Food Companies: Is Food Safety A Priority?

 

Wouldn’t you like to know if the food you eat is contaminated with a deadly disease? Wouldn’t you like to know if that disease could potentially kill you or someone you know? The food industry doesn’t care. They don’t want you to know about their unsafe and inhumane processes that they use to produce the food that you buy. All they care about is your money!

Big food companies such as Tyson Foods and Cargill Foods produce most of the meat that is sold in supermarkets. People buy the meat, cook the meat, and then they eat the meat like any other standard meal in the history of civilized living. But what is different about these the meat nowadays is that the meat is processed in large factories. This is due, in part, to the dramatic increase in demand for meat that is required to satisfy the growing population of America. But this was not fast enough for these big corporations. Many big companies have resorted to creating feed for these animals that differs from the natural diet that these animals are used to. As the Consumer Reports article made evident, feathers and feces are only some of the things that are essentially fore fed to these animals. This creates an environment for disease. In the documentary Food Inc., the director gives an argument against the current way that feed is produced. He argues that the food that is given to animals is harmful because it goes against what is supposed to be given to them. Giving corn to cows is dangerous because cows are not supposed to eat corn so their bodies are not very healthy which leaves them vulnerable to disease. Corn can also carry diseases such as E. Coli. It can then be spread to animals and humans. If the corn contains a disease, then the cow gets the disease. When combined with the horrid living conditions that these animals are forced to live in, the disease can then evolve and spread faster to the humans that eat the meat that comes from that cow. These unnatural and basically inedible feed ingredients are meant to fatten the animal quickly so that they can be slaughtered and sold sooner. But instead, the feed helps make the animals walking petri dishes that contain many different diseases and bacteria. In addition to the unhealthy feed, all animals, regardless of health, are given medications that are supposed to “boost growth and keep infections at bay.” This now makes these animals like walking cocktails.

The Consumer Reports article does provide a slight glimmer of hope. It provides ways, in which, the consumer can protect themselves against these potentially dangerous meats. But it does not solve the issue at hand.

Big food companies also take advantage of the new technologies that society has to offer. Their goal to decrease their spending while increasing their profits. They no longer have the consumer’s best interest in mind. They only care about their wealth. This shows in how they run their factories and their farms. They have resorted to some inhumane practices as a way to increase their profit margin. Food Inc. visits some of these huge farms in America that house hundreds of cows, chickens, and pigs. The film shows some of these animals being kept in tight, dirty spaces; sometimes even being kept in their own feces. This brings down the maintenance costs by giving the animals the bare minimum needed to live but it also creates a breeding ground for bacteria and disease.

Pesticide use has also become commonly used as a way to kill bacteria and bugs which allows for a higher crop yield. These crops are then put in the feed of the farm animals. Some pesticides, such as chrysanthemums, sabadilla, and nicotine, are highly toxic and can be dangerous to consume. But of course, these companies do not care as long as they are paying less and making more.

Blake Hurst in his article, Organic Illusions, spends some time discussing pesticides. According to a Stanford study, that he repeatedly refers to, pesticides cannot be doing any harm because if they were, then farmers would have stopped using them years ago. The Food Journal article backs up this point of view to a certain extent. The article insists that new pesticides that are made are modelled after natural pesticides and they are safer than before. Jennifer Dewey Rohrich, a third generation farmer, says that her family must protect their farm in order to keep producing and if pesticides were slowly damaging their land, they would not be using them anymore.

The Consumer Reports article argues that pesticides and antibiotics lead to disease and if farms and companies were to stop using them, then there would be less risk of getting some diseases. This contradicts with Dewey Rohrich’s view because Dewey Rohrich mentions that farmers are very safe when it comes to pesticide use and she argues that pesticides make food safer because disease carrying organisms are killed and so they can not infect any of the plants.

The article ultimately makes the claim that without pesticides, the cost of farming would significantly increase because alternative methods of protecting crops would have to be used and so the price of goods that are bought in stores would increase as well. So again, it all comes back to costs. At the end of the day, food companies only care about their profit margin so they will continue to use whatever products or practices allow them to spend less and make more.

This all ties nicely under the idea that there is a lack of government oversight. The government created the Food and Drug Administration and the United Stated Department of Agriculture in order to oversee the food industry and ensure that the companies are following regulations that were that were implemented in order to make food safe for consumers. Food Inc., Marion Nestle, and Consumer Reports show that this is not the case. Food Inc., Marion Nestle, and Consumer Reports all argue that the government needs to do more. From Food Inc., “in 1972, the FDA conducted 50,000 food safety inspections. In 2006, the FDA conducted only 9,164.”

