Unfortunately, this assignment has caused me to think about food safety more than I would care to.  And I say “unfortunately” because I would rather go on living in the bliss that was my ignorance.  I don’t want to think about the potential of arsenic in the chicken wings I wanted to order.  I don’t want to  consider getting sick at the thought of eating a medium rare burger.  I just want to order something and eat it with no regard to anything other than the potential of indigestion.  But now I am forced into an awareness that, of course, is better.  It also angers me.  The businesses that grow richer at the behest of my fears anger me.  The politicians who line their pockets for re-election with the donations made by such companies are not what are founding fathers intended.  So I have little else to do but complain.  In that respect, this was a good assignment for me.  It allowed me to get some things off my chest.  I usually write poetry when I feel I have no other recourse.  This exercise enabled me to write poetically about the topic.  And I feel better now.

Growing up within a family of cattle ranchers from southwest Montana, I assumed I understood the where, how, and why in regards to where our food comes from. From a very young age, I was enthusiastically involved with the inner-workings of the ranch and jumped at every opportunity to work along side my uncles and older cousins. Not a glamourous job, however, the merits of hard work produced a respect and understanding for the way our food is produced. The animals on our farm were never mistreated, and quite the contrary, were looked after in a respectful and caring way. Knowing the other farmers and ranchers in the area solidified my understanding of food production, and at this young age believed this was common practice for farms nationwide. It was not until I was much older that the realization of corporate farming came into focus. With feedlots packed with cattle by the tens of thousands, this type of farming, along with chicken, pig, and big business agriculture, have created a vicious system of
inhumane practices. The treatment of these animals, from questionable feeding practices to the general lack of care for these animals and the foodborne illnesses in question, is a direct result of these mass production practices. Without proper food production practices, combined with strict oversight and regulation, the commercialization of food production has created a tsunami of problems that can no longer be over looked.
It has become frustratingly obvious that food safety, more than ever before, has taken a backseat to production efficiency and maximum profit. Blatant ignorance controls and justifies every aspect of a process that could very simply be regulated to adhere to strict quality control standards. While it seems that government has in place regulatory agencies overlooking issues of food safety, it has been made clear that profits are more important than public health. Although they claim to have the publics safety and best interest in mind, these agencies are under funded and under staffed, heavily influenced, lobbied, and riddled with regulatory loopholes. When it comes to the food we eat, these government agencies have continually dropped the ball. At times with disastrous and fatal results. Through the hard work and research of food activists such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, as well as, documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner, and Marion Nestle Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU, along with many other investigative news journalists and publications including Consumer Reports, the public has become more aware and better educated regarding the shady practices of food manufacturing and production.
According to Ms. Nestle, “the most authoritative estimate of the yearly number of cases of foodborne disease in the United States is 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths. Furthermore, although outbreaks of foodborne illness have become more dangerous over the years, food producers resist the attempts of government agencies to institute control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures by every means at their disposal. If it sounds like, or is assumed that, government agencies such as the FDA and the USDA would protect the consumer by every means at their disposal, fact could not be further from the truth. Ms. Nestle continues, “because federal policies cannot ensure that food is safe before people bring it home, government agencies shift the burden of responsibility to consumers.” Government oversight of food safety has long tended to provide far more protection to food producers than to the public. Today, an inventory of federal food safety activities reveals a system breathtaking in its irrationality: 35 separate laws administered by12 agencies housed in six cabinet-level departments. At best, a structure as fragmented as this one would require extraordinary efforts to achieve communication, let alone coordination, and more than 50 interagency agreements govern such efforts. This lack of proper regulation is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to food safety, and further investigation exposes alarming practices at the conventional farming level. According to Consumer Reports, life on today’s farm – often a 30,000-cow feedlot or a 60,000-chicken coop, and the need for huge quantities of high-protein rations as well as, the need for slaughterhouses to find a cheap, safe way to dispose of waste gave rise to a marriage of convenience between renderers and food producers, and to the inclusion of animal by-products in animal feed. Through this practice, food animals are now being fed processed feathers, floor wastes from coops, plastic pellets, as well as, meat and bone meal. These waste products, mixed with corn and soybean meal, make up 10-30% of the feed produced for these mega-farm feedlots. It does not take a food safety expert to see all that is wrong with such a practice.
Although many of those who work in big business food production decline to be interviewed about their process, much of the ignorance involved in their decisions and practices have come to light. Blake Hurst, commercial farmer and president of the Missouri Farm Bureau has stated, “plants and animals aren’t the least bit interested in the story the farmer has to tell. They don’t care about his sense of social justice, the size of his farm, or the business model that he has chosen. Plants don’t respond by growing better if the farmer is local, and pigs don’t care much about the methods used in the production of their daily rations.” The absurdity of such statements is fundamental to the myriad of problems that have engulfed the commercial food industry. When farmers such as this, and the government agencies that oversee these practices believe the current methods of production best provide a plentiful and affordable food supply, it becomes painfully obvious that profits are the driving force behind this line of thinking. Attempts to give federal agencies the right to enforce food safety regulations have been blocked repeatedly by food producers and their supporters in congress, sometimes joined by the agencies themselves, and more recently by the courts. These facts have been substantiated and echoed by others also investigating the food industry. In his Documentary, Food Inc., award winning filmmaker Robert Kenner has brought to light many other disturbing facts related to food safety. According to interviews with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, five companies control 80% of the meat production in this country. Of these companies, ALL have ties or close relations to members of congress or other judicial or political figures. At this alarming statistic, it is not difficult to see that conflict of interest is obviously ignored so as to benefit big business and their partners. Although in a perfect world to have farmers such as Joel Salatin, full-time farmer at Polyface Farms who employs the strictest standard of environmentally-friendly farming practices, as a model for what farming and ranching could and should be, the reality is that we need food produced on a massive scale. However, with the current practices in place that give advantage to the big corporations in farming, and that turn a blind eye to the ridiculous number of violations committed by these individuals, there is very little hope that clean and healthy foods can be produced within this system.
From lack of proper food inspection and regulatory loopholes, to the antibiotics and inedible ingredients put into animal feed, to the ammonia and other chemicals mixed into ground beef and more, every step of the food manufacturing process is rife with unthinkable disregard.
Farming is no longer farming. We are no longer eating food, and what we are eating is the idea of food. When the agencies trusted to oversee food safety have such unimaginable conflicts of interest, how can they be relied upon to give truthful and accurate information on the supposed organic foods also regulated under their authority. Although the FDA and the USDA certify certain foods as organic, claims such as no antibiotics administered, no hormones administered and no chemicals added are unverified. So are claims by some beef brands that their cattle are raised on an all-grain or all-grass diet. Until the loopholes and conflicts of interest are eliminated and proper regulation is the standard and common practice within the food production industry, these problems will only get worse. With a population that is growing by leaps and bounds, not only is the question how will we feed everyone, but how to feed them safely and with the maximum amount of nutrition possible. Corporate farming and ranching is a huge problem that has run away with itself and until proper regulation and loopholes are addressed the dangers associated with foodborne illnesses will only get worse.

Reflection Questions
Unit I / 10%
Using the homework, in-class workshops, revision workshops, etc.

1.) 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 synthesis of research, information, and quotes to compose a concise understanding of the material and to develop this into a blog-type format. From several sources on the subject of corporate farming and food borne illness, an attempt to combine this information into a quick reading and yet informative document, has been the goal.
2.)  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 “sorting it out” worksheet is very helpful in the organizing of all source material. Drawing connections between these sources by briefly listing their content and literally drawing lines to connect similar thoughts and ideas.
3.)  Describe your understanding of synthesis. What is its importance? How did it manifest within your drafts and/or final blog article? Provide examples.
– To combine the essence of a lot of information into a precise and focused document.
4.)  Describe your own accomplishment (of something) during this unit.
– There is still a lot to learn through the practice of synthesis. Though barely scratching the surface of what this style of writing can accomplish, I feel a greater understanding can only come through further writing.
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?
– The main idea was always to take a stand and express a certain combative uneasiness with the discovery of facts connected to the issue of food borne illness. The evolution of this article came in understanding that a lot of information had to be condensed into a short and concise reading.
6.) 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 someone who enjoys long precise explanations, and see’s no end to research, the challenge with this writing was to trim the fat and then trim the fat again. The organizational strategies came mostly from the ‘sorting it out’ worksheet to find the essence of what needed to be presented and what we could do without. From an earlier draft, (The modern American supermarket has on average 47,000 products. Of these products, the majority have been processed and produced under sub-standard conditions with sub-standard ingredients. Seventy percent of these foods contain GMO’s) seemed to not be necessary in the sense that my article was focusing more on food borne illness and its cause. Although this information was important and concise, more could be said with less.
7.) 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.
– I don’t believe there is a truly successful synthesis of this manner. Although there is a synthesis taking place, the challenge has been to find a way to really tighten this up. The synthesis seems to take place over the course of a whole paragraph, and attempts at trying to accomplish this in one or two sentences has been unsuccessful in my view. Synthesis seems to be an exercise in fine-tuning, saying more with less, and success at this type of writing needs the benefit of lots of practice.
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?
– The ‘lede’ in this article did not find its way until late in the process, and therefore did not receive necessary feedback. Due to the personal nature exposed by mentioning my upbringing, there was much thought and concern as to how to present this passionately yet with modesty as well. (Growing up within a family of cattle ranchers from southwest Montana, I assumed I understood the where, how, and why in regards to where our food comes from.)
9.) Name a specific writing/researching/revision goal you’d like to work on during the next Unit projects.
– Although much was learned from the process of synthesis, an intriguing and informing exercise, there is still much more to be learned about synthesis.

