Food Inc

I watched this documentary sometime early last year and again on Wednesday but was still shocked by what I saw.  Only a handful of companies controls the US food supply and animals are designed to grow fatter faster. Cattle are fed food (corn) that their bodies were not designed to digest, which resulted in the new strains of E.coli. The animals live in such horrendous conditions, for example, cattle are kept in pens where they have very little room to move and spend the entire time knee deep in their own waste. This is another reason why our food is contaminated. When the animals are transported to the slaughter house with their hides caked with feces and it becomes very difficult to keep everything sanitized.  One company’s solution to the problem was to rinse their ground meat with ammonium. I could not believe that this was their answer. How about giving those poor animals more space and cleaning those pens?

The slaughter house workers are exploited by the companies they work for. For example, the workers in plants such as Smithfield’s meat processing plant are treated as machines. They work in such horrible conditions that some get infections, lose fingernails, and suffer other bodily harm. Moreover, the company’s factory is in a poverty stricken area in the south and knowingly hires illegal immigrants from Mexico and then reveals their immigration status to US immigration. The only people how suffer are the immigrants while Smithfield escapes scotch free. Companies like Smithfield pay and treat their workers badly because they no longer look at them as human beings. They know that the workers are easily replaced because of the poverty in the area.  

Something that had me wondering what on earth was going on was the chicken industry. The giant companies are forcing the farmers into so much debt that the farmers have no other recourse but to do as the companies dictate. For example, chicken farmer spend $500,000 following the companies rule but only make $18,000 a year. How on earth are those farmers ever going to pay back all they have borrowed?  It now takes a chicken half the time it took to grow and they now have bigger breast than ever before. They grow so rapidly that their bones are under developed and they cannot carry the weight of the newly designed bodies.

Another thing that was shocking was the fact that the government allowed a private company to patent a food source. The Monsanto Company, developed soya bean that is resistant to pesticides and soya bean farmers how had been saving the seeds for generations were told they could no longer do so. If a farmer beans had the patent gene regardless of nature playing its part thru wind pollination they would sue that farmer. Even after farmers bought the Monsanto’s seeds they could not save them from their crops to replant; they had to buy new ones every year. This law was passed by a Judge who was Monsanto’s attorney before he became a judge. (Conflict of interest anybody)

I was amazed by the amount of people in charge governing bodies like the FDA among other who worked for the giants of food industry. These are the same people are reluctant to enforce the necessary rule to protect the American people; rather they protect the food industry. So many preach about exploitation in foreign countries, but turn a blind eye to what’s happening right here in the US. Working against labeling that would inform people about the products they are buying, whether it is – where the product comes from or that the meat they are buying is the product of a cloned animal.

The company Tyson was praised for they charitable donations, how about extending that charity to their chicken farmers so they can provide an environment that produces healthy food. I guess those companies have never heard of the phrase “charity begins at home.”

I strongly recommend that you watch Food Inc because at the end of the day what we eat affects our health. They are pumping some many antibiotics into those animals due to the conditions that they live and we are the ones paying the price when viruses and diseases become resistant.

We as consumers have power to make the necessary changes for our children’s future. Every time buy or refuse to buy we are utilizing and making of preference known.

My question to you: Do you think that working for those companies created a bias and affected the decisions the Judge or members of the FDA made? What’s your take on the conflict of interest aspect?