There has clearly been a sharp decline in government involvement in the food industry. There are a few factors that can affect this downward sloping trend. One example being a lack of funding. Food safety has clearly become a second thought in the minds of everyday consumers and this stems from the trust that they have put into their government to keep them safe.        Consumer Reports and Marion Nestle go more into detail on the two agencies that are supposed to be protecting the consumers of America. Nestle believes that the lack of federal oversight stems from the “illogical division of food safety oversight.” An example being that the USDA regulates hot dogs in pastry doe and the FDA regulates hot dogs in rolls. But the main issue regarding these two is that they are very understaffed. The FDA has about 700 inspectors and does an inspection about once every five years due to this. The USDA has about 7000 inspectors, which is more than the FDA but is still not enough because the USDA does daily inspections but they cannot be thorough because they have a lot of companies to inspect. This results in situations like how the FDA only tests about 2 percent of imported seafood yet about 80 percent of seafood is imported.

These are the very things that allows food companies to get away with skimping on proper safety procedures. The FDA and USDA need to be more funded. They ultimately need an overhaul in the way the agencies are structured. The current state of these agencies is one of inefficiency, which allows for the selling of unsafe food.

The food industry has been able to get away with not following safety instructions properly due to their size and power and also the lack of government oversight. This makes buying food dangerous because the average consumer is not able to tell whether the food they buy will get them sick. They put their trust in these companies and in the government and in return, they are let down when outbreaks occur and people die. This can happen to anybody, at any time, anywhere that sells these tainted foods. These companies, and the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them, need to be overhauled to stop people from getting sick and dying.

 

 

• Describe your understanding of the “writer’s project”? How were you able to identify the texts’ “project”? Discuss your own “project” as it pertains to this particular blog article.

I think that through the workshops in class and listening to the views of other people on the writer’s project, the writers project became very clear in each article. I was able to identify the project after breaking down the article into its crucial details. Doing that made the projects very clear. My project was that the food industry is not as concerned about the consumer as they should be and the people deserve to know.

 

• Describe your completion of the “Sorting it Out” workshop? What sections were most beneficial to the development of your ideas—and why? Discuss how this workshop assisted in development of draft and/or assignment organization?

Summarizing the main arguments of the article and then responding to these arguments made it easier form my project because I was now able to see the ideas laid out. It made it easer follow instead of having to keep it all in my head. Without the layout, I probably would have just written whatever came to my head in hopes that it comes out clearly.

• Describe your understanding of synthesis. What is its importance? How did it manifest within your drafts and/or final blog article? Provide examples.

After synthesizing these articles, the direction I wanted to take became very clear. I laid out the details, formed the question that I wanted to answer and then plugged in the details where I saw fit. This is evident in the paragraph where I introduce the government agencies. I supported the synthesis by plugging in statistics.

• Describe your own accomplishment (ofsomething) during this unit.

I was successfully able to fully analyze and formulate an opinion on the subject and successfully back up this opinion using the articles from class and also from another online source.

5.) Discuss the evolution of the main idea. Where did you begin (include the example) and show its progress (again, include example) throughout the drafting/revision process. To what do you attribute its evolution?

I originally wrote the synthesis as an essay but I realized that writing as a blog would be more successfully at conveying ideas to the lay person. A blog is more informal while at the same time, sharing a lot of information. At first, I just compared a few of the articles against each other but in the end, I decided to lay those same details out and use them to support a claim that I was making. That claim being that the food industry needs to be overhauled.

• Discuss what organizational strategies you implemented in order to structure this blog article. Provide examples from a section(s) of an earlier draft and other excerpts in later drafts to support your response.

SMy strategy for my drafts and my final piece were the same in that I used an outline. The difference was how I used that outline. Basically my entire piece was changed. At first, I wrote it as an informative essay but then I wrote it as an informative blog that was doing more than stating facts. My entire piece needed to be changed in order to properly convey the claims that I was making.

• Provide an example of the final draft where you successfully synthesize 3 texts in a concise and direct manner. Discuss how this evolved throughout the drafting process for you.

In the 6^th paragraph, I begin talking about pesticide usage and I use 3 separate sources that discuss pesticide usage directly. I started out making by taking a stance and I feel as though I pulled out the most essential sentences that supported and strengthened my claim.

8.) Discuss the evolution of the ‘lede’ in earlier drafts and its final version (provide examples of each): where did you begin, what feedback did you receive, and how did it end up in final blog article?

sMy lead did not really change much throughout the evolution of my blog. I knew I wanted to take an immediate, strong stance against the current state of the food industry and I feel as though that is exactly what my lede did. I wanted it to set the tone of the article and after getting some feedback about it, that is exactly what it did.

9.) Name a specific writing/researching/revision goal you’d like to work on during the next Unit projects.

During the next project, I would like to get better at synthesizing because at first, it was difficult for me to make a claim and find details to support said claim. But after finishing the first project and reflecting upon the process, I feel like I am already better at seeing the argument that I would like to make.