Shouldn’t we make sure the food we eat is safe?

John Carino

The burger you ate today is not as safe as you assumed when you bought it. Everybody knows that cows eat grass, but it is less known that the cows whose meat most grocery stores sell, were raised eating corn. This seems like it would not be much of an issue if it weren’t for the fact that this diet increases the likeliness of spreading dangers such as E-coli. Food plays a vital role in our daily lives. Without it we cannot survive, so shouldn’t it be a priority to make sure that what we eat is safe?

American food has become industrialized to meet the needs of consumers across the country. However, this resulting industrialization has begun to lean more towards the “industry” than “food” in the food industry. Companies have begun cutting corners to maximize production and profits. Consequently, the quality of food being produced has decreased drastically causing many problems. While promoting public awareness about issues in the industrial food system is important, there needs to be a more significant movement towards instigating change in the industrial food system and improving government regulation of the industry. These changes would include more transparency of food production to consumers and preventing money –saving “shortcuts”, for example by feeding animals what nature intended for them. These operations create a safer well-being for Americans from issues such as food borne illnesses and diseases.

One reason that there have not been significant safety improvements in the food industry is because of the government’s lack of involvement in making sure these companies are not taking shortcuts. In “You are what they eat” the writer shares “our investigation raises concerns that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result, the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be.” (26) Understandably, the government is not capable of regulating all food manufacturers at all times because “the FDA can’t blanket the country with inspectors, so it delegates much enforcement responsibility to the states, which conduct 70 percent of feed-company and renderer inspections.” (27) This delegation of regulation has resulted in a significant loss of control from the government. States are often less likely to take a stand against these industries than the federal government for a couple reasons. They are less likely partly because of the importance of profits these companies makes as well as because of the control these powerful companies may have over more local governments. These companies have simple goals, “to fatten animals as fast and cheaply as possible.” (26) The problem with this having this goal and finding loopholes is the compromise of quality and safety, putting consumers as risk. These “regulatory loop-holes could allow mad cow infection, if present, to make its way into cattle feed; drugs used in chickens could raise human exposure to arsenic or antibiotic-resistant bacteria; farmed fish could harbor PCBs and dioxins.” (26) The federal government needs to take a stand and instigate firmer regulation, even if it compromises fiscal profits. The more powerful these companies become the less ability the government will have to make sure the food consumers buy is safe. Consumers have very little power in fighting these food industries, they cannot simply stop buying food. That is why it is important that the government plays a big role in standing up making sure they stop hurting their consumers.

Not only is the food consumers buy not always safe, these companies also deceive consumers into thinking what they are buying is often healthier and more nutritious than it actually is. Blake Hurst in “Organic Illusions” shares how two contrasting studies present contradicting results to how nutritious “organic food” really is. Hurst writes “a recent study by a group of scientists at Stanford University found that the nutritional benefits of organic food have, to say the least, been oversold.” (2) The food industry heavily relies on misleading consumers to sell many products at escalated prices. Many companies that sell “organic” foods are owned by the larger conventional brands that they pretend to be competing with. This is another form of deception and sly misleading that needs to be stopped. Hurst argues “the organic farming narrative depends upon the belief that conventional farming sacrifices the present for the future, that the chemicals and fertilizers applied by conventional farmers poison the soil, and that this careless use of the unnatural will infect the things we eat and the productivity of our farms and ranches.” (3) However, this argument for the organic food industry is compromised by the studies that find no differences in nutritional value of foods after over half a century of hybrid seeds and 2 decades of genetically modified seeds. This does not necessarily mean there is no difference at all between conventional foods and organic, “the Stanford study found that organic foods were considerably less likely than conventional foods to have pesticide residues, although organic foods were higher in E.coli.” (3) It seems one bad quality has been traded for another, yet the food industry has been able to turn out higher profits from organic foods by misleading consumers with lies. Hurst shares “even if a naturally produced pesticide is less toxic than its synthetic counterpart, it may be applied at much higher rates than the comparable manmade chemical.” (7) One way to combat this and other deceptions by the food industry is to make sure they are not able to hide information to mislead consumers. This can be achieved by calling for complete transparencies within the food industry about how the food was produced and what products have been added to the product and the process. By advocating for more clear and detailed labels consumers can be significantly more informed on their decision making when purchasing food. This will also require government intervention but also consumers to take a stand.

Consumers blindly accept the lies fed to them by the food industry. Marion Nestle writes in “Resisting Food Safety” that “they accept at face value the endlessly intoned mantra of industry and government: the United States has the safest food supply in the world. Whether this assertion is true is a matter of some debate.” (27) The food industry has become more and more powerful and continues to fight and beat the government in every attempt to regulate their processes. Nestle presents that “food producers resist the attempts of government agencies to institute control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures by every means at their disposal. They lobby Congress and federal agencies, challenge regulations in court, and encourage local obstruction of safety enforcement.” (27-28) Not only do they fight against the government, but also heavily against activists who are fighting for their right for safer foods. An article by the US News Health shares “The food industry works aggressively to discredit its critics. According to the 2008 JAMA article, the Center for Consumer Freedom boasts “[our strategy] is to shoot the messenger. We’ve got to attack [activists’] credibility as spokespersons.” The website even revers to Nestle as “one of the country’s most hysterical anti-food fanatics.” It seems difficult to combat an industry with so much financial, political, and publicity power, but it is not impossible.

By creating a more transparent food industry and instigating stricter regulation, the food industry could return to serving a primary purpose of meeting the needs and safety of consumers, not just to churn our profits and mass produce products. One small step at a time of making the right decisions in making food safe will have a significant impact on creating a safer America. It will take time effort from much of the population, but it is not an unreachable goal, and with the safety of millions of Americans at stake, it is necessary.

Works Cited:

“You Are What They Eat.” Consumer Reports, January 2005.

Hurst, Blake. “Organic Illusions.” The American, October 1, 2012.

Nestle, Marion. Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Voiland, Adam, and Angela Haupt. “10 Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.” Health.usnews.com. March 30, 2012.

Reflection Questions

• 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.

-Finding the “writer’s project” is key to understanding the argument and greater point of any source or project. From the examples we went over I was able to find the writers project by studying the evidence they presented and analyzing their arguments to find what point they were trying to make. For example, in the Kanye West music video studying the imagery used and listening closely to the lyrics allowed me to figure out what he was trying to make clear. My “project” with this blog article was to present the biggest issues with the food industry today and suggest possible solutions that could be considered to instigate change.

 

• 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 most beneficial section from this worksheet was anaylizing the main argument that each article/report was trying to make. By figuring out what each source had to offer specifically helped create a stronger thesis that consisted of a few key arguments. This workshop allowed me to clearly brainstorm and build on my ideas in a cohesive way, by initially forcing me to find out the key concepts then by finding specific evidence from the text that supported them.

3.)  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 key when attempting to make a clear argument. If you are trying to make an argument and your evidence does not relate to your argument or at all to other evidence your claim will seem weak and unsupported. I synthezised the main arguments from each source to support my thesis of how America needs to instigate change in the food industry. I also utilized my outside source to support the evidence from the other articles. For example, the article I used comments on how Marion Nestle is viewed by the food industry as “one of the country’s most hysterical anti-food fanatics.”

4.)  Describe your own accomplishment (of something) during this unit.

