opponents’ demands are almost never met. These issues are evidence that fast food corporations have grown too powerful and must be regulated.
Fast food consumption is taking America by a storm and it is for the sake of our lives. Fast food relies heavily on industrialized corn because of how cheap and easy to grow it is. With that being said, animals are being fed with corn rather than being fed with grass. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Rich Blair who runs a “cow-calf” operation s...
“If you live in a free market and a free society, shouldn’t you have the right to know what you’re buying? It’s shocking that we don’t and it’s shocking how much is kept from us” (Kenner). For years, the American public has been in the dark about the conditions under which the meat on their plate was produced. The movie, Food Inc. uncovers the harsh truths about the food industry. This shows that muckraking is still an effective means of creating change as shown by Robert Kenner’s movie, Food Inc. and the reforms to the food industry that followed its release.
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
According to the article, “The Unhealthy Meat Market,” by Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times (2014), Kristof asserted that the meat industry particularly Tyson Foods has done more harm than good. Consequently, to sustain the high demand for meat especially chicken, there has been a negative repercussion on both humans and animals, the environment, as well as, the economy (Leonard). Most chickens in order to reach the level of maturity desired by Tyson are bred to grow “huge breasts.” Hence, Beacham of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals stated that “These birds are essentially bred to suffer,” which she classifies as raising “exploding chickens.” Furthermore, the conditions under which chickens are reared
The movie food Inc. described and showed a lot on how chickens are treated, and what the farmers has to go through to raise them healthy and strong for the society to eat. One fact on how chickens are treated than how they used to be is, “farmers wait forty-nine days to hatch, they feed them a lot for them to grow twice as big, and for them to have bigger breast as well”(Food Inc.).A lot people think oh well I’m eating chicken
The way that our society has been able to produce food has changed in the last fifty years that the several thousand years beforehand. Robert Kenner addresses problems of our society’s food system and how there is only a handful of large corporations that have basically taken over the food system in the United States in the film Food, Inc. Large businesses have been able to significantly produce vast amounts of food and set low prices for consumers, usually because of government subsidies, which results in enormous profit and greater control of the food supply sources. This leads to negative health, safety, and economic consequences. This documentary examines the exercises of the few large food corporations from the start of production
Since companies have the money they can make the a cleaner factory and raise their animals the right way. Problem With companies wanting to get their meat products on shelves of grocery stores or in fast food restaurants they bypass many health codes. One of the causes of bypassing health codes is the
It is said that the most important factors in layers’ welfare are the basic needs of the laying hens. If the eggs produced are at its highest quality, then good welfare was applied to the hens (Heng, Li, & Peterson,
I have always been drawn to chickens since I was a little girl. It was only in my thirty’s that I first came in to contact with chickens on a farm. You would think that a city girl like me would be afraid, nope, I went right in to feed and sat in chicken poop. No one told me I shouldn’t sit in the coop and feed them, but I was fine with it, they calm me. Each year I keep telling myself I will move when I can have my chickens. I will cover the difference between meat and egg layers. I will discuss the different ways to home them, and keep them safe. Why should people keep chickens at all? In this research paper I will go over the information that I have read and how I feel personally about raising and keeping chickens in your back yard.
Shayla Herrera Economics Final Essay May,2018 The way we eat has changed over the past 50 years. Mammoth corporations have taken over all of the food chain in the United States, from all farms where our food is grown to the restaurants and supermarkets where it’s sold. Our food industry is brutal, and economically and environmentally unsustainable.