The Fate of Food The hidden methods used to produce the food we consume today are unethical. These methods include the usage of chemicals, and abuse of workers and animals. The process of producing food goes on everyday but as consumers, we are unaware of how it is done. A vast majority of Americans are not aware of the highly mechanized structure of the industrial food system. Determined to capitalize on profit and production, social responsibility and food safety has taken a backseat to the industrial food system. The three most significant problems of the industrial food system are animal cruelty, the lack of biodiversity, and the treatment of farm workers, and these problems can be resolved by creating more efficient food agencies, government subsidies for small organic farmers, and agencies that protect farmers’ rights). The industrial food system is the cause of animal cruelty because of factory farms. The treatment of farm animals is “barbaric” (Blatt 2008, 195). The procedure for raising farm animals is inhumane. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is a process of the industrial farming system that separates animals from their natural habitat and confines them into farmhouses with thousands of other livestock. (Walsh 2009) In modern factory farms, animals are crowded into dirty, windowless farmhouses and cramped in “wire cages”, and “gestation crates”. (Niman 2009, 101) Hogs for example are confined in these factory farms for twenty-four hours a day. This raises a lot of issues because these animals will never have the chance to raise their families, enjoy free-range, or roam in grassy fields. Newborn piglets are separated from their mothers. The animals are deprived of access to fresh air and are fed through ... ... middle of paper ... ...d health. I propose the creation of the Farm Workers’ Labor Protection Agency (FWLPA). Through the FWLPA, farmworkers can address their concerns without fear of being fired or deported. The FWLPA will work with OSHA to apply its safety standards to individual farms. Farmers prior to being hired will be taught safety standards and ESL classes will be provided twice a week to immigrant farmers who do not speak English. Workers’ compensation, living conditions, and wages will be respected as part of the FWLPA’s standards which will include a $10 dollar starting pay, and overtime pay. Industrial farm workers face dangerous work conditions and should be rewarded accordingly. With the creation of new and efficient agencies, the industrial food system in the United States will lower health issues, protect animals and workers’ rights, and develop a sustainable strategy.
With regulations being set and laws enacted, the United States has seen a change for the better within the food industry and for the consumers overall. As a result, as much as a company is willing to cut on cost, without the consumers, every business in any industry will become bankrupt. The power is in the consumer and as long as consumers are educated properly and willing to speak up, there is a bright future ahead. However, because not everything can be seen, it is important to have books such as The Jungle and authors like Upton Sinclair to let people know what is going on and what not everyone is able to see. In doing so, this will raise awareness, create transparency and demand that companies practice ethically for the betterment of the
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.
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,
Did you know that over fifty-six billion animals, all over the world are being slaughtered for meat production yearly? This is caused by the high demands for meat, since the consumption of meat has increased annually. To accommodate the meat demands the agricultural farming has turned to factory farming. An intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, also called factory farming. Factory farming is a large, industrial operation that cultivates large quantities of animals to meet the food consumption of humans. In the United States, Over ninety-nine percent of farm animals are raised in factory farms, these factories were invented to focus on profit and efficiency. They do this by sacrificing the animals’
Imagine having a big juicy hamburger or some fried chicken in front of you, of course you cannot wait to eat it. Now a days we want to eat the cheapest, fastest thing we can find without realizing where it came from or how the animal was treated before being killed. The production of food has changed drastically over the course of the years. There is more food being produced, but at the cost of becoming unhealthy. In the documentary Food Inc. released in 2008, it goes through and provides the real facts of what goes on in the food we eat. The documentary provides an American family’s view, a farmer’s view, and an expert’s view towards the modern day food production system. The movie makes you aware of the how dangerous food has become over
Most people do not spend their days wondering where their next meal is going to come from, but as the economic situation gets worse and jobs get harder to find it is becoming an every occurring issue in the United States today. Not only will some of us have to worry about with what money will we buy our food, but now we will all start having to worry about where our food is coming from and is it safe for us to consume. We are moving toward a safer tomorrow every day by regulating certain parts of our food supply system. No matter how long it takes, it is clear that there is always opportunity for improvement in making our Nation healthier and safer.
