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.