The food industry is one of the most overlooked industries there is. The safety and regulation of the food is in the hands of big businesses that dominate certain areas of the industry. The consumer knows what the big businesses want them to know and it is very hard to find answers to questions as simple as where their food is produced. Anything that goes wrong is blamed on the consumer. The lack of knowledge and government regulation raises many concerns within the industry, and more needs to be done to make the system more transparent. The everyday human has countless things to worry about, wondering if their food is safe should not be one of them.

 

Food is defined as any nutritional substance that people or animals eat or drink in order to maintain life and growth. This means that food is a necessity. Often when it comes to food, people go grocery shopping, order in, or go out to dinner whenever they feel slightly hungry. A lot of times people get food not even because they are hungry but because they are bored and it is something to do. It is natural to want to eat food because a person spends so much of their life doing it.

However, it is very uncommon for people when deciding where to eat or what to buy, to consider where that restaurant or supermarket, gets their meat and produce from. Rarely do people when ordering a salad ask where the lettuce or tomatoes are from, or what the diet of the cow that became their hamburger was. People do not question their food and assume that since they need it to survive, it is safe.

Marion Nestle, a nutrition and public health professor at New York University, sums this up completely in Part One of her book Food Politics, when she says that most people view food poisoning as an “uncomfortable inconvenience” and “random bad luck” rather than “industry and government indifference and outright obstructionism.” They simply do not feel well for a day or two and then go about their lives like nothing happened.

She is entirely right when she says that people do not take food poisoning seriously and it is a serious problem. The numbers of cases of food poisoning cannot be completely accurate because a lot of times people do not report them. Since it is seen as not a big deal, many people will just not return to the restaurant that gave it to them, or will stay away from whatever food made them ill. Nestle states, “The most authoritative estimate of the yearly number of cases of foodborne disease in the United States defies belief: 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, 5,000 deaths.” Foodborne illnesses are nothing to be taken lightly. Bacteria such as salmonella and E. Coli can have serious negative effects on the human body and may even be life threatening.

Food Inc., a documentary by Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser, featuring Michael Pollan, shows some of the corruption within the food system. The journalists interview a woman whose life was personally affected by the damage done by E. Coli. Barbara Kowalcyk’s whole world came crashing down after a vacation she went on with her family. While away, her two-year-old son, Kevin, consumed a hamburger that was contaminated with E. Coli 0157:H7. Blood was found in his stool and his kidneys started to fail. This little boy went from being perfectly healthy to passing away in just twelve days. Kowalyck is a Food Safety Advocate and was fighting for what happened to her son. She would schedule appointments with government agencies such as the USDA, but they would only see her for about five to ten minutes. Nothing was ever done by the government in regard of her son, and the meat company was never held responsible.

One thing every part of the food industry has in common is that they fail to take responsibility when something goes wrong. This is present in every step of the farm to fork process. Nestle puts it simply when she says, “producers blame processors for foodborne illness, and processors blame producers; government regulators blame both, and everyone blames the consumers.” The lack of taking responsibility is the first thing that needs to change in order for bigger changes to be made. In an article written my Michael Moss of New York Times, Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Food Safety on Consumers, Moss informs readers about how big companies try to dodge taking the blame in any way they can. In 2007, a product of ConAgra Foods, frozen pot pies, contaminated about 15,000 people with salmonella. The company tested the ingredients to find out what exactly caused the illness in so many people, however, they could not pinpoint which of the ingredients was responsible. Instead of doing more tests and finding out exactly where the food that goes into their products comes from, ConAgra decided to avoid all accountability by making anything that happens the consumers fault. The company wrote food safety instructions on the pot pie packaging saying, “Internal temperature needs to reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.” Therefore if a person gets sick because the actual pot pie was contaminated with bacteria, the company can argue that the consumer did not follow the instructions and heat the product right. This was also seen when General Mills had recalled about five million frozen pizzas in 2007. The instructions on the box now suggest to “avoid microwaves and cook only with conventional ovens.” Other major companies including Nestlé, and The Blackstone Group are also guilty of shifting the burden to consumers. These food giants make up most of the brands that fill the shelves of supermarkets, yet they are “unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients.”

The food industry is a very delicate system and should have more government regulation. Although agencies such as the FDA and USDA exist, they are not as thorough as they could and should be. It is very easy for good ingredients to get contaminated at some point in the production process, as seen in the article You Are What They Eat. Starting at the farm, it is important that the animals are fed and taken care of properly. What is most important is that they eat feed that is safe and uncontaminated. Consumer Reports exposes what items go into the feeds that farmers give to cattle, chickens, and fish. While the feeds consisted of some disturbing things, such as poultry litter, feathers, feces, bone meal, and waste from coops, they were all FDA approved and said to contain nutritional benefits to the animals. With this array of ingredients it is incredibly easy for the feeds to get contaminated, “simply by being stored in the wrong bin.” When meat from contaminated animals is produced and sold throughout the world, it can do a lot of damage to a lot of people. This is why it is important that everyone at each stage of the process must take responsibility for his or her actions.