-During this unit I feel there were a few skills I familiarized myself with that I was new too. I have never attempted to write I a “blog/article” format before. This required me to learn a few new skills and writing techniques.

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?

-My main idea evolved as I gained more evidence exploring the articles/sources in more depth. What began as an unsupported claim vilifying the food industry became a well-supported argumentative piece that begins to even offer solutions to the issues presented. For example, I was initially aware that the food industry mislead consumers, but by further examining the given texts I was able to prove how they do so through false claims and misunderstanding on terminology such as “organic.”

6.) 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.

-To structure this blog article I considered how a person hopes to consume information. I lead with a catchy introduction to grab their attention, present the topics I intend to discuss, then present an open ended question that my arguments throughout the blog support. In an earlier draft I had written out the topics I intended to discuss in an outline including: How the government needs to step up, how the food industry deceives, and how the food industry is fighting anyone that tries to oppose it. My arguments against these points answer the question I pose of “shouldn’t it be a priority to make sure that what we eat is safe?”

7.) 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 my conclusion I connect the main arguments from each text to suggest what actions could be made to create a positive future for American food safety. I proose “By creating a more transparent food industry and instigating stricter regulation, the food industry could return to serving a primary purpose of meeting the needs and safety of consumers, not just to churn our profits and mass produce products.” Through the drafting process I was not as sure what proposals I could make about how to fix these issues but further analysis of the texts led me to this argument.

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?

-My original lede was not significantly different from my final blog. The tips from the worksheet we went over in class were helpful to simplify and reinforce the lede I had written.

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

-I would like to figure out how to narrow down my arguments into a more precise response. I often use too many works and by figuring out how to share my ideas more clearly I will be able to write more convincing works of writing.

 

Its tough to know who is to blame for the cases of food poisoning… is it our fault or is there a higher power behind everything that is held responsible. Its debatable.

Remember back to a time, you didn’t feel so well. No, not when your significant other broke your heart, think of a unpleasant moments when your bum was planted on the toilet. It was the weekend after a night out of eating a dinner cooked by yours truly, or even if you went out to eat that weekend, you got yourself in a sticky predicament now. You’re another lucky one who got the case of food poisoning.

Everyone has gotten food poisoning before, but no one ever thinks to blame the government agencies or food production companies for it.  You just had to be the unlucky one of the group again. You didn’t clean your food. Yeah, its your fault.  However, what if the meal was cooked perfectly by you, and no matter what you end up doing, your body seems to be upset with you. Trace this meal back to its original traces, and ask yourself if you are to be blamed again. Let me answer this question for you. The answer is NO, you as the consumer should not be blamed for something you bought that you don’t even know yourself the full extent and full description of where and how your food has been raised. Who should be liable instead are the government agencies in charge of the food industries.

This topic has been resurfaced many times in recent news in cases like Chipotle, where they claim to have ethically raised poultry and non- Genetically Modified Foods (GMO). According to the Center for Disease and Control ( CDC), as of January 27, 2016 there was a total case of 55 people who were infected with the outbreak strain of Escherichia coli ( E. Coli) O26  in Chipotle restaurants; for those who may not be aware of the symptoms from this strain, symptoms include bloody diarrhea, and for extreme cases, kidney failure.  As a popular food chain, they took actions immediately to expand the testing of fresh produce, raw meat and diary items prior to restocking the restaurants. Luckily they are taking the next step in making their food safer for the consumer. Other cases haven’t been so generous in doing it for the people, rather than keeping the company name safe.  They will fight to keep doing what they are doing and that is keeping the consumer clueless as to where the food they put in their mouth has been and has gone through.

In documentary films like Food Inc, they expose different cases in which food has been a big issue in people’s lives. One of the big cases that was mentioned was Kevin’s story.  Kevin was described to be a little boy who was full of life and on one family vacation decided to chow down on a burger during some of his meals. Note, that he was not the only one eating the burgers and his mother, father, and sister were also along side him on this vacation, also eating the same burger from the same company that were all cooked the same way. After returning home from his retreat, Kevin’s mother reported seeing blood in Kevin’s stool and also noticed that he was accumulating a slight fever. They headed to the doctors but were sent home. The next day, Kevin’s condition was significantly worse that it had ever been and they went to the hospital again for bloody stools again, and also dehydration. His kidneys started to fail, and they were given the diagnosis that he had contracted E. coli O157:H7.  He passed away shortly after. Kevin’s sister and father were also tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, but cases were both less extreme than those of Kevin’s. They brought this case to court, but were told they they did not have enough evidence. Later on, the same company had done a random test on their meats, and were positive for E. coli O157:H7 and the PFGE pattern (for DNA) for Kevin’s E. Coli matched the PFGE pattern of the recalled meal. However this was still not enough evidence o get justice for Kevin. What happened to Kevin was very tragic, and scary. But the scariest thing is that this situation can happen to anyone, despite eating meat or vegetables. No one is safe.

Kevin’s story was very heart breaking to hear, but as mentioned before his sister and his father who also ate the contaminated food just had one uncomfortable bowel movement. This seems to be very common where food poisoning gives people the results of just an uncomfortable bowel movement. So common, that when it happens, people brush it off their shoulders and move on with their day. The most frequent cases of these illnesses are viruses and species of bacteria, but most episodes are never even reported to authorities. According to Resisting Food Safety, Marion Nestle mentions that the most authoritative estimate of the yearly number of cases of food borne disease in the United States is 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths. Today, Food Production has created more promising conditions for bacteria and viruses to breed. Infected animals excrete pathogens in their feces, and other animals and plants come across the infected feces and then we proceed to eat it. Some of the pathogens survive cooking, stomach acid and other bodily functions and these pathogens can multiply and do much worse things to your body. On top of these pathogens, plants are genetically modified and animals are even fed ridiculous foods, both are done in effort to make the food bigger and more appealing to the consumer.

When you first lay your eyes on a fat cow, you immediately think that this cow was fed proper meals and was grown to be big, fat, and healthy. You would also imagine this cow hanging out with other fat cows on nice big grass fields and eating grass like they do in commercials and cartoons. However this is certainly not the case. According to You Are What They Eat by Consumer Reports, cows are fed things as ludicrous as chicken feathers, because they apparently contain a high source of protein. On top of that, all of the animals, including cows, chickens, pigs and even fish are fed corn. Corn comes in abundance, and fattens up the animal quick. Corn, is also very cheap to produce and harvest and distribute. As casual as that sounds, lets backtrack for a bit. Cows are fed corn, when they are supposed to be eating grass. Cows are unable to digest corn. When they eat corn, it can upset their digestive system. According to an online piece of writing titled What Happens in the Stomach of Corn-fed Cows, the author Laurel gives detail on what exactly happens to a cow when they consume corn. Cattle create a lot of gas, which they usually release, but when their diet is high in starch and low in roughage, a layer of foamy slime forms in their great food-processing tank. This reading states that a corn diet can also generate acidosis. Unlike our highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of cattle stomach is neutral. Corn makes them unnaturally acidic. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant, and drool, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. This condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloating, liver disease and general weakening of the immune system. A cow that has a poor immune system due to eating corn, which was intentionally meant to make them fat and appealing, is being served to us. The extent to which the negative affects of the cow eating corn that can be passed onto humans through consumption are still unknown, but it surely does not sound appealing. If you want to see a disturbing image of a cows stomach and the slimy foam that layers in their stomach go to 00:22:46 in the documentary film Food Inc, currently playing on Netflix.

Some people argue that organically grown foods are healthier. Considering they don’t feed their animals ridiculous foods such as corn. Corn is only an option because it is so cheap and easy to make. This makes it very easy for big companies to make lots of money. As opposed to organic food, where cows are free to roam and eat grass, like they were destined to, and they live on a land where farmers do not have to stick their hands inside of their stomach to clear out nasty slimy foam. All in all, this argument is that organic food is better food. However, Blake Hurst, the writing of Organic Illusions, he opposes this idea that organic is the better option. He also mentions that the cases of E. Coli were also present in organic foods, so food being organic does not eliminate the fact that E. Coli is still around. He mentions a lot of points that big production companies will provide more jobs if the food was not organic. However, according to Food Inc, it is true that big production companies hire a lot of people to work for them, thus always having job openings. They tend to hire undocumented workers so they are able to hire more workers, but also pay them very little and they have no employee benefits. Also, lets not forget they are undocumented, meaning they can easily be thrown back to where they came from, and the big production company that hired them will stay in the shadows as they are the day they hired these workers. So is it true that big production companies will provide more jobs for people. Yes, that is true. This doesn’t change the fact that E. Coli still exists, and big production companies are doing what they do best, and that is staying in the shadows.

