The Unknown Dangers in American Food Production
It is the middle of summer vacation and you are working your way through your AP Language summer reading book, The Jungle. You recoil in your chair as you find out what “head cheese” is really made of and read all about the ingredients that fall into Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard. You quickly reassure yourself that you live in the twenty-first century. Ever since the formation of agencies such as the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) as well as the creation of the Food and Drug Act, there is no way that corporations can get away with making the inhumane food products found in Upton Sinclair’s novel...or are there? Over the years food
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The cows would roam freely on the hillside and chickens look for food around the red, wooden barn. If you step back into the present you may realize that most farms today are very different than that of the past or what we would see in a painting. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) there are more than 20,000 factory farms nationwide. This is a 30 percent increase from 2003. These farms are industrial-scale facilities where animals are treated as a product rather than a living creature. Thousands of animals are kept in these factories resulting in disease and contamination. In the widely acclaimed documentary Food Inc., directed by Robert Kenner, Carole Morison declared that “This isn’t farming. This is just mass production like an assembly line in a factory.” In fact there are so many animals that workers cannot even process the 1.3 billion tons of waste that is produced annually. To solve this problem, waste is piled into large open pools and sprayed onto the land resulting in health problems for not only the workers but the people who live nearby. Rivers, streams and groundwater may also get polluted from this process.
In The Jungle, Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus describes the horrid working conditions of the 1900s to be filled with “...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and fertilizer tanks,
Our nation’s industrial farming has become more than just feeding people; it has become a way for the food industry to make more money as human population continues to grow. Jonathan Safran Foer in his book Eating Animals, illustrates the effects factory farming has had on animals meant for human consumption. Furthermore, Foer asks many questions to the reader on what will it take for us to change our ways before we say enough is enough. The questions individuals need to be asking themselves are: how do we deal with the problem of factory farming, and what can people do to help solve these issues? Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, also illustrates the animal abuse that goes unseen within the food industry as well as Bernard Rollin and Robert Desch in their article “Farm Factories”, both demonstrate what is wrong today with factory farming. Foer gives such examples of employees who work in slaughterhouses giving accounts of what goes on in the kill floors, and stories of employees who have witnessed thousands and thousands of cows going through the slaughter process alive (Animals 231). Namit Arora in the article “On Eating Animals”, as well as Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, both address some of the issues that animals face once they hit the kill floor. The food industry has transformed not only how people eat, but also the negative effects our climate endures as a result of factory farming as illustrated by Anna Lappe in “The Climate Crisis at the End
Factory Farming is an increasing industry in the United States. These large farms, which evidently appear to be more like slaughterhouses than the typical farms a person can imagine are located throughout the United States. These factory farms contain animals ranging from chickens, sheep, goats, cows, turkeys, and pigs, they also contain dairy products. The conditions for the animals and the employees of these factory farms are inhumane and vile. Life behind the walls of the factory farm is both unsanitary for the animals and the employees. Employees are forced to endure long hours and poor treatment. Animals in these conditions withstand living in cages and are forced to live in uninhabitable ways.
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.
“The Jungle”portrays the harsh conditions of the Chicago meatpacking industry in the early 1900’s. Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite recently emigrated from Lithuania to Chicago in search of a better life. The conditions were the cause of Jurgis’s injury to his ankle, which led to his frustrating unemployment. Jurgis and Ona, a couple who planned on getting married, struggled throughout their time Chicago due the treatment of immigrants. Jurgis always prevailed and assured his wife that things would soon be better as he had believed in the American dream.
Despite almost a century separating two publications on the meat industry in the United States, the works of Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser contain eerily similar accounts in attempt to expose the dangers behind our food. These shocking revelations exposed by Sinclair and Schlosser have forever changed the way our nation views its food. Sinclair 's The Jungle and Schlosser 's Fast Food Nation discuss the topics of factory conditions and their safety, prevalence of immigrant workers, the conditions of animals and their health, and the corruption behind large corporations and the federal government. These overwhelming similarities have caused Schlosser to be compared to his predecessor Sinclair. Although each reading contains many similar elements, Sinclair and Schlosser had different intentions for the public reaction to their works.
Have you ever been in a rush, low on cash, and looking for something to eat so you didn’t really have a choice but to grab a burger with fries at your local fast food place? Have you ever paused or stopped to think about where the burger really came from, or the process that went in to be made? The Food Inc documentary investigates and exposes the American industrial production of meat, grains, and vegetables. Robert Kenner the producer of the film makes allegations in this film and he explores how food industries are deliberately hiding how and where it is our food is coming from. He emphasizes that we should find out where our food comes from and why is it that the food industry does not want us to know. Food Inc. does not only uses compelling images, such as hundreds of baby chickens being raised in spaces where they do not see an inch of sunlight, it also includes the speeches and stories of farmers, families, government officials, and victims of the food industry. The four current problems facing today’s food industry are the reformed usage of the false advertisement within the labeling of products , mistreatment of farmed animals, and the harmful chemical in our meats. The documentary Food Inc uses very persuasive tactics that demonstrates strong elements of pathos, ethos, and logos make an effective appeal, while uncovering the dark side of the food industry.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
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.
