Joel Salatin, author of “Folks, This Aint Normal”,  farmer, and consultant for Food Inc. once said, “I think it’s one of the most important battles for consumers to fight: the right to know what’s in their food, and how it was grown.” Do you know the food you eat is what is getting you sick? Or that just one of the thousands of cows mixed in your small package of ground beef could be contaminated and thus contaminate every piece around it eventually sickening you? Why should you have to sit around while these major companies in the production industry do nothing to help the consumer?

Food politics has slowly become more and more important in the media. In 2008 filmmaker Robert Kenner directed a documentary called Food Inc. It immediately blew up and caught everyone’s attention. It was first time people were seeing the reality of the foods they’re eating, organic or not. Good or bad people were interested and wanted to know more. It was refreshing to see the point of view from farmers who know the methods are wrong but get paid to do it.  Farmers and activists alike began to write several articles on this topic. At the end of almost every article on food politics there is a section on how we as consumers can and need to make a change. Without the consumers there will be no change in the industry, an industry that has become corrupt and unhealthy.

All the articles agree that the way we have been farming has changed drastically from 20 – 30 years ago, and not for the better. Farmers or major companies have turned their minds from making the best produce they can to feed the world, to making the cheapest and quickest produce they can to make money. Our methods have become purely based off profit, while this may seem good for the government and for major producers; this has proven to be bad for the consumer. Why would we eat food that wasn’t produced with our satisfaction in mind.  “Nestlé’s “Resisting Food Safety,” and Consumer Reports “You are What They Eat,” both provide a number of facts and sources to help prove their case that the industry is becoming unsafe. More than 2 of the articles have said that there is a way to fix these problems, but with the government and large corporations running most of the industry there I sonly so little that can be done. “… The top four cattle – slaughtering firms increased their share form 30% in 1972 to 79% by 1998.” (Resisting Food Safety, 44) Of course by now this number has only increased. While we know what to do about the problems in the food industry it is not up to us to make the decision, it has been shown that our food is not always safe and we now know the causes however, large corporations take over almost 79% of the food industry making it extremely difficult to implement a change in regulation. While not impossible, there are still some ways that we could try to make an impact, which is what Food Inc., and Consumer Reports is trying to do. On the Food Inc. website there is a tab called “Take Action” where you can sign a petition that is trying to put and end to laws that don’t allow journalist to report the truth. Without journalists and documentaries we would be uninformed about the dangers of the industry.

Thanks to Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, and Consumer Reports, we are all more aware and more knowledgeable about our food situation. According to “You Are What They Eat” and “Resisting Food Safety” our main problem in production is the growth of E. coli and other health concerns. Food Inc. shared a terrible story of a young boy who died of E. coli while on a trip with his family. They did however drag the story out and used it story to draw on peoples love for children to get a greater reaction from the viewers. But after reading numerous articles on E. Coli and other bacterial outbreaks it is very obvious that it is a major problem. . It has been a continuing problem in the United States, even this month Chipotle had to close down because of an E. Coli outbreak. Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal  said in his book,“The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat.” This is now a known fact and what has been done about it, not a lot. Even Blake Hurst’s “Organic Illusions” said that we need to change the way we are farming. While this article may not be the most credible that point is something that cannot be argued against.

Food Inc. was able to do what these articles were not able to do, they allowed for the viewers/readers to get an inside look at what they are consuming. “You Are What You Eat” and “Resisting Food Safety” could not, however they both provide a number of reliable sources and statistics to provide the reader with without being opinionated as to allow the reader to make their own decisions.  Based one these sources the main source of the problem in our food industry  is the conditions in which they are keeping the animals and what they are being fed. Three sources agree that keeping animals in such closed in tight quarters is unhealthy, since the animals can barely move there is fecal matter everywhere which could carry E. coli and then get transferred to all the other animals. One sick chicken or cow could contaminate and entire farm in a situation like that, even just by drinking water. The main reason that these diseases grow is because of what they feed the animals. The animals are fed whatever will make them fatter quicker, which is usually corn or waste feed. The problems with this are that it makes it easier for bacteria to grow inside of them when this is what they are being fed. Major companies know this as does the FDA however, feeding chicken and cattle corn is an easier way to increase their weight and happens to be much cheaper which in this industry seems to be the only thing that matters. Considering the fact that 79% of the industry is run by major corporations  every time we go shopping we are purchasing an item from a powerful corporation. So we are giving money to the very corporation that has poor living conditions for animals that lead to a deterioration of their well being which in the end affects us. So it seems as they get richer we get sicker.

