“These companies have legions of attorneys.  And they may sue even if they know they can’t win, just to send a message.” This quote is by Eric Schlosser in the documentary Food Inc. To put this quote in context, Eric Schlosser, a journalist, is talking about the food industry and their insane amount of power when it comes to the production of food in our country. The documentary Food Inc. aims to show the food industry as it really is. In other words, it shows the food industry from the side that consumers do not usually see. For example, consumers do not see how powerful the food industry really is until they are the ones fighting it. An example that the documentary used was the battle between Monsanto and a farmer who they were sewing for saving soybeans. Monsanto is a company that essentially has control over all soybean production because of their patent on the bioengineered soybean. Monsanto has the money and the resources to fight average farmers even if they only have suspicion that the farmer is using their patented soybeans against their patent agreements. This example just shows the power that the food industry has over producers. Those who produce our food our essentially puppets controlled by the food industry. Therefore, issues of food safety are widespread and out of reach not only by the consumer, but also by the producer.

To show the extent of how important food safety is and how it is neglected by the food industry, Food Inc. highlighted the story of Kevin. Kevin was two years old when he contracted E. coli from food and ended up hospitalized where he then died from the infection. His mom has been in a legal battle ever since. She has fought the government for more safety regulations when it comes to food, however, the food industry, highly backed by the government, is not easily budged and it has been a long and hard battle.

While the food industry claims that there are many safety regulations put in place to monitor the safety of food, evidence has surely proven otherwise. The article You Are What They Eat  provides various reasons to be concerned with the meat we are eating in the United States of America in regard to animal feed. The director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, Carol Tucker-Foreman, is quoted in this article saying “Rules protecting the feed supply aren’t as strong as they should be, and the FDA enforcement has been more wishful thinking than reality. Contaminated animal feed can result in contaminated food, putting the public health at risk.” This article quotes Fred Angulo who is the chief of the CDC’s foodborne and diarrheal branch who says that “connecting human illness to contaminated feed is difficult.” While it is hard to pinpoint human illnesses to animal feed, the article also notes that there have cases of salmonella linked to animal feed and the most recent case occurred in 2003. With that being said, it is obvious where the concern lies and that is with consumers. The fact that human illnesses are hard to trace already puts the food industry at an advantage. Saying that they are hard to trace does not mean that they are not a concern because even the CEO of the American Feed Industry Association is quoted in this article saying that feed can become contaminated because “people make mistakes.” Thus putting the consumer on the end of the mistakes that may end up with a foodborne illness while the food industry can blame it on an accident, if in fact, they are even caught.

The fact is is that it is hard to pinpoint where illnesses come from. The article Resisting Food Safety even shows how foodborne illnesses go unnoticed most of the time leaving the food industry off the hook and the consumer to suffer. The article states that even with 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths yearly in the United States of America “most episodes are never reported to health authorities and their cause is unknown.” The article not only highlights the severity of foodborne illnesses, but also how the use of antibiotics in animals can make foodborne illnesses even more severe. Using antibiotics creates a resistance to bacteria and therefore “If antibiotic-resistant bacteria infect people and cause a disease, the disease will be untreatable.” However, this article goes on to state how the drug industry does not agree with any attempt to hinder the use of drugs in animals for food even with the alarming evidence of how dangerous it can be to humans. In this scenario, the drug industry, as well as the food industry uses their power to maintain control over production even when the health of their consumers are at stake.

Organic Illusions, although arguing that organic food is worse for the consumer than conventionally farmed food, also notes how foodborne illnesses are neglected in light of those in the food industry. Organic Illusions argues that the organic industry is one built off the profits they can make by creating the image that organic food is better for people than conventionally farmed food. The argument the article makes is that the Stanford study found that E. coli is more prevalent in organic food. While this argument may not be from the most valid source, it still acknowledges how food safety is less important than the profits of the industry itself.

Safe at any scale? Food scares, food regulation, and scaled alternatives is another article that positions the food industry as a powerful industry that would rather benefit than make food safe for its consumers. The article states that “Food safety (or the illusion of safety) is being positioned to secure capital rather than public welfare.” The article discusses an E. coli outbreak in contaminated spinach that sickened people in 26 states, over the course of six to eight weeks, and caused at least three deaths. It took about a week to find the distributor (Dole) and the article said that it would have taken even longer to find the contamination source insinuating that that was never discovered. Again, this article shows how, in this situation, the government and food industry responded but this was only in the case of a widespread and tragic instance. Also, how steps were only taken to secure the contaminated food but not to actually find the contamination to prevent it.