There are constant debates about the nutritional value of organic farming versus conventional farming. Organic is believed to be better nutritionally because it does not contain chemical pesticides. Blake Hurst raises some concerns in his article “Organic Illusions”, by questioning that declaration. Hurst, who is a third-generation farmer, explains how easy it is for pesticides from neighboring conventional farms to drift and pollute organic farms. Products are labeled organic due to the producer’s claim of following organic procedures. “No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims,” according to Hurst. If organic foods are not really what they are said to be, this is another way for businesses to take advantage of the consumer. Organic products are often more expensive because they are produced in a more natural way. If the products are not actually produced by organic procedures, the consumer is once again in the dark and held subjective to the food system.

This is another issue within the food system that could easily be fixed with more government regulation. People should not have to guess or be unsure if their spinach is actually organic or if the chicken they are planning on making for dinner was stored improperly and now contains bacteria. More emphasis needs to be put on food safety practices and big businesses should not be allowed to find loop polls out of taking responsibility for the foodborne illnesses that arise from their products. In the words of Barbara Kowalcyk, “We put faith into our government to protect us and we’re not being protected.”

Food safety is a very important issue and more people need to become aware of it. By laying back and being uninformed about the severity of foodborne illnesses and the effects that bacteria’s such as salmonella and E.Coli can have on individuals and their families, people are prolonging the changes that the food industry, and more importantly, the consumers, desperately need.

 

Reflection

• 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.

The writers project is the main point that the author is trying to get across in his or her piece. You can identify it in a piece because it is the main claim the author makes and what other parts of the piece are trying to support. My project in this piece was to show people that there is a lack of government regulation in the food industry and that there are many issues that arise because of that.

• 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?

The workshop was beneficial because it made it easy to see what the main point of each piece was and how they related to each other. Also listing important themes and people in each made it helpful to not forget anything important that you wanted to include.

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

Synthesis is when you analyze multiple texts and then relate them to each other. You talk about each piece, but you do not summarize them, and you make connections using direct quotes and important ideas. I got a better understanding of synthesis after Amy showed us her paragraph from the four quotes of the VMAs. I tried to do that in my piece, using direct quotes that really supported what I was arguing in a major way.

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

During this unit I think I became better at arguing one thing and sticking to it. In past papers I have written, sometimes I would jump all over the place and argue multiple things at one time. With this paper I think I really stuck to my main argument and used the sources to support it very well.

• 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?

When I began this project, I was a little overwhelmed because there were so many sources that portrayed so many different aspects of the food system. My main idea was rather broad at first but what still mostly about how many people do not know where their food comes from and the secrecy of the system. As I wrote my first draft, I focused a lot on who hold the power in the system and how big businesses such as Monsanto, contribute to the lack of knowledge of the consumer. When I sat down to write my final paper, I sort of combined the two but focused more on how more government regulation could fix both of these issues. Each source we had to use gave examples of issues that could be fixed with more government involvement.

• 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.

For my blog article I started off with trying to inform people about how serious foodborne illnesses can be and why it is important to be informed about the issues. I then took arguments from each source that supported why more people need to be more concerned when it comes to their food and how more regulation could fix these problems.

•  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.

“Marion Nestle, a nutrition and public health professor at New York University, sums this up completely in Part One of her book Food Politics, when she says that most people view food poisoning as an “uncomfortable inconvenience” and “random bad luck” rather than “industry and government indifference and outright obstructionism.” They simply do not feel well for a day or two and then go about their lives like nothing happened.” In the next paragraph I then talk about Food Inc. and how the little boy, Kevin, was affected by a foodborne illness. I also then talk about my outside source, which deals with how big companies are trying to not be held accountable for illnesses by making it the consumer’s responsibility.

• 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?

In my earlier drafts I did not even include a lede. I did not know what he term was or how it would affect my paper. In my later drafts I worked on making a lede that was informative and concise but also creative enough to get the reader to want to continue reading my paper. In my final blog post, I tried to relate to the everyday person and grab their attention, while stating facts about how little people know about the food system.

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

I would like to work more on my writing and making it stand out. I want people to want to read what I have to write about and make it more fun, creative, and informative, rather than just dry and informative.