Eating Animals Part 3:

I read how chickens have changed and became unnatural geneticly modified beings. It when when the USDA and Poltry Industry launched a "Chicken of Tomorrow" contest to create a pefect chicken that could produce more meat with less feed. Sounds crazy right? But they actually figured it out. They made a hybrid corn called Cornish blood that gave chickens broad breasts. Also they gave the birds sulfa drugs and antibiotics, which stimulated growth and held down the diseases induced by confinement. The chickens' feed and environment were so manipulated that they were genetically altered. "The average weight of broilers increased by 65%, while their time-to-market dropped 60% and their feed requirements dropped 57%. To gain a sense of the radicalness of this change, imagine human children growing to be 300 pounds in ten years, while eating only granola bars and Flinstone vitamins." (Foer 107) Factory farms have taken the natural process of farming and made it unnatural like what you'd see in a Frankenstein movie. These chickens grow so fast that their bones and organs cannot keep up with the growth. This results in the chickens being crippled or in immense pain.
All this overcrowding within a stressful and filthy environment leads to a weakened immune system. As a result, virtually all chickens are infected with E. coli. Take this into account and then remember how Foer described "fresh." As a result, "between 39% and 75% of chickens in retail stores are still infected." (Foer 131) I don't know about you, but that scares me. E. coli is a disease responsible for thousands of deaths, and yet chickens we purchase at our trusted stores are infected with it. I think we should have more restrictions on what factory farms can and can't sell. Perhaps a restriction such as; if a factory is producing food that is infected, then it can't sell it or the factory should eventually be shut down. So lets take a look at who is in charge of providing nutritional information to the people of America and able to create and provide these restrictions. "The USDA was charged with providing nutritional information to the nation and ultimately with creating guidelines that would serve public health. At the same time, though, the USDA was charged with promoting industry." (Foer 146) Does that sound strange to anyone else? The people who tell us what is ok to eat are also promoting the food industry. The USDA has a complete monopoly of the food industry and basically sets the guidelines for what we should and shouldn't eat. I think we need to change this so that we are eating the safest food possible and are given proper nutritional guidelines. If this continues, more people will die as a result of unchecked food that was put into our stores.

Food Safety

The U.S. claims to have excellent quality food from factory farms, but statistics don't support this. According to David Hosansky, An estimated 5,000 people die yearly and some 76 million are sickened because of food-borne pathogens like E. coli, listeria and Vibrio vulnificus. Much of our food comming from factory farms is still contaminated and getting people sick. This is due to the fact that there are few restrictions on factory farms when it comes to clean meat. “There are a lot of gaps in the food safety system, and there are also redundancies,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the food safety program at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), an advocacy group in Washington. “The system is very inefficient, and we pay the price in terms of more illness and deaths.” Factory farms try to produce mass amounts of meat at once to increase profit, however their carlessness of handling meat leads to the death of thousands every year. I think we should increase the restrictions on meat factory farms so that we have less contaminated food going to our market. Factory farms only care about their own profit, not the health of others. Their products may be cheaper, but in the long run they cost us more in our health. "Poisoning costs the nation an estimated $7 billion a year in medical expenses, lost productivity and other related costs. It causes symptoms ranging from stomach cramps and diarrhea to kidney failure and death." A person can get sick through such innocuous acts as eating a medium-rare hamburger or unwashed lettuce from a salad bar. Our meat should be more closley regulated so that we don't have to be paranoid when eating a salad or cooking hamburgers on the grill. We, as consumers, have made the food industry too powerful so that they can prevent themselves from being sued due to these sicknesses they cause. Also they can prevent laws that restrict them from sending meat out to the market without being thouroughly checked. This is why we need to give less power to the food industry and keep them more in check.
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2002110100&type=hitlist&num=0

Eating Animals Part 2:

One of the chapters in this is called Words/meaning. It's called this because many things the food industry claims isn't what we think and means a different thing. For example, Foer defines the words "cage free" and "fresh" as "bullshit" when it applies to our food. All cage free really means is that animals aren't held in cages, but they are still crammed together in tight space. They are still subject to debeaking, being drugged, or being cruelly slaughtered. USDA standards of fresh only have to do with temperature. So no matter how old chicken may be, if the temperature is right, it is still considered "fresh." As Foer put it, "pathogen-infested, feces-splattered chicken can technically be fresh...and sold in the supermarket legally." (Foer 61) So most people's interpretation of fresh is different than the USDA's. When we by a meat product, it may not be at our standards of healthy and fresh, but is in the hands of the food industries standards. Does that seem right? Lets take a look at KFC. KFC insists it is "committed to the well-being and humane treatment of chickens." Could we trust these words? The slaughterhouse that's supplies KFC has workers that have been "documented tearing heads off live birds, spitting tobacco in their eyes, spray painting their faces, and violently stomping on them."(Foer) This slaughter house was voted "supplier of the year." This makes me wonder what we can believe about our food. Shouldn't we be able to know all the details about the food that we put in our mouths and how it was processed. From what I've read so far, the best way to avoid untrustworthy food, is buying organic products. "This requires that animals must be raised on organic feed, be able to be traced through their life cycle, not be fed anti-biotics or growth hormones, and have access to the outdoors." (Foer) Although organic doesn' cover animal welfare issues, it is still a more healthy choice. I'm no PETA extremist so, as wrong as it sounds, I don't care how animals are treated in factories, TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. I don't want people to think I'm a horrible person. However, we feed animals, raise them, make them grow, provide shelter, and in return we get to kill them and eat them. Sounds reasonable to me because death is a natural part of life. However, I don't believe any animal should go through what I listed about KFC's factory.
Then I read about how a farmer became the first factory farmer. It turns out it was all by accident. Celia Steele managed her family's small flock of chickens and accidental ordered 500 chickens instead of 50. She decided to keep them and conduct experiments on her limits. She kept them inside at all times and with newly discovered feed supplements she kept them alive. From there, she kept at it and eventually had 250,000 birds. So this is how factory farming all started. We truly don't need factory farming, just like we didn't need it back then. The surplus of animals farmers were able to keep increased the amount of food Americans eat. In reality, we eat too much and don't need all these animals to eat.

Site Page

This is a post to hold all my refrences and sites I got info from. Take a look at all them and learn about factory farms for yourself.

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/factoryfarms/

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=GVRL&userGroupName=deer63488&tabID=T003&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CCX3233900094&&docId=GALE|CX3233900094&docType=GALE&role

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2002110100&type=hitlist&num=0

Adverse affects of factory farming

I wanted to learn the effects of factory farming so I went to gale and found a good article. One important thing I found was that "the intent of factory farms is to reduce the costs of raising high numbers of the poultry or livestock by reducing the space necessary to contain them." Basically the main purpose of a factory farm is to gain more profit even if it means having negative effects on everything else. Factory farms are not only detrimental to the animals it holds, but everything around it. Factory farms require a lot of local water, eventually diminishing supplies or ultimately polluting them. "A factory farm generates huge amounts of waste; a factory farm housing 10,000 hogs can produce as much waste in one day as a community of 25,000 people." With all this waste comes a lot of polluting because it soil into water systems or in the soil, which eventually will go into water. Furthermore, all the waste and animals in one area posses another very serious problem. The conditions of a factory farm are perfect for diseases to spread and evolve. An example is avian influenza, or the bird flu. "The common practice of providing low concentrations of antibiotics to livestock as a means of increasing their weight gain has been proven to generate resistant types of bacteria that are also capable of causing disease in animals as well as in humans." At one point, this flu could be transmitted to only birds, but because of factory farms it can be transmitted to humans. How could we continue this type of new farming when it creates such problems? We need to change to all natural and local farms. Big food industries don't want you to know this because if you did you wouldn't support them by buying their cheap meat. The only thing factory farms care about profit, obviously they don't care about their animals, the environment, or the health of the people around them or the ones buying their products.
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=GVRL&userGroupName=deer63488&tabID=T003&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CCX3233900094&&docId=GALE|CX3233900094&docType=GALE&role

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Part 1:

