In Jill Kaufman’s article “Meat Packing Industry,” Kaufman analyses the meat packing crisis and controversy that occurred during the Roosevelt administration in the early 1900’s. In 1906 Author Upton Sinclair released a novel title The Jungle, which sought to critic exploited meat packing workers of that time. While his novel did stir up some commotion, his ultimate goal remained unmet. Americans were appalled at the ways he described the unsanitary methods and procedures of the meat packing industry. This resulted in stricter policies and inspections being put in place; however, whether or not the industry was truly unhygienic and unsanitary remained disputed.
Chapter 7 of Fast Food Nation discussed the starting of meatpacking industry and its downfalls. At first, Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) used the same principle as McDonald’s principle to make fast foods. IBP hired unskilled workers just to do simple and repeated work all day. However, competition with other companies made IBP low wages and health insurance options. This caused slaughterhouses to move West to gain cheap labor and land.
The farmers are treated poorly by the big name companies. The health in the United States is declining severely, 16% of children are obese,have diabetes, and other major health problems. In David Barboza’s article, “If You Pitch It, They Will Eat It,” Barboza argues that big name food companies are targeting the youth of society, because they will watch a show on television and see the food products at the store with their favorite character on the packaging. But the food that is being marketed to the youth is unhealthy for the human body.
Eric Schlosser, a journalist, writes Fast Food Nation, which asserts the dangers and maltreatment of slaughterhouses. Through interviews and descriptions of workers, Schlosser depicts the careless and desperate conditions of the workers. Schlosser’s evident purpose is to bring awareness to the dangers that come with a job in a slaughterhouse. He intends to draw the attention of supervisors and authoritative figures, so he integrates a sense of normality when depicting the disturbing job. Schlosser begins with a simple depiction of the disturbing and unrestrained working conditions by implicating pity and disgust.
Michael Pollan’s alternative to Factory farming has given a huge insight into a better ethics on food. In “The Animals: Practicing Complexity” Michael Pollan writes about a polyface farm and how it works. The goal of a polyface farm is to emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhance agriculture. Everything on a polyface farm has the potential to be helpful to something else on the farm. Pollan states “The chicken feed not only feeds the broilers but, transformed into chicken crap, feeds the grass that feeds the cows that, as I was about to see, feeds the pigs and the laying hens” (Pollan 345).
In the introduction, it’s obvious on how Eric Schlosser (the author) feels about the growth of fast food. He opposes it, or more realistically, opposes the negative effects that the fast food industry has. In this passage, Schlosser goes into detail on how much of an influence fast food in the United States has. He explains that the process of raising, slaughtering, and processing cattle into ground beef has changed negatively mainly due to fast food. Meatpacking, which was once highly paid and a highly skilled operation transformed into a highly unsanitary and very dangerous occupation performed by immigrants.
When the documentary Food Inc. was released in 2008 it was groundbreaking. It pulled back the curtain and revealed the sometimes heinous inner workings of the agriculture and food producing sector in the United States. One of the sub-industries it examined was large-scale agriculture, specifically corn. The movie ascertains that even though wheat production per acre has increased from 20 to 200, 30% of the United States land base is utilized for corn production (1). One of the chief reasons for this gross overuse of land for corn production; the large amounts of the federal budget that are dedicated to corn production.
From Slaughterhouse To Slaughtering American’s Health Paul McCartney once said that “if slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be vegetarian”. With such claim Paul McCartney aimed to bring attention to the lack of knowledge the general public has about what goes on behind the closed doors of these slaughterhouses. He claims that if the public was exposed to the facts, they would stop eating the meat produced in these places. In this paper, I explore a more broad but similar topic, the lack of transparency by some of the biggest food corporations and the lack of information the general population has about the health benefits, or rather the lack of such, in the majority of mass produced processed food. I will explore this topic by using various works such as Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory(1964), The Jungle(1906) by Upton Sinclair, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation(2001), the film Super Size Me (2004), a nonfiction piece titled “The Way We Eat Now” (2004) by Craig Lambert, and the word “abattoir”.
Thankfully there are others who have investigated this mass production of food and the truth behind how it’s made. Cohen talks about other who have followed in the footsteps of Sinclair, “Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair's work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat. Despite increasing public awareness, sustainable agriculture, while the fastest-growing sector of the food industry, remains a tiny enterprise: according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), less than 1% of American cropland is farmed organically” (Walsh 4). By bringing the problem into the homes of families through television and even on the Internet these people have begun a movement. To illustrate our modern agriculture Walsh discloses, “Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one
In the 2008 documentary Food Inc. Authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan offer insight into the food industry in America, including how food is produced. Revealing to the normal everyday american all the things you don't know about how you get the food that in your figure right now. They reveal that the main thing that drives our current food system, like any big corporation, is cost efficiency. These cost cuts do make food cheaper for americans but it also puts their safety at risk.
In 1977, based on the idea that fat and cholesterol intake is linked to heart disease, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition released a set of guidelines urging Americans to eat less red meat and dairy. This resulted in major backlash from the industries producing these products, forcing the committee to rethink their strategy and only suggest guidelines for the intake of the nutrients—such as saturated fat—instead of the entire food. The fixation on nutrients continued to grow after 1977, sparking the era of what Pollan calls
I had never really thought much about animal rights before. But after reading “Puppies, Pigs, and People” by Norcross, I now look at the way we get factory processed meat differently. People need to be more informed of where the meat they are buying and consuming is coming from.
Robert Kenner’s “ The Food Inc.” argues that american’s do not know where their food comes from because the food industry keeps them in the dark. Our industrial base is made from corn. People are eating food that is causing them to be sick. The beef that people are eating is being washed with ammonia to kill the bacteria on the beef. American’s are getting obese.
Through the modernization of machinery and the process for producing products, the definition of food has changed into something sinister. In the article, “Down to Earth: All Vegetarian and Natural”, the author discusses that the initial definition of food has changed by saying, “Instead of a nourishing substance to sustain life, food is now fatty and processed.” This refined definition of food is all consumers know, and the production of this meat is a result of the food industry's abuse of the welfare of their animals. Originating from controversial and illegal ethical actions, consumers and their families’ health suffers as a result. In the novel, Eating Animals, author Jonathan Foer states, “The very genetics of chickens, along with their feed and environment, were now intensively manipulated to produce excessive amounts of eggs.”
“The Creed of Scientology: We The Church of Scientology believe, that all men, of whatever race, color, or creed, were created with equal rights. That all men have inalienable rights to their own religious practices and their performance, that all men have inalienable rights to their own lives, that all men have inalienable rights to their sanity¹, that all men have inalienable rights to their own defense, that all men have inalienable conceive, choose, assist, or support their own organizations, churches, and governments², that all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely their own opinions, and to counter, or utter, or write upon the opinions of others, that all men have inalienable rights to the creation of their own kind,