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
American society has grown so accustomed to receiving their food right away and in large quantities. Only in the past few decades has factory farming come into existence that has made consuming food a non guilt-free action. What originally was a hamburger with slaughtered cow meat is now slaughtered cow meat that’s filled with harmful chemicals. Not only that, the corn that that cow was fed with is also filled with chemicals to make them grow at a faster rate to get that hamburger on a dinner plate as quickly as possible. Bryan Walsh, a staff writer for Time Magazine specializing in environmental issues discusses in his article “America’s Food Crisis” how our food is not only bad for us but dangerous as well. The word dangerous could apply to many different things though. Our food is dangerous to the consumer, the workers and farmers, the animals and the environment. Walsh gives examples of each of these in his article that leads back to the main point of how dangerous the food we are consuming every day really is. He goes into detail on each of them but focuses his information on the consumer.
As can be seen throughout history with events such as the industrial revolution, a desire for high production and high profits often times leads to conditions that are unsafe and inhumane. Today we have realized this and made many reforms to abolish this kind of callous behavior, yet these reforms have not been extended to apply to the animals that are daily abused at factory farms. In order for these operations to have the high amount of output they do they must train their workers to desensitize themselves to the plight of the animals. At a typical slaughterhouse approximately 250 cows are killed every hour, this rush forces workers to shift their view of the animals to become mere objects of production, and in effect promotes inhumane treatment to force cooperation (Factory Farming: The Truth From Behind The Barn Door).
Every year worldwide, over seventy billion animals are killed for food in factories without the inclusion aquatic animals (“Factory Farms Overview¨). The animal rights movement began in Europe during the nineteenth century to protect horses, dogs and cats (Recarte 1). However, now modern animal rights groups have switched their focus to factory farms, test animals and the removal of ag-gag laws. The fight to create less painful and stressful environments in factories and the altogether removal of animal testing and ag-gag laws has been taken on by animal rights groups like ASPCA (“Factory Farms”). The biggest issue currently facing animals is factory farming.
The abuse of livestock is a widespread problem that affects everyone who buys and consumes meat products. Most people are not even aware of how slaughter-destined animals are treated while alive, what chemicals are forced into their bodies, what they are forced to eat, and how they are slaughtered. Fortunately, an increasing number of slaughter plants and small farms have been conforming to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA), after it was passed in 1958, and amended to be fully enforced in 2002, but there are still slaughter plants that abuse, neglect, and provide poor conditions for livestock (“Humane” Animal). When looking at the realities of mass producing meat and animal products, two serious problems arise: the quality of life for the animals, and the possible negative health effects for the people who consume these products.
Like many other industries, the farming industry has evolved into big business, “Animals on factory farms are regarded as commodities to be exploited for profit.” In each industry from clothing to instruments, the bosses want to make a profit. The more they can supply with the least amount of waste, the more profit they make. The same goes for factory farming. However instead of humans being the ones directly affected by big bosses, the animals are. They don’t have a voice, and can’t stand up for what is right or wrong. These animals are manipulated in every way to make a better profit. Factory farms mass produce animals for ...
America focuses heavily on its livestock and crops earning us a major role in global trade as a farming nation. Unfortunately this has led to some poor choices in treatment of our animals. Many farmers who believe in animal rights say that it started back when farmers only tended to fewer animals, “Ownership of farm animals became concentrated in fewer hands, and flocks and herds grew larger. As a result, the individuality of animals was lost to their owners and they began receding from most people's everyday life” (Namit 29). When people lost their connection to the animals that provided their food, the quality of the animal's lives began to dramatically decrease. Consumers constantly pushed farmers to their limits with high quotas. To keep up with demands agriculturalists turned to some unorthodox practices to keep costs low and still maintain their annual quotas; “To raise efficiency and cut costs, farm animals began to be engineered for abnormally rapid weight gain, fed unnatu...
"U.S. Food System Facts Sheet." Center for Sustainable Systems . The University of Michigan , 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. .
Factory farms have portrayed cruelty to animals in a way that is horrific; unfortunately the public often does not see what really goes on inside these “farms.” In order to understand the conditions present in these factory farms, it must first be examined what the animals in these factory farms are eating. Some of the ingredients commonly used in feeding the animals inside factory farms include the following: animal byproducts, plastic, drugs and chemicals, excessive grains, and meat from members of the same species. (Adams, 2007) These animals are tortured and used for purely slaughter in order to be fed on. Typically large numbers of animals are kept in closed and tight confinements, having only little room to move around, if even that. These confinements can lead to suffocation and death and is not rare. Evidence fr...