A lot of times people who would work in the factories would get injured or even killed. There were cases of people who fell into the rendering tanks that would just get ground up as lard or fertilizer. The Jungle is a perfect representation of just how bad the workers had it. Sinclair describe the working conditions as horrid. Workers were forced to toil in unsafe, and unsanitary conditions. For instance, the pickling rooms; rooms where they would dye the meats to bring them up to code for meat regulations. “The hands of these men would be crisscrossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or trace them. They would have no nails,- they had worn them off pulling hides…” (82) Factory floors were generally flooded, workers would standing in puddles of unsanitary water all day long, causing there to be a lot of humidity in the air. Factory building would either be too hot during the summer days, or terribly cold during the winter. There would be no air ventilation or insulation. Workers choose to either starve or make the little money they did to support themselves or their families, in these unthinkable conditions. If employees got injured on the job; Worker’s Compensation was not available to them yet, leaving them to find another job when and if they got better. Sinclair was convinced that conditions like these were substandard, because the only way capitalist could make money was from exploding the workers. Another way workers being exploited was the example of Ona and Conner. (Sinclair 125) Conner being the boss; Ona the employee. Conner blackmailed Ona into thinking that her and her family, would all lose their jobs if she didn’t become his mistress. There was no sex discrimination law at the time in history. Occasions were ommon during this era. People ended up dying off and the Plants would keep
Industrial agriculture is currently the predominant food production system in the United States. It is distinguished by large-scale monoculture, abundant use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and meat production in CAFOs. CAFOs are ‘Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations’, otherwise known as factory farms, which aim to cram as many animals in one space to boost efficiency and profit at the expense of animal suffering and environmental hazards.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
Food Inc., a documentary film produced by Robert Kenner that was based of Eric Schlosser book, Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is designed to inform people by exposing the inhumane policies and techniques within the food industry. The documentary aims to bring spotlight on the reality of the food industry rather than what is portrayed through advertisement. In doing so, the film shows where it all begins in slaughterhouses as animals are raised only to be smash to death or processed in unsanitary conditions, while also including stories from farmers, government officials and victims who suffered from the food industry. The main intended audience is American people in general to warn them of the sinister side of the food industry.
Good Morning Everyone, Imagine in your head where the animal products you consume come from. You’ve probably envisioning acres of grassy farm lands with cows grazing leisurely in the open air, happy pigs rolling around in the mud, and chickens in cosy coops laying their eggs, right? Wrong. Farms like these hardly exist anymore. Instead, cows are kept pregnant to produce an abnormal amount of milk, pigs are raised in concrete cages inside windowless metal buildings, and two hundred and fifty thousand laying hens are piled in one, single building.
People today believe that the government is supposed to eliminate any possible danger from the food they consume, but that is not the case. In the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of The All-American Meal written by Eric Schlosser, he discusses numerous problems with food production. Some of these issues are discussed in the “Epilogue”, “What’s In Meat”, and “Most Dangerous Job” chapters where Schlosser elaborates on the government’s role and how workers are mistreated. In the article, “U.S. Meatpacking Under Fire: Human Rights Group Calls for Line Speed Reduction, ERGO Standards,” it explains how the working conditions in the meat packaging industry are hazardous and are violations of basic human rights. Although workers are affected by the government’s role in the food industry, consumers are affected as well. The consequences of the lack of governmental oversight, like food contamination and others, are discussed in the film Food Inc. “Escaping the Regulatory Net: Why Regulatory Reform Can Fail Consumers”, an academic journal written by Henry Rothstein, explains how “putting consumers first” is difficult for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to accomplish because with consumer’s interests that means regulatory reforms are most likely going to fail.
“Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide- laden corpse of a tortured animal.” says Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) PETA and animal activist. Factory farming should be banned or demolished thoroughly due to more harm than good that is being presented worldwide. Animal brutality, which can be found constantly and excessively throughout factory farms, is a deleterious act involving the animals and a diabolic act regarding human morals. The antic actions that proceed have an effect on both humans and the environment, as well as the unethical, inhumane treatment and the atrocious sufferings of animals. Besides factory farms offering a copious amount of cheaper food, factory farming is a detrimental agricultural practice to both humans and the environment. The way we receive our food is inhumane and unhealthy to humans and the environment, thus factory farms should be banned.