America’s Food Crisis, by Bryan Walsh Essay

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, gives light to the question, “What should we have for dinner?” that he thinks Americans today cannot answer simply due to the fact that there are too many food options. This book serves as an eye-opener to challenge readers to be more aware and accountable of what is consumed daily. In order to understand fully where our food comes from, we must follow it back to the very beginning. Pollan goes on to discuss three different modern food chains in which we get our food: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. By tracing our food back to the beginning, we can understand that most of the nutritional and health problems America is going through today can be found on the farms that make our food and the government that can decide what happens. America deals with many food related illness such as, heart disease, obesity, and type II diabetes. Majority of a human and animals diet consists of being corn-fed leading to a high cause of obesity in the United States these are just some of the many diseases that come with over processed foods and diets we are unaware of. In this study, we will highlight the environmental and health issues and impacts related with modern agriculture and how these systems can be made more sustainable.

In the article America’s Food Crisis and how to fix it by Bryan Walsh it talks about how people are packing in animals into confined pens with a bunch of other animals of its kind. All the animals are dosed with antibiotics to keep from getting sick. The article explains that the waste that the animals produce on the factory farms gets disposed into open air lagoons and how it can contaminate nearby streams and creeks.

In his article “Boss Hog: The Dark Side of America’s Top Pork Producer,” (Rolling Stone Magazine, December 14, 2006) Jeff Teitz reports that not only are millions upon millions of pigs being abused and slaughtered each year by America’s largest pork producer, but, in turn, the waste produced by those pigs is polluting, destroying, and even killing others. Teitz begins by revealing that Smithfield Foods, the world’s most profitable pork processor, killed 27 million hogs last year, which is roughly equivalent to the entire human populations of America’s thirty-two largest cities. As Teitz delves deeper into statistics, he explains that more fecal matter is produced from half a million pigs at one Smithfield subsidiary than the 1.5 million

Consumers have become increasingly detached from their food as America’s food system grows larger and continues to ruin the environment. The main problem is that most consumers do not know how their consumption habits affect the ecosystem around them. Nor do they know about how their food was produced. Information about how and where the food is being produced and wasted is essential, so people can shop responsibly. Short of legislation, Americans make choices at the grocery store. It is essential for all Americans to cast in a vote with their dollars to change the way that food is produced in the United States resulting in more sustainable food being more accessible in the aisles of the grocery store for all Americans.

The food system in the U.S. has changed a lot over these decades. In the past, people grew crops in their land and vegetables in their gardens. Today, the food system is dominated by the industrial farms and food companies. The industrial food system prevents us from knowing the food. We do not know where the food comes from, how it is produced, and what the conditions that animals live in are. Animals, such as cattle and chickens, are raised in concentrated feedlots where the conditions are terrible and the space is narrow. When it comes to the meatpacking, we do not know how the animals are slaughtered, gutted, and skinned. The operations are invisible and conducted behind walls. The industrial food system aims to produce more food faster and more cheaply. However, it hides lots of truths, such as its effect on consumers’ health, the environment, and the society. If there were more transparency in the food system, the inhumane practice of meatpacking would be reduced; the living conditions of animals would be improved; fewer fertilizers and pesticides would be used in agriculture; consumers would have the chance to see how the food is produced and make a wiser choice of what to eat; and the current industrial food system might be replaced.

Food insecurity, or the lack of access to enough food for all members of a household, is something that exists in every part of America. In fact, some 49 million Americans struggle to provide regular meals for their families. This isn't due to lack of food available as it might be in more improvised countries. No, in the land of plenty, it is instead due to a prevalence of poverty, resulting in the inability for many families to afford to purchase the available food. One Virginia church witnessed this need in their community and decided to do something about the problem.

In the United States, it almost seems like you can’t go far without running into a place that sells some sort of low cost meat. In fact, in the United States you can’t be further than 107 miles away from the Golden Arches of McDonalds (Worley, 2009). With all this meat so available and so affordable, it raises the question how it is possible to produce so much at such a low cost. The way this food is produced at such large quantities for such low cost is a due in part of factory farming. Factory farming has the ability to deliver food to millions and millions of people each year at an astronomical rate, however the way it goes about accomplishing this comes at the expense of the economy, the environment, the ethics of humanity, and the health of the consumer.