I desided to read Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer, because it is a non-fiction book that is all about where our meat comes from. So far, its no simple case for vegetarianism as one might think. This book brings up controversial and somewhat hippocratic issues in our society. Foer brought up a simple point about the way we treat dogs. Why don't we treat other animals with the same level of decency? "Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why dont they get to curl up next to the fire?" (Foer 25) This is an interesting and thought provoking quote. it made me understand how different cultures favor certain animals over others. All animals are equal, just some are more equal than others. Its something to think about when eating meat. What makes us decide what to eat? As Americans, we most likely eat things that taste good or they are easy to obtain. We hardly think about what exactly we are eating or where it came from. "Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list." (Foer 32) We should be more aware of these things.
Looking at the inside cover of the book there’s a quote that reads, “anyone who, after reading Foer’s book, continues to consume the industry’s products must be without a heart, or impervious to reason, or both.” (J.M. Coetzee) Now I’m not vegetarian and I’m not looking for a reason to become one, but that seems like a pretty powerful statement. However, I’m still an omnivore and I sure hope I’m none of the things Coetzee said. I’ve learned a lot about factory farms and I’d say it’s important to learn because 99% of all animals eaten in this country come from factory farms. Perhaps some people don't even know what exactly a factory farm is or does. This is one reason I'm doing my project on factory farms. Also I learned that the once reassuring words, organic and cage-free, mean very little when it comes to the treatment of animals. Chickens are crammed in tight cages their entire short life of less than a year (any time after they don’t lay as much eggs) or in a broiler chicken’s case only 40 days. They are also genetically altered so that they produce more meat or lay more eggs. Turkeys are so genetically modified that they can’t even walk. That can’t be healthy to eat. "For thousands of years, farmers took their cues from natural processes. Factory farming considers nature an obstacle to overcome." (Foer 34) As crazy as it seems, this quote perfectly describes the new style of farming, factory farming. Farmers used to use nature to help them raise animals. Now they try to find new ways to include the least amount of nature as possible like keeping them alive indoors their entire life. Or making them grow at an unnatural rate so that their organs and bones cant catch up causing much pain. Not only this, but “animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined.” (Foer 43) This is a direction I’m drawn to because I think what we eat and the environment have a lot to do with each other and they are both very important for living happy and healthy lives. Factory farming isn't the only thing humans are using to produce massive amounts of food for people. Fishing is also used to catch many fish at a time. We catch so much fish they cannot replenish themselves at a fast enough rate, thus affecting the food chain and the ocean as a whole. The techneques we have for fishing also catch or kill many other fish. This is called bycatch. "Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across" (Foer 50) Our mass fishing kills many other unintended fish. So many species of sea animals are killed just for that little role on your plate.  

Food, Inc.

I watched the movie Food, Inc to further help my understanding of the food industry. Robbert Kenner, the film maker, wanted to lift the veil of the food industry from over his, and everybody else's eyes. The veil, is the image of the honest farmer on a nice field with happy animals, when truley, factory farming has completely distorted this farming. I highly suggest watching this video because it really opens your eyes to where your food comes from. The conditions in which our food is processed are unsanitary and result in the death of many Americans today. Many of the food factories Kenner went to would not allow an interview because they knew people wouldn't buy their products if they knew what they came from. One farmer wanted to let the film makers in, but he knew the industry that owned his business wouldn't like that.What scares me the most is that these companies have managed to make it illegal to say anything bad about the company. On her show, Oprah said she didn't want to eat a burger because of the outbreak of "mad cow disease." The company sued her because they lost profit, however, Oprah battled it out and didn't let them win. The point is, just for saying she didn't want another burger the company was able to sue her. They also have immense laws protecting them from any lawsuits concerning diseases one might get from their meat. One mother tried to sue because he son died from E. coli in their meat. Then she tried to create and pass a law to make meat industries have more inspections and pass them, but her efforts were in vain. What makes these industries so powerful and seemingly unstoppable, is us. Though we may not think we are, as consumers, we are very powerful. Every time we buy something it's like we're voting for that item and saying we want more of it. Sure big business products may be inexpensive, but they cost more in the long run when considering your health and the health of our world. Take a look at their website- http://www.foodincmovie.com/