Despite obvious concerns of the food industry and the impacts it has on our health, food industries are doing little to mother about it. We are left with a constant mystery of where our food has been. You might as well be blind folded for every meal. We need to hear the truth, and we want justice for all the cases of E. Coli around the nation.

Reflection Questions:

1.  My understanding of the writers project was to break down each of the texts and pick out information that I would use to defend my own project. Many of the articles that I broke down had different topics mentioned, but under the big umbrella of food poisoning. My main project was to inform the consumers of the secrets the food production companies are hiding from us. I use graphic information as well as sad ones too to try to engage the reader.
2. I personally, did not enjoy sorting it out. I feel as though it did not really help. However, the section where I needed to connect everything together was the most helpful of all the parts. I made most of my connections to Food Inc since Food Inc was the one thing we looked at that talked about everything. Other than that, I didn’t use everything on the sorting it out workshop, I personally found it a little confusing and I did not enjoy filling it out.
3. Synthesizing is when you combine ideas from others to form your own argument. Synthesizing helped me form my argument as well as provide evidence for some parts of my paper. It made my writing more reliable and that I was not making up the information.
4. I would say this blog post is an accomplishment. I never made a blog post like this before, and it was fun to go through drafts and go through other peoples writings and finally make this end product of a blog post and also just learning how to connect many articles together in one writing.
5. To create my main idea, I picked out one broad topic and narrowed it down. I also wanted it to connect to the people so that when someone reads it, they are engaged and feel like this problem can also affect them, and that the food production companies will look over each and every person  and not give the justice each person deserves.
6.  I am not proud of my first couple drafts. But I used it to just bunch all the texts together and as I kept writing more drafts I added more to try to engage the readers. I transitioned from trying to capture the reader with a personal story, to talking about Kevin and his tragic story for an emotional appeal. Then I get scientific and  give details on where some of our meat, mostly beef since thats what Kevin ate before dying. I tried to make this a persuasive piece.
7. I synthesized Nestle, Food Inc, Consumer reports together and I used Hurst’s writing as a bit of a rebuttal. This evolved as I was writing the texts, since now I incorporate the evidence into the texts instead of just repeating what they said. I am able to easily connect all of the texts together.
8. For the lede, I just tried to capture the reader as best as I could by using a fake, but totally real, scenario.  The feedback that I received was  that she was “tempted to keep reading because seeing relevant topics such as Chipotle makes me interested and i also agree with how it is not the consumers fault and would like to hear more about what you have to say”. I used this information to try to make more relatable cases for the reader to engage the reader more.
9. Overall, I want to be better at synthesizing. I want my writing to have a better flow and to engage more readers into my writing.

 

When most people think of where their food comes from, they probably think of a farm. This stereotypical farm image is generally what most people think of. People generally picture a big field with cows eating grass and a red barn. What nobody realizes though is that farms haven’t been like the image above in decades. The sad truth is that farms have become factories with the sole goal of creating cheap and sustainable food. However, it’s not the farmers that are in control of these farming practices, it’s big businesses.

These businesses have a lot more power than the average Joe thinks they do.  Most of these large corporations have a strong hold on the average farmer. These large businesses often put farmers in crippling debt in order to silence those who are against current farming practices.

“You have to do it, or you’re threatened with loss of a contract. This is how they keep the farmers under control. It’s how they keep them spending money, going to the bank and borrowing more money. The debt keeps building. To have no say in your business, it’s degrading. It’s like being a slave to the company.” – Farmer in Food Inc.

Many of these businesses have large monopolies within the farming realm. With very few companies having such control over certain types of food, farmers have no choice but to succumb to whatever the company wants, or risk losing a contract and farming job entirely.

The food industry has an unfathomable amount of control over the consumer. As revealed in Food Inc., larger companies such as Tyson, give the consumer the illusion of more options by hiding behind smaller name brands. This means that even if you think you have a real say in what you’re eating, you might not.

But the corruption does not stop there.

Almost all of these large food production companies have members running for important positions in government. This leads to an ever present bias within government towards the food industry rather than public safety. These government positions allow for companies to have control over what safety precautions are made, which often benefits the food industry rather than the consumer.

It seems that as the food industry becomes larger and more profitable, food safety decreases. The problem according to Nestle is the government. There is not nearly enough regulations set in place by the government to protect the consumer. Nestle argues that many of these food borne illnesses could be prevented if the proper regulations were put in place. However, the main issue seems to be a lack in man power. The food industry has gotten much too large to be regulated by the limited federal government.

“By the early 1980’s, for example, the poultry industry had already expanded far beyond any reasonable inspection capacity.” – Nestle

While simply adding more regulations seems like the perfect solution, there seems to be many more underlying problems within the food industry.

Pesticides. Antibiotics. Animal Feed. These are just a few of the many problems within the food industry that wouldn’t be fixed with a few simple regulations.

But how do these problems effect you?

Pesticides:

So if pesticides are the problem, why don’t more people choose organic? After all, isn’t it true that organic farming uses less pesticides? This is the question many people seem to be asking. The problem with this statement is that the answer may not lie within the organic food industry. In a study done by Stanford University, it was found that organic foods did have less pesticides than conventional food. However, E. Coli was far more present in the organically grown food. It was also proven that organic foods aren’t really any healthier for you than conventional foods. In an article written by Blake Hurst, it was revealed that even the organic food industry is not entirely pesticide free. While the pesticides being used are not as strong, the organic farmer will often have to use more pesticides in order to make the less potent kind more successful. Hurst also argued that pesticides are necessary in farming. Without them, fields would need to be weeded by hand which takes up more time and requires more man power. So while the idea of not using pesticides sounds nice, it doesn’t seem to be entirely realistic. So if you’re trying to avoid pesticides entirely, you may be out of luck.

Antibiotics:

The reason why antibiotics are used in food production is not necessarily a bad one at first glance. The reason is to prevent sick animals from creating sick consumers after eating that animals’ product. When animals are kept in such tight quarters, it’s not uncommon for animals to carry bacteria. However, the more antibiotics are used in animals, the more antibiotic resistant bacteria are formed. This resistant form of bacteria contaminates the food that comes from that sick animal, which can then make the consumer develop an antibiotic resistant infection. The CDC says that the use of antibiotics in the food industry is ok. However, it should only be used to address sicknesses in animals, not to promote growth. However, even animals that are not sick get large doses of these antibiotics in order to create a bigger ‘super’ animal to create more food per animal. While this saves the food industry on costs, it only harms the consumers health in the long run.

Animal Feed:

What do you think a cow eats? Most people would say grass, right? Well the sad truth is that most cows and other animals no longer eat grass, they eat corn and other waste products. According to Consumer Reports these waste products are not limited to processed feathers, poultry litter, floor waste, feces, plastic pellets, and other forms of meat. As we know, cows and chickens are not carnivores and probably should not be eating feces from other animals. The reason why the food industry does this is because this type of ‘animal feed’ makes the animals fatter creating more food production per animal, which is then more profit for the food industry. This also creates less waste from the food industry since rather than throwing these things away, they feed them to the animals. The problem with this practice though, is that whatever the animal eats directly influences the consumer. In a study done by the Animal Protein Producers Industry, salmonella was found is about one fourth of feed on average. To simplify, if the cows are eating salmonella contaminated food, and then the consumer is eating it, there is a much higher likelihood that the consumer will then be contaminated as well.

So, why should any of this matter to the consumer [you]?

The consumer should have a say in how their food is being made. They should also be knowledgeable about what exactly the risks are to what they are eating. If the consumer is unaware of the practices being used in the food industry, how will they be able to fight it? They won’t.

The food industry needs a complete renovation. The government should not be biased towards companies using unsafe practices. While the lack of resources to monitor these farms is a valid excuse, it’s still not a good enough reason to put public health at risk. The people that make decisions on consumer health should be the consumer themselves, not the company or official getting a paycheck. The only people that should have a say in what a safe farming practice is, is the consumers, the FDA, and other food safety commissions. We as the consumer need to put a higher focus on food safety in order to protect ourselves and the rest of the nation.

A change needs to be made, and while change may take time it is definitely worth the wait to save even one life from dangerous food consumption. Food should not be made on a conveyer belt. Cows and other animals were meant to eat grass and be able to roam around. While these new techniques have made quite the profit for these big companies, the consumer is suffering greatly.