The author describes a global food revolution that began years ago from New York and Paris to London and Toronto. Consumers are becoming aware of the food they are purchasing at their local grocery store and realizing the grocery store is just a facade. Many small time organic farms started disappearing because of the mass producing large scale industrial farms which became possible after the industrial revolution. Large scale industrial farms are producing food in large quantities with low quality while polluting the earth and harming consumers because they are focused on one thing: profit. It makes it difficult for grocery stores to say no to these industrial farms just because of how cheap and convenient their product is. It also allows the grocery stores to supply produce year-round that normally would not be in season in a specific area. The sustainable factors and health of the consumers and the planet were of no concern when it came to higher produce yields and lower costs for both the conventional industrial farms and grocery stores. In 1996, industrial farms introduced genetically modified crops to increase yields and make more profit. Since then, more than 70% of foods produced contain genetically altered ingredients which has led to consumers being more prone to illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and obesity. This idea from Food and the City makes me furious because there are so many processed foods today that are hard to get away from. Mass industrial farms and manufacturers have found ways to extend food’s shelf life and alter the basic ingredients that would normally be considered healthy. With all of the additives, who knows what the food actually is and the harm it could do to your

With the modernization of the United States over the last decades, companies are manufacturing food rather than farming. Industrial farming, also known as factory farming, is an abusive and inhumane way of raising animals. The amount of food these farm factories are mass-producing is not the issue, instead, the quality of food needs to improve. The nation contains over hundreds of millions of people that need to be fed, the right way. The government needs to make sure the nation’s health is not at risk and properly manage the way food is made.

Food insecurity is happening to many countries, very rapidly. Food insecurity is the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious, healthy food. My chosen country is the Central African Republic. The Central African Republic (C.A.R.) is a land surrounded by remote land in Central Africa.

They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits.” "Modern Animal Farming." Vegan Outreach. Web. 27 Jan. 2016. . America and the rest of the world tends to stay ignorant to the real problems in society such as this. They want to think of the animals of having happy lives. When in reality the animals never experienced a happy life. From the time they are born they are born into factory farming, crowded, congested, unsafe place for mothers to give birth and the babies to grow up to be shipped straight to slaughter. Their lives only get worse and more stressful as they go on. Even back in the early 1900’s, while describing the slaughter houses Sinclair writes, “All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell.” (Sinclair,

factory farms. “Up to 1 billion tons of manure is generated by livestock operations every year,

We live in an age in which we have come to expect everything to be instantaneously at our fingertips. We live in an age of instant coffee, instant tea, and even instant mashed potatoes. We can walk down the street at 5 in the morning and get a gallon of milk or even a weeks worth of groceries at our discretion. Even though it is great that food is now readily available at all times, this convenience comes at a price, for both the producer and the consumer. Farmers are cheated out of money and are slaves to big business, workers and animals are mistreated. And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the

Since the time man has grown accustomed to manufacturing goods, toxic waste has been an issue to our quality of life, and the surrounding natural environment. While the degree has not always been understood as to what effects toxic waste can have, there is no excuse in the present. Methods of disposing toxic waste in the past have shown the negative impacts such waste can have on the health of humans, wildlife, and nature in general. Without proper mitigation, and methods of dealing with the issue at hand, the situation will only continue getting worse in the future.

Long ago, the four food groups lived in harmony within every American home, vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes. Then the American diet changed when the meat industry attacked. The seeds of Mcdonalds, Burger King, and others fast food titans reared their ugly heads and took over every highway exit and street corner. While innocent men, women and children gorge on their monster burgers stuffed with a large patty with several stacks of bacon, they do not question if it comes from a free range farm or a concentration camp exclusive for animals. The consumption of animal products leads the use the inhumane practices of preparing farm animals for consumption and the increase of deadly diseases in humans.