In Nestle’s “Resisting Food Safety”, table 3 shows that in 1999 there were 2,000,000 illness, 10,500 hospitalizations, and 99 deaths due to a bacteria called Campylobacter which is a the most common cause of food poising, it is most often found in chicken and in the worst cases causes paralysis. Along with Campylobacter, there have been 62,500 reported illness, 1,800 hospitalizations, and 52 death from Escherichia Coli (E. Coli). These numbers haven’t shifted in a positive direction, in fact they have increased in the past 16 years. The numbers provided above may not be 100% accurate because those are only reported cases, there are hundreds of cases that go unreported. Due to neglect in our government little action has been taken to fix these problems. While very few laws have been placed there is still little being done. Food safety is illogically divided between USDA and the FDA regulations. With the industry continuously growing as our population grows it becoming harder and harder for inspectors to examine every animal carcass that goes through to slaughter. They have been given the reputation of “poke and sniff”, there is little trust in the system and it should be changed. It is said in Food Inc.  that, “It’s incredible to me that the federal government can order the recall of a stuffed animal with a glass eye that could come off and choke a child, but that the federal government cannot order the recall of thousands of pounds of contaminated ground beef that could kill a child,” says Eric Schlosser. It is clear that a change has to be made, the government cannot continue to allow people to get sick off of contaminated food when it can be fixed.

Reflection Questions:

1. It seems to me that the writers “project” is the authors main focus, it is their purpose for writing their piece and what they want reader to take from it. I was able to identify the texts projects by pulling out their main points or topics and how I felt after I read each article. My project in this article was not to give people pages of facts but to give them just enough information to make their own decision about the food industry and to make a change.
2. I was absent on the day we did the “Sorting it out workshop” however the next day in class I did look over it and try to fill in what  I could. If i would’ve been able to fully complete it I’m sure it would’ve helped me organize my thoughts and information and give me a basis to write on. It works as an outline for the article to help pull it all together.
3. It took me a while to understand synthesizing, I finally ended up understanding it about three days before I had to finish writing my article. But from what I understand synthesizing is drawing connections and comparing and contracting the similarities and differences in two pieces of writing. It is important because it allows you to really analyze different points of view to come up with you own. To be honest I’m not confident in the amount of synthesizing I did in my article. I did use all the articles I read and a few outside sources to help me decide where I stand on this issue. I did however compare some of the works.
4. I am slightly proud of myself for trying to write in an article format and not being overwhelmed by my lack of experience in this area. I tried extremely hard not to make it a research paper so I’m hoping it doesn’t read that way. Another accomplishment would be never giving up when it comes to understanding how and what synthesis is.
5. My main idea started when I had to write my 500 word reading response for Nestle’s Resisting Food Safety. The article really resonated with me because food poising is something that happens to me far too often. My claim or “project” began there and hasn’t really changed since I first started writing. Only towards my last draft did I start to talk about how people could implement a change.
6. I am  not really a planner so I didn’t really strategize. I used my reading response as a basis for the article. Then I started to look back at the articles we read and the chart we made in class and began pulling ideas, quotes, and people out. But otherwise not much has changed since I first began writing.
7. In the second paragraph where I said “All the articles agree that the way we have been farming has changed drastically from 20 – 30 years ago, and not for the better. Farmers or major companies have turned their minds from making the best produce they can to feed the world, to making the cheapest and quickest produce they can to make money. Our methods have become purely based off profit, while this may seem good for the government and for major producers; this has proven to be bad for the consumer. Why would we eat food that wasn’t produced with our satisfaction in mind.  “Nestlé’s “Resisting Food Safety,” and Consumer Reports “You are What They Eat,” both provide a number of facts and sources to help prove their case that the industry is becoming unsafe”  It may not be the best synthesizing but it is an example of how it evolved. My first and second draft on had the first sentence and the last two. Which didn’t really synthesize much. So after getting feedback from peer review I added to it changed it a bit to get more analysis in it.
8. When I first wrote it it had no lede, it ended up sounding kind of like an essay because of my introduction. However after working with lede’s in class and looking at examples in other articles I began to understand why it was necessary and how it changed writing to sound better for an article. Once I began writing my lede I started out with just a quote which stood out to me and really grabbed the idea behind my article. Trying to keep it short was the hard part and since the quote said most of what I wanted to say, I added a few questions that I will be answering in the text in the hopes of grabbing the readers attention.
9. Writing is not my strong suit, it takes me a very long time to get my thoughts on paper. So this unit my goal is to start everything earlier and give myself enough time to get my words out without being stressed out. I would also overall just become a stronger writer.