Consumer health needs to come before profit, and the only way to do that is to fight the industry for change. By voting for change in the food industry, we will once again put the power back in the hands of the everyday consumer [you].

Reflection Questions: 

1.) The “writer’s project” seems to be whatever the writers main purpose is for writing an article. For example, in Blake Hurst’s article his “writer’s project” is to spread awareness about the real differences between organic and conventional farming methods while also exposing that conventional food isn’t necessarily bad for you. I was able to identify the texts project by summarizing the article and focusing on whatever the writers main argument was. My own “project” for this article was to spread awareness of the many dangers in the food industry and the many corruptions that prevent change being made. I also wanted to promote that consumers fight for a change within the food industry.

2.) The “Sorting it Out” workshop was actually really helpful. I ended up referring to it several times when drafting my article. I think the most helpful sections were summarizing each article and figuring out what it’s “project” was. It helped me remember which article was about what so I didn’t confuse the articles. The workshop also allowed me to start picking out quotes and connecting articles together so I could come up with one centralized idea for my article.

3.) Synthesis is taking information and simplifying it. It takes several different ideas or stories and combines them into one singular piece. It basically takes multiple perspectives and puts them together for a more rounded perspective. For my drafts I synthesized each piece and then used that to come up with my main argument.

4.) I learned how to create hyperlinks and write in a less formal tone.

5.) I originally began with the idea that the government was entirely to blame for the flaws within the food industry. However, later on I realized that perhaps the consumer is also to blame. After all, we’re the ones that vote these people into government roles. We should do our research to make sure these candidates have no biases. I attribute this revolution to the inclusion of more sources and also reading other peoples articles to get a better sense of what my opinion was on the topic.

6.) My organizational strategy was pretty simple. I broke it up the same way I would any other writing piece, just by topic. The only difference is that this article was much more casual and short so I broke it up into easier paragraphs. I just made sure to condense my topic as much as possible and shorten everything.

Example:

Original Draft:

These businesses have a lot more power than the average Joe thinks they do.  Most of these large corporations have a strong hold on the average farmer. These large businesses often put farmers in crippling debt and force them to follow unsafe farming practices. With most of these businesses having a huge monopoly within the farming realm, most farmers have no choice but to succumb to whatever unsafe practices that company wants. Large companies such as Monsanto, have even gone as far as controlling what type of seed farmers use and how they use it. They use scare tactics to keep farmers from speaking out or breaking these unfair rules. But the corruption does not stop there.

Final Draft:

These businesses have a lot more power than the average Joe thinks they do. Most of these large corporations have a strong hold on the average farmer. These large businesses often put farmers in crippling debt in order to silence those who are against current farming practices.

I also added block quotes to the final draft to help make my point while also keeping the paragraphs simple.

7.) Example: It seems that as the food industry becomes larger and more profitable, food safety decreases. The problem according to Nestle is the government. There is not nearly enough regulations set in place by the government to protect the consumer. Nestle argues that many of these food borne illnesses could be prevented if the proper regulations were put in place. However, the main issue seems to be a lack in man power. The food industry has gotten much too large to be regulated by the limited federal government.

While I focussed on one particular article in this example, I think I did a good job touching base on the main argument in several other sources. My inclusion of the texts increased as I got further along in drafts and got closer to the final product.

8.) My ‘lede’ originally was really long, to be honest it didn’t even exist. I just started talking without hooking the reader in. The lede in my final draft forced the reader to imagine a stereotypical farm and then forced the reader to face the reality that farms don’t actually look like how they picture it.

Original ‘Lede’:

When most people think of where their food comes from, they probably think of a farm. Perhaps their farm has a happy farmer and his family making conscious decisions about the food they are making. The farmer would be the one in charge of how his food is created and what growing practices he/she chooses to follow. However, the sad reality is that the food industry is no longer controlled by the farmers themselves, they are controlled by big businesses.

Final ‘Lede’: When most people think of where their food comes from, they probably think of a farm. This stereotypical farm image is generally what most people think of. People generally picture a big field with cows eating grass and a red barn. What nobody realizes though is that farms haven’t been like the image above in decades. The sad truth is that farms have become factories with the sole goal of creating cheap and sustainable food. However, it’s not the farmers that are in control of these farming practices, it’s big businesses.

The feedback I got was to be more specific and make the reader picture what the farm looks like a little better. I originally was pretty vague and focussed more on the farmers than the farm itself.

 

9.) The next unit project I’d like to make more drafts. Maybe go to office hours to ask for better revisions. It felt like I had to make tons of revisions at the end for the final paper because I didn’t get enough feedback from my peers.

 

Drew Andros

M/W 3:45 PM

1447 words

 

Unit 1 Blog Article:

Throughout the course of time, food has been an everlasting staple to all species. It is a reason for people to get together and communicate, it’s a reason to celebrate and relax, and it’s a necessity in order for the body to be properly nourished. However, over the past century or so, food has become less of a gathering tool, and less of a reason to get together, and it has simply become a way to make money.

In the centuries prior to this one, home-cooked meals, fresh food, and delicious ingredients were all a staple of the American household. People would invite their friends and family over, cook food, and relish the opportunity to enjoy each others company. However, as stated above, the last 60 or 70 years has brought us a massive change in society that now sees food as only a commodity in order to profit. Of course, with every statement, there are limitations. Food is still used by many people, both in this country, and around the world, to relax and enjoy, however as a whole, there have been a plethora of reasons as to why we are starting to see food as simply a way for large corporations and farmers to make money.

In the documentary Food, Inc., the narrator discussed how the rise of the fast food industry and the “conveyer belt/mass production” system created an atmosphere that changed the landscape of food production forever. At that point, growing food became less and less about growing fresh products that tasted great, and more about growing and using pesticides to mass produce things that could be given to chains like McDonalds, who could then turn around and give these large companies a major profit because of the bulk with which they were buying. When the food market became more about creating money and supplying large amounts of both meat and produce to giant companies, rather than allowing small time farmers to create fresh food that could be better quality, the entire dynamic changed.

Now, we live in a society much different than the one half a century ago. While it seems that our food is relatively easy to purchase as a consumer, we are blissfully unaware of the difficulties and struggles that go into processing our food, as well as the harsh conditions that many farmers must go through in order to take care of their families. Although, as I stated above, we live in a society that puts a greater emphasis on quantity than quality, there are still farmers out there that are trying to stay with old traditions and create good quality food; however, those farmers will most likely either be eaten up by the large companies, or unable to compete with them because of the price difference. Also in the Food, Inc. documentary was a very depressing narrative that showed small farmers having to cooperate and create farming environments that they weren’t morally comfortable with, because of how it affected the animals. However, if they were not to oblige and go against the companies for whom they worked, they would lose massive amounts of money that would disallow them to provide for their families.

One of the main issues we face today in the food industry is safety of the food that we are growing and consuming. We have had a handful of foodborne illnesses over the course of the last 30 years, however, people, in general, don’t seem to be very concerned about the fact that they may be eating tarnished food. They simply expect the government to look out for them and “vet” the food before it arrives in their refrigerator, however in many instances, that is just not the case. The government may not be impartial, first of all, and may have some of the large food corporations in their back pocket, but even more terrifying than that is the peoples’ unawareness to the potential problems that foodborne illnesses can create. According to Marian Nestle, food is a very difficult illness to pinpoint, and as a result, foodborne illnesses are not tracked very well. She states that “Attributing a bout of diarrhea to food rather than other causes is no simple matter. Most of us eat several foods at a time, several times a day, in several different places. How could we possibly know which food might get us sick, especially if there is a delay in the onset of symptoms. I can not imagine bothering to call a doctor about a brief stomach upset” (Nestle 37). This quote perfectly illustrates the difficulty with creating a society where we can honestly track the health and safety of food, beyond what the government already has implemented as safety standards, such as the USDA, the FDA, the CDC, amongst other organizations. Nestle is a professor of sociology and food studies at New York University, and she gave us a perfect anecdote to sum up America’s ignorance to the harsh realities of foodborne illnesses. She says in her article “The Politics of Foodborne Illness” that she and her family were at a dinner party in the 1970’s, and many people got sick afterwards. Now, instead of going to the doctor and making sure that they were truly okay, or calling the company that supplied the foods they ate and asking them if there had been any other reported outbreaks of illness, the people simply took Advil, Tylenol, and within a few days there were back to normal. Now, while it is definitely a positive that nobody got seriously hurt, or worse, died, it speaks to how uninformed and unaware these people were to the serious dangers of food. Now, that was 40 some years ago, however the true message really hasn’t changed. People simply expect the government to have their best interest in mind and to monitor everything that they are putting into their mouths, and that simply isn’t the case time and time again. Thus, Nestle argues that there needs to be more government intervention, as well as more self-teaching when it comes to people and their food.

