Wednesday, June 3, 2009

New Draft of Food Final Assignment

In today’s society, several people have been consuming food products that have been either shipped or produced in factories. Meaning that the food products have lost its natural value. The majority of vegetables, fruits, and many other farm grown products have turned into fast produced products. When we eat we usually don't take the time out to think where our food came from, or even how it was made. We buy our meats and dairy products from supermarkets and companies. The meat and chicken come from animals who have been abused and tortured to gain weight faster, while the companies selling these products make more profit. That alone changes the value of our food, making the animals gain weight, this leads me believe that this isn’t healthy for them nor is it natural. Because the food industry and other major companies have gained so much power over the society and culture, they are able to manipulate how the animals are raised. The food industry and major companies managed to push out the original farms where the animals were treated fairly to make their factories where there is animal cruelty so that they can make their profits. That’s where our society is leading towards, treating animals bad just to make a quick buck and soon our own citizens.

In today’s culture, the society we live in is based on eating industrialized foods. The food that we are consuming is produced in factories in which the chemicals used are harmful to the animals. While watching the movie "Meatrix", it talked about how the dominant food industries were able take over small family farms which were growing their food in a healthy organic environment. The larger food companies are able to produce a larger variety of food products much faster than the smaller family farms, because the factories are able to use machines, which end up having the small farms shut down. The factories use several substances, chemicals and other hormones to enhance the animal’s growth speed. This allows them to produce more meat when they die which again means more money for the companies. According to http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp, Chickens are fed steroid-like chemicals to increase their growth at a rapid pace that their weak chicken legs are not able to sustain the weight of their body, therefore killing them in the process. Cows and pigs are also fed harmful chemicals to fatten them up before they are sent to the slaughterhouse. These chemicals that are in the animals bodies not only hurt them, but they are also hurting us in the process. The chemicals that are in these animals later on cause us to get diseases. Once an animal dies, example the cow, in some situations the dead cows blood is fed to a living cow. that increases the chances of us getting affecting.

As well as harming these animals the factories are harming our world with their pollution. In the video “VROOM” there was a scene that showed a huge field of crops that were getting harvested, after this scene a huge truck spraying pesticides and other harmful chemicals was shown. These chemicals that were sprayed killed the crops which made it easier for them to destroy them and use more machines to destroy our planet with all the fossil fuels being used. The example above shows how huge companies don’t care about nature they just care about the profit.


One thing that stood out to me the most was not only do these factories fatten
up their animals, they also take the sperm of their males and perform artificial insemination on their female animals. According to a video we watched in class, the farm workers would bring a male cow to a female cow and get it in heat. Once the male cow has produced sperm to have sex with the female cow the workers will take the male cow and stick a tube in their body that is able to take the sperm out of them. Once that happens the male cow is placed back into his stall while the farm workers place the sperm in many female cows. This basically allows the industrial farms to produce more babies and animals, which means more hormones, more meat, more diseases and most important more money.

At this point in life, I feel that the society, industrial food industries and any other companies have been able to do what ever they want and get away with it. While finding out all this disturbing information about the food we eat and the way the animals are treated makes me not want to eat meat. As industrial food industries keep feeding our animals chemicals and other substances makes me wonder what food products they are eating. I feel as if what the workers are doing to these animals is cruel and they can give a healthier life for these animals. Because I have been grown up on eating meat, its obvious that I wont become a vegetarian, but maybe the amounts of meat I consume daily can decrease my chances of getting any diseases being passed on. Also cutting down on eating fast foods, which again is fast produced food products and companies making profits, can allow myself to make a slow change in my eating habits.

In today’s society People need to become more aware of what they are eating and be more educated about what’s happening to these animals. We as a community should come together and stand up against these companies that are demonstrating animal cruelty, we have to realize that in the long run the animal cruelty is affecting us as well. That's what confuses me the most, the fact that someone is allowing people to harm these animals which eventually would be harming those who eat it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your paper has good flow and it talks a lot about how the animals are treated and what they are forced to eat the hormones and steroids to make them grow faster. only thing you coulda done to make it better was talk abou what you eat and compare it to american society. But even without it i would say your paper is better than mine.