After a long, busy day the only thing that could be on your mind is dinner. Starving from hours of not eating, your mouth waters at the smell of food. The last thing on your mind is where this food is coming from, how its prepared and if you will get sick. Our minds are trained not to think about what’s behind this large cheeseburger with a basket of salty fries. We trust what we are putting in our body because anything unhealthy, sanitized or even deathly would obviously be against the rules in the food industry and would be stopped by the government right? There are regulations that protect what we are eating and how it was produced? Nope. The Government and Food Industry aren’t as trust worthy as we hope to believe. The food industry has changed tremendously in the last 60 years. From farms, local and small companies to large, corrupt corporations that mass produces chemically enhanced foods. Our country has no clue what is happening behind the yummy looking meats, vegetables even sometimes “organic foods” and may never even try to find out.

Each year, over 70 million people are effected by a food borne illness, and this number is just rising. Even children, Food Inc. introduces the story of Kevin Kowalcyk, a young boy who died after eating only one hamburger coming back from vacation. For years, Kevin’s mother and family has shared their story and fought the food industry’s to pass important regulation laws but it continues to be a constant battle. that In one of the strongest industry’s, shouldn’t the government, medical world and corporations being stopping these food borne illness’s? Food companies don’t have to have a recall on something they know is causing sickness, but many do just for the image. Its very uncommon that the government and even doctors step in unless hundreds get ill or multiple die mostly because its too much effort to have evidence that a certain food caused a death. Marion Nestle states “USDA has 7,000 inspectors or so, and they over see 6,000 meat, poultry and egg establishments and 130 importers that slaughter and process 89 million pigs, 37 million cattle and 7 billion chickens and turkeys, not to mention the 25 billion pounds of been and 7 billion pounds of ground beef each year… The demands on the FDA are even more unreasonable. About 700 FDA inspectors must oversee 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 10,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores, and 1.5 million vending operations.” We hope that professionals, like food inspectors are making sure these companies aren’t getting away with unhealthy and harmful practices of food processing, but we can’t when we don’t even have enough of them to go around.

Food Inc., an extremely effective way of opening the world to the corrupt and unhealthy food industry, Shows the conditions these animals are living in. They are packed into small, tight, feces ridden dark shacks, eating pounds of chemically packed foods, which lead straight to our bodies. Cows, are being fed corn which creates a fatter cow and more beef but packs the animals with bacteria that is extremely harmful to not only their bodies but then to us. The bacteria is found in their feces that are often mixed in to our meat supply because of the busy and over packed slaughter houses. It isn’t only the animals being treated poorly but the workers as well. Carole, a farmer who stated, “Having no say in your business is degrading, its like you are a slave to the company.”, in the film. These large corporations break many labor and job laws as well, overworking their employees in harmful and unhealthy conditions. Robert Kenner and his film Food Inc, opens our eyes to way the food industry takes over everything, Michael Pollen states, “It looks like there is diversity in supermarkets but its really just a few companies”. Even what we thought of as small, local and healthy brands are owned by huge corporations like Kellogg, Tyson, and Pepsi. Michael Pollen also speaks about the harmful and genetically modified foods we are eating “There is no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, its kind of a notional tomato. I mean it’s the idea of a tomato.” Yes, maybe it is nice to be able to eat your favorite fruit or vegetable all year round, but it is everything but natural.

Organic Illusions, written by Blake Hurst shines a light on organic food industry as well. Although Organic foods are the better path to take, its still hard to trust a company that we don’t know much about. “Organic foods are labeled as organic because producers certify that they’ve followed organic procedures. No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims.” Although Hurst does not provide much evidence about these problems and the studies included had numbers, dates, it still gets the job done of questioning what we are putting inside our bodies.

The corrupt food industry and ginormous corporations put the money over the customers everyday. The only reason they don’t want someone to get sick from a food borne illness is not because they made someone sick but because it just makes the company look bad and lose money. They do everything they can do produce fast and cheap, breaking and bending around many regulations and laws. We cannot continue to pretend that these companies and government are trying to keep us safe. We cannot trust everything we are putting into our own bodies and have to stop letting these companies run our country and lives.