As discussed above, consumer awareness is a major part of creating a society with good food that is both tasty, and safe. While it should be the job of the government to make sure that people are eating safe food, we also need to encourage a society of people who understand the nuances of the food industry and how to spot food that is both safe and unsafe.

Whether or not organic food is better for someone is a very big debate in this country at this point in time. On one hand, companies like Chipotle thrive off of organic food and use it as a selling point. However, there are people, like Blake Hurst, who feel like eating organic is simply a way to drive up prices on food, and it allows farmers who do grow organic to charge their prices at a higher rate in order to increase profits. In addition, he argues that studies have shown that organic foods can actually present a greater health risk to society than genetically modified foods. He states in his article “The Stanford study found that organic foods were considerably less likely than conventional foods to have pesticide residues, although organic foods were higher in e. coli. Pesticide exposure is hard to understand and scary, but pesticides on food are typically found at levels thousands of times lower than harmful levels. E. coli, which comes from fecal matter, just kills people” (Hurst Pesticides and Policies). E. Coli is extremely dangerous, and as a result, this Stanford Study does bring up legitimate questions about whether or not eating organic is truly better for one’s health.

All in all, the food debate has completely shifted over the course of the last generation or two. While small time farming that focused on freshness, the best ingredients, and moderate prices was the narrative in the food industry 60 or 70 years ago, large corporations and mass-producing has taken over. As a result, farmers are going out of business and the market is being taken over by a handful of large companies. In addition, people are generally unaware about what they are putting into their mouths and are completely oblivious to whether or not they are being served safe of unsafe food. In order to ensure the safety of the American people, and to also keep the government and food growers responsible for what they serve us, it is our duty to become more knowledgeable about food, and to also become cognizant of the changes in the food industry that could very well affect our health.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

https://blackboard.syr.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-3960432-dt-content-rid-   11963849_1/courses/33872.1162/Nestle Resisting Food Safety.pdf

 

https://blackboard.syr.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-3960433-dt-content-rid-11963850_1/courses/33872.1162/Consumer Reports You are what they eat.pdf

 

https://www.aei.org/publication/organic-illusions/

 

http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i8/Keeping-Food-Safe.html

 

Food Inc.

 

 

 

Reflection Questions:

1. For me, the writer’s project refers to the message that the writer was trying to get across to the reader. It focuses on the key points that they were hoping would come through in their article. I was able to identify the specific project used by the different writers by simply reading the text, annotating it, and then looking for main theses and points. In this article, my own project looked at multiple things, including the naivety of people when it comes to the food they eat, the argument surrounding organic vs. non-organic, and also government intervention into our food.
2. The entire Sorting it Out worksheet I found to be incredibly beneficial when completing my blog article, however I would have to say that finding the key terms of each article was especially beneficial because it allowed me to find similarities within the articles, as well as give me an understanding of the main points of the article.
3. To me, synthesis revolves around understanding the cohesion with which this essay was put together. There needed to be a flow to it, as well as making sure that my points were properly sorted out and put on paper so that the reader could understand where I was coming from.
4. During this unit, I accomplished becoming more aware of food safety, and the general food industry. I was completely unaware, to be honest, of the industry before this class and so I do feel like learning about it is an accomplishment in itself.
5. My main idea simply started as a belief that people were unaware of the food that they were putting into their mouths, and it evolved into something much larger. At the end, it was evident that I discussed multiple facets of the food industry, including food safety, government intervention, organic vs. non-organic.
6. Throughout the course of the essay, I tried to divide the article up into main points. Whenever a main point shifted gears into something else, I made sure to start a new paragraph. In addition, it has been shown that people can only focus on small bits of information at once, so dividing something up into a bunch of little paragraphs allows for people to be more willing to read it, rather than to simply keep it in a big block of text.
7. “As a result, farmers are going out of business and the market is being taken over by a handful of large companies. In addition, people are generally unaware about what they are putting into their mouths and are completely oblivious to whether or not they are being served safe of unsafe food. In order to ensure the safety of the American people, and to also keep the government and food growers responsible for what they serve us…” In this little excerpt, I discussed the food market changing to support big business instead of small time farming, as well as food safety, and lastly, government intervention into our food.
8. In the beginning, my lede was very long and drawn out, and as told by our professor, as well as the person I worked with one on one, I had to shorten it. as a result, I made sure to make it concise and bring in something that was attention grabbing and would be interesting for the reader.
9. I would like to work on transition statements throughout the course of the next couple unit projects. I felt like they were good in this specific blog article, but that there is definitely room to improve. Smooth transitions are imperative to an essay’s success, so I want to make sure that I do well with them.

 

 

 

 

Next time you’re in line at your favorite fast food place, read between the lines on the Dollar Menu. It takes some doing, but when you finally see it, it’s pretty obvious that the biggest seller on the menu is exploitation.

Michael Pollan is concerned with the exploitation of animals. Consumer Reports backs up what he says in popular food documentary Food Inc., by director Robert Kenner. Michael Hurst has a counter to this in an op-ed he wrote on the apparent evils of organic farming. Marion Nestle, a nutrition scientist, sociologist, and compelling author, ties it all together with a concise history of the decrepit government bodies that are supposed to ensure our food is safe.

But the exploitation includes all of that and more. From the farm to the table, exploitation has become the base for a lopsided food pyramid. Farm workers and owners, cattle and poultry ranchers, seed cleaners, and consumers are all on the losing side of a battle aimed at cutting food costs right to the bone, bringing the end consumer more, faster, cheaper, and more dangerous than food has ever been in American history.

But there is hope for some of those caught in our tangled food web. NPR has featured many articles on the myriad number of localities across the US that have been in talks to increase the minimum wage of fast food workers to a living wage of at least $15 an hour.

Luckily, our own state of New York has finally passed such a bill.

Let us shift our focus at the start of the chain of woes that have befallen our food system; the farm.

According to testimony in Food Inc. the government subsidizes corn below the cost of production, to the point that American farms dedicate enough of their land and resources to produce around 30% of the world’s corn on 30% of American farm land.

That corn is used, as Pollan discovered, in pretty much everything.

“So much of our industrial food turns out to be clever rearrangements of corn,” states Pollan. He went looking for the source of the so-called diverse food products on most grocery store shelves.

What he discovered was that most foods contain a number of corn-derived ingredients, one of the most common being much maligned High Fructose Corn Syrup. What’s worse is that humans aren’t the only ones subsisting on a corn-rich diet.

In an effort to fatten up feed animals in record times, farmers have fundamentally changed the diet of most farm animals to rely on, you guessed it, corn.

Pigs never evolved to eat corn. Neither did chickens. Fish, well, there’s a lot of stuff we feed fish that they never would find in the rivers, lakes, and oceans of the world. But cattle — ruminants — definitely didn’t evolve as corn-sumers.

In order to make the cows bigger faster, and because corn is so much cheaper than any time in prior human history, farmers began putting it in the feed.

This is fundamentally bad for cattle, animals that have special stomachs designed to help them digest their primary food source; that is, grasses. Those special stomachs contain bacteria, actually E. coli bacteria.

In a truly grotesque scene in Food Inc., a man with his hand stuffed into the rumen of a cow through a hole in it’s side says, “There’s some research that indicates that a high-corn diet results in E. coli that are acid-resistant. And these would be the more harmful E. coli.”

Anyone who’s read the news or turned on the radio knows that E. coli is a hot-button topic that keeps popping up, year after year, month after month. We all know that Chipotle, the fast Americanized Mexican joint beloved by college students everywhere, has had to contend with an E. coli outbreak in just the last couple of months.

Back on the farm, we’re feeding the cows corn. The corn is causing the cows to produce the harmful strains of E. coli in their stomachs. That doesn’t even get to the fact that those cows are sometimes too fat and weak to stand, and where they’re sitting, laying, or standing is often ankle deep in cow feces and urine.

The next link in the chain, and final stop for the sickly cows, is the slaughterhouse. No longer looking like the slaughterhouses of 1800’s America, these monstrous factories are contending with E. coli and other bacteria in interesting ways, such as dipping slaughtered animal parts, meat products now, into tanks of ammonia.

E. coli, as mentioned before, has grown acid-resistant, and also antibiotic resistant. According to Marion Nestle, “nearly 25 million pounds of antibiotics are used in animal agriculture, whereas just 3 million are used for human infections.” In the end, if contaminated meat does get through this process, just one slaughtered cow can contaminate up to eight tons of ground beef, according to Consumer Reports.

Now that meat is packed up and sent all over the country and even globally. If that meat is contaminated, so then become the people that eat it.

What, if anything, is the solution? Some argue that a shift back to organic farming methods, what our great-great-grandparents would have just called ‘farming’ in their time. But Michael Hurst thinks that such a change would actually be worse for the environment than current ‘conventional’ methods which utilize persistent chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

Hurst makes the argument that, “it takes fewer acres to produce the same quantity of food conventionally than it does organically,” but doesn’t offer any source or research to back this claim up.

Even if conventional farming takes up less land, and produces more, do we really want companies like Monsanto to hold a monopoly over our seeds? Moe Parr, a seed cleaner interviewed extensively in Food Inc. certainly doesn’t think so.

Monsanto was, as Parr said, “suing [him] on the basis that [he is] encouraging the farmer to break the patent law by cleaning their own seed.”

Monsanto, a multi-national corporation that holds a virtual monopoly over seeds in the United States, felt it necessary to intimidate farmers out of cleaning seeds which those farmers would have used to grow more plants next season. But instead, they must buy new seed from Monsanto every season. And, even if you don’t use Monsanto seed, you can be sued by them if they find any of their products growing in your fields. So if the wind blows a little Monsanto pollen your way, you’re fucked as well.

We’ve got a corporation holding our seeds hostage for ransom, and we’ve got a government subsidized food system that can’t even police itself for food safety producing meat that can kill. But let’s look at another link in the chain: the foodservice employee.

From first-hand experience, having worked in it for over a decade now, I can explain what the foodservice industry is like.

We’re criminally underpaid, often earning only what the state minimum wage is. We’re expected to work long hours in dangerous (350 degree deep-fat fryers, chargrills, ovens, knives), often cramped, high-stress environments producing food, you guessed it, fast and cheap.

When we’re sick, we can’t afford to take the day off. Cooks work with tissue stuffed up their noses just so they can pay rent. Dishwashers duck out of the kitchen to go barf behind the dumpster and then come back to clean your plates. We often have to work multiple jobs, more than 40 hours a week, especially in fast food, because those corporate behemoths know they don’t have to offer benefits if their employees aren’t full-time.

If that doesn’t sound fair, it’s because it isn’t. When we’re worried about out own well-being, the phrase “the customer is always right” really means “the customer has no idea what it’s like in the kitchen” and yet they expect it faster, cheaper, and exactly how they ordered it. And they sure as hell don’t expect to get sick from it.

If we want to see our food system made safe again, we need a radical shift in how food is produced, distributed, and managed from farm to table.

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Critical Reflection:

1- The writers project is their end-goal. It encompasses what they are writing about and why, who it’s being written for, and what they intend for the reader to gather or learn from it. Each of the texts for this project had easy-to-grasp writer’s projects. Food Inc. dealt with a few specific themes (corn, food costs, sickness, and corporate greed. Hurst was blatantly obvious in attacking organic farming. Nestle also dealt with themes of illnesses and government oversight. The Consumer Reports article was very clear in addressing issues of food safety and foodborne illness, and how that all impacts humans.

I wanted to focus on the fact that in all of this, one thing is clear: exploitation, in an unfair and unjust manner, is at the heart of the American food system. From harming animals with improper feed and how that harms people with foodborne illness, to how the cheap/fast model of consumption in the US makes for unfair treatment of foodservice workers.

2- The Sorting It Out workshop seemed redundant to the notes and the chart that was made that included all of the pertinent information found in each text. However, the way it helped to connect the dots between texts by quotations and themes helped to synthesize an argument and draw parallels between each text in a manner that made it easier to synthesize my own project.

3- Synthesis is the fundamental core of most of the academic writing I’ve done as an anthropology student. By drawing on multiple sources, sometimes disparate, synthesis helps to draw conclusions or back them up. It gives credit to the author by sort of saying, “I understand these sources and the sometimes subtle ways they support each other, or how I can use them to support each other and myself.” The core of my project is a synthesis of how each text makes subtle or not so subtle reference to the various forms of exploitation that

The core of my project is a synthesis of how each text makes subtle or not so subtle reference to the various forms of exploitation that are a part of the US food system.

4- The most difficult aspect of this project that I was able to accomplish is figuring out how to write in a blog style, given that the last 7 years of my schooling has been primarily writing in purely academic styles.

5- I knew from the start that I wanted to focus on inequality or injustices in the food system, having seen Food Inc. prior to this course. When we got into the other texts, I started to realize that there was something that was common to them all, but it was hard to figure out exactly what it was. It wasn’t until nearly the middle or close to the end of my first draft that I realized that my main idea was ‘exploitation.’ It evolved rapidly into my final draft as I reflected on my own experiences and the things I’ve seen while working in the foodservice industry (everything from fast food to franchise chains to local, small business and the kitchen at a Whole Foods).

6- My first and later draft were not well organized, and I didn’t get to the human exploitation element of my argument until the very end. I decided to use Food Inc. as my starting point, since it really brings up each topic I wanted to touch on. My earlier draft says “The human element is addressed by Food Inc., Consumer Reports, and Marion Nestle, although not completely. Most of what is addressed by the authors and experts of these pieces is due to food borne illness or other persistent dietary problems like diabetes or malnutrition.” I realized I needed to either back this up, or change how I approached it, and so I focused the discussion of human exploitation as those texts discuss it on foodborne illness, rather than critiquing them for not talking about it in other ways.

7- I synthesize what’s seen in Food Inc, and what both Consumer Reports and Marion Nestle have to say about foodborne illness concisely where I wrote –

“Back on the farm, we’re feeding the cows corn. The corn is causing the cows to produce the harmful strains of E. coli in their stomachs. That doesn’t even get to the fact that those cows are sometimes too fat and weak to stand, and where they’re sitting, laying, or standing is often ankle deep in cow feces and urine.

The next link in the chain, and final stop for the sickly cows, is the slaughterhouse. No longer looking like the slaughterhouses of 1800’s America, these monstrous factories are contending with E. coli and other bacteria in interesting ways, such as dipping slaughtered animal parts, meat products now, into tanks of ammonia.

E. coli, as mentioned before, has grown acid-resistant, and also antibiotic resistant. According to Marion Nestle, “nearly 25 million pounds of antibiotics are used in animal agriculture, whereas just 3 million are used for human infections.” In the end, if contaminated meat does get through this process, just one slaughtered cow can contaminate up to eight tons of ground beef, according to Consumer Reports.”

Only when I sat down to finish the final draft did I realize the way those three texts complimented each other and how that worked for my own argument.

8- My first lede was awful, convoluted, and too long.

“When you step in line at your favorite fast food place, you’re probably only thinking about how hungry you are, and how cheaply you can feed yourself. You aren’t going to be thinking of the personal, local, or global impacts that the dollar menu truly has. Only a small handful of corporations are in control of most of the food on the shelf at your local supermarket, according to Michael Pollan. With a virtual monopoly over the global food market, these corporations rely on coercion, scare tactics, and abhorrent abuses of humans and animals to deliver to you the cheapest but most costly meals in history, and it’s bound to get worse before it gets better. Sickness, poverty, and death are the backbone of the food industry, and the few that control it don’t dare to admit it. In just a few years we’ve managed to completely transform the ways we grow, handle, and prepare foods, and those changes are taking a toll on everyone involved, from farm to table, cradle to grave.”

I knew I needed to shorten things up and leave the reader wanting more.Next time you’re in line at your favorite fast food place, read between the lines on the Dollar Menu. It takes some doing, but when you finally see it, it’s pretty obvious that the biggest seller on the menu is

“Next time you’re in line at your favorite fast food place, read between the lines on the Dollar Menu. It takes some doing, but when you finally see it, it’s pretty obvious that the biggest seller on the menu is exploitation.”

I think I give the reader something to think about and wonder where I’m going while challenging them to want to learn what I really mean. Honestly, the feedback I received of the first draft was positive, but I knew when reading it that it just dragged on too long.

9- I want to work on my lede more as well as the blog format with more of my own voice and opinions in it.

“700 FDA inspectors are in charge of overseeing 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 20,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishment, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores and 1.5 million vending operations.” This quote by Marian Nestle brings up the important note that the FDA has a limited number of inspectors that inspect more than they can handle which results in the many outbreaks of foodborne illness because not ever meat or produce is inspected properly. Food regulatory agencies have trouble inspecting all of the meats and produce we come in contact with due to the overall scale of our food systems. Also big companies have almost total control over our food system.

The articles we read in class have shown that our food regulatory agencies are not on top of inspecting our food systems for illnesses and sanitation. The articles show us the hidden truths of what really happens to the food we eat as it goes through the processes between farm to fork. Food Inc., “Resisting Food Safety,” and “You Are What They Eat” focus mainly on the hidden truths of our food system such as the poor living condition and the diseases that the farm animals can get. “Organic Illusions” discusses more of the conventional vs organic argument but also discusses some of the unhealthy aspects of organic foods such as having to use more pesticides and having a higher risk for e coli.  All of them show what the food systems can get away with.

The articles all discuss the inner workings of the food system. They give us a closer look into where our food starts off at to the many processes it goes through before ending up on our plates. More specifically the articles and movie point to all the negative points of the food system. Examples include the poor health conditions chickens are grown in to the possibly cannibalistic food feed to cows. The movie Food Inc. showed that chickens are grown at a rate so fast their bones and organs cannot keep up with them. The chickens in the movie could barely take a few steps before their legs gave way. The article “You Are What They Eat” mentions that there is no regulation on animal feed so it is alright if meat scraps from chickens or pigs are in feed for cows to eat.

The argument of conventional vs organic foods are also brought up by the articles. Conventional means the animals and produce are grown by using standard farming methods. Organic means the produce seeds are GMOs that help bring out desirable traits in the produce such as being resistant to herbicide or pesticides and making them contains vitamins and nutrients that produce would not normally contain so it is “healthier” to us.  The article “Organic Illusions” by Blake Hurst in particular discusses the argument that conventional foods are just as good as organic foods.  “Organic Illusions” discusses more of the conventional vs organic argument but also brings up some details about organic foods having higher e coli content than conventional foods. The use of pesticide is also brought up in “Organic Illusions” with the article saying that much more pesticides are used on organically grown foods. The pesticides used are organic and not as strong as inorganic pesticides as a result more has to be used to get the same effect. This leads to the produce also having higher pesticide content.

Food Inc. said that there are former employees of big farming companies working in congress and Supreme Court and as such have leeway. Monsanto was a company the movie focused heavily on. Monsanto is huge company that makes seeds, herbicides, and pesticides. Monsanto has former employees that hold seats in office and as a result have the support of these people. Other small companies don’t have this kind of support from the government. In the movie Monsanto bullied and sued farmers that did not stick there their strict guidelines about what they could and could not due with the products they were given. The movie also showed that Monsanto kept a private list that contained all the names of the farmers that did anything Monsanto did not like such as reusing seeds the next year or not throwing away all ungrown seeds at the end of the harvest. On Monsanto’s website they have a section that addresses what we saw in the movie about their company. The most important question they answered was about former Monsanto employees working for the government and about the influence the may have over food policies. The website says former employees do not influence the decisions of the government to help the company. The website goes on to say that the movie says a lot of incorrect statements about their company such as their policies for suing farmers. They even tell us more about the case between Monsanto and Moe Parr. In the movie Moe Parr was shown being sued by Monsanto for cleaning Monsanto seeds. The website say the movie left out some information about the trial such as Moe selling the cleaned Monsanto seeds for profit which is illegal.

All the information given from the articles, movie, and website show that there is a lot to our food system. From companies like Monsanto having former employees work in the government to more pesticides being used in organic foods, there are many problems with our food system. If more people were aware of these problems, maybe the way our food system could change. In Food Inc. a mother lost her son to contaminated meat. Through her determination she was able to get congress to pass Kevin’s law, named after her son. This law requires the USDA to search and identify any pathogens in food and makes it easier for the USDA to shut down any food plants that fail quality standards. With enough outcries from people our food system can change Kevin’s law proves this.

 

Reflection

 

1. The “writer’s project” is the main idea of paper. The projects are what the author is trying to convey the reader. In class we talked used the example of Kanye’s music video blood diamonds. We said his project was to show how people receive these diamonds without knowing where there from and the work that’s put into mining them. To find the project we context clues given in the lyrics and the actions seen in the video.
2. The “Sorting it Out” workshop was helpful for getting my ideas out and brainstorming what I wanted to focus on in my essay. The section we worked on in class was the most helpful. In that section we started with one idea and expanded it with evidence and a claim to pull it all together. And we got peer feedback on our claim which helped improve it. After making adjustments to the clam I used in my essay as a thesis.
3. Synthesis is a short summery of the material. It is important because it gives all the important ideas and details to those who have not read or seen the material. I used synthesis in my essay when I talked about the articles we were given in class. I had to synthesize the information given so my reader could get a better understanding of what each article was about an example of this is in my fourth paragraph where I had to give a short synthesis about the organic illusions article.
4. During this unit I learned about the writer’s project. I am now able to identify a writer’s project from reading or seeing the material.
5. My main idea started out with the food system is terrible because of what we saw in the movie Food Inc. The movie showed us chickens that are cooped inside and never see daylight, chickens are made to grow at an accelerated rate and their bones and organs cannot keep up with the growth, the horrible conditions of slaughter houses, and that our food system is mainly owned by five or six big companies. As we read the articles my main idea changed to the food system needs to change. There are many problems but a lot of the problems can be changed with public outcry. Kevin’s law was passed due to one mother’s determination. And it was through public outcry that organic foods became as popular as they are.
6. I organized my essay by the issues in our food system that I thought were the most important.
7. I synthesized the articles we used in class in my third, fourth and fifth paragraphs. In paragraph three I synthesized from the “You are what they eat” article. I discussed the issues with animal feed and the infections found in animals due to the feed. Paragraph four was about “Organic Illusion” and the debate between organic vs conventional. Organic foods having more pesticide used and having higher e coli content then conventional foods. Finally paragraph six is about the issues Food Inc. brought up about Monsanto. Originally I was not going to synthesize the texts and instead just quote from them but I wanted to explain why each article was important.
8. At first I didn’t have a lead. In my draft I went right into the information. However in my final I use a quote by Marion Nestle that fits with what my claim form the sorting it out worksheet.
9. For the next unit I would like to be better at organizing my essay and better at synthesizing the next articles we read.

Today, the majority of people in the United States do not know where their food is coming from. This is probably because the people in charge of our food industry do not want people to know that our food system is completely corrupt.

Corruption is a simple matter of right and wrong. Anyone or anything can become corrupt based on the actions the person or thing practices. In this case, the food system that is used to circulate the majority of the world’s food products to public markets has become corrupt.

The interesting part about our corrupt food system is that most of the people who consume the products have no idea where these products came from or how they were prepared. In the food system we have today, four or five large corporations own the majority of all food products sold in grocery stores today. There are hundreds of different brands of meat, produce, snacks, or whatever types of food you can think of that are sold in a supermarket but, its really only a handful of corporations that own the greater part of all of them.

In the film Food Inc., Eric Schlosser an American author, activist, and journalist talks about how big business has alluded the general public and turned the American food industry into a corporate monopoly. Schlosser goes on to say, “The average grocery store has 47,000 products which makes it look like there is a large variety of choice – but it is an illusion – there are only a few major companies and a few major crops involved.” Schlosser and the rest of the experts go on to talk about how big business runs the food industry and how their methods to grow bigger and better food have substituted the quality of our food for higher profits. That’s the problem, if people knew that large corporations were behind our food and that they were making our food in an unnatural, inhumane manner, they would probably have something to say about it.

Our food system is corrupt because the people in charge of it know what they are doing to our food is wrong but, they still do it anyway. In an ideal world, the people who know the most about our food would be in charge of developing how our food system works. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.

There are too many problems to count in our food industry today but, a lot of them have to do with how our meat is prepared. The meat in our grocery stores is not prepared in a friendly, heartfelt way. The way most people want to believe that their meat is prepared is that the animal is born and raised on a farm where it was able to roam free and grow the way god intended it to live. They believe the animal was killed humanely by the farmers who raised it in a way that did not make the animal suffer. That would be nice if it were true. The fact of the matter is, in this corrupt food system we have today, animals are basically tortured in cramped quarters from birth up until the moment they are slaughtered.

Michael Pollan, another American author and journalist who worked on Food Inc. discusses how the animals that are raised