Food Inc

.docx

School

New Jersey City University *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

113

Subject

Medicine

Date

Dec 6, 2023

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by PrivateFreedomCheetah36

1. How do you think farm animals should be treated? How do your ideas compare to what you saw in the film? Farm animals should be treated with kindness and respect. If humans are to continue using animals for food, they should be allowed to roam in open spaces and eat what they were naturally designed to eat. Farm animals should be treated similarly to how they are on Polyface Farms, which allows its livestock to live comfortably. Cows roam in the fields, eating grass with enough space to move about and automatically manuring the fields. This directly opposes the way farm animals are treated by major meat packing corporations. Chickens, for example, are typically kept in lightless chicken houses, crowded together in tight quarters to remain there with their own feces and filth as they grow. Those chickens are also fed products based on corn and soybeans in order to make them grow bigger, beyond what they are capable of typically, in as little time as possible. Their bodies are incapable of keeping up with this rapid growth, causing them to die while in the chicken houses. Overall, farm animals deserve better treatment than what they are receiving at the factory farms seen in Food Inc . 4. In the film, the mother, Maria Andrea Gonzalez, says, “We’re really tight from either paying for his [Alfredo Orozco’s] medicine to be healthy or buying vegetables to be healthy.” Which should she choose if she cannot afford both? If Maria Andrea Gonzalez cannot afford to buy both her husband Alfredo Orozco’s medicine and vegetables to be healthy, she should ultimately choose to buy vegetables in order to keep herself and her family healthy. If Maria and her family continues to purchase unhealthy food from Burger King and other fast food restaurants Alfredo’s diabetes will worsen over time, making his medication useless and prompting more expensive doctor’s visits and medication. If they were to purchase vegetables, it could serve to alleviate Alfredo’s diabetes, since a healthy

diet, along with exercise, are viable treatments for diabetes. Additionally, as it stands, their children are at risk for diabetes due to their current diet of fast food. This is a concern that is voiced by their eldest daughter, who worries for her younger sister’s health. By buying vegetables, Maria would be benefiting her entire family by keeping them all healthy, improving her husband’s diabetes and lowering the chances of her children contracting diabetes and needing more medication. 5. How would you compare the slaughtering of the chickens by Polyface Farms (small-scale farm) to the slaughtering of the Smithfield (large factory) hogs? How do the workers’ conditions compare? Overall, Polyface Farms is more sensible and more humane in their methods and treatment of animals and workers than the Smithfield factory. This extends to the way that they slaughter chickens at Polyface Farms as opposed to the slaughtering of hogs at the Smithfield factory. At Polyface Farms, chickens are kept healthy and clean, as they are kept in sanitary conditions. When it comes time to slaughter them, they are loaded one or two at a time into metal cones so that only their heads and throats are exposed, facing down. The chickens are killed by hand, with only a cut to the throat. At the Smithfield Hog Processing Plant, the hogs are slaughtered violently on the kill floor, still covered in their own filth. The workers’ conditions are also drastically different. At Polyface Farms, there are fewer workers that operate in more sanitary and safe environments conditions. The Smithfield factory employs hundreds of workers, including illegal immigrants from Mexico, that work in a factory system of divided labor. Their conditions are dangerous, and workers are constantly covered in blood and feces from the slaughter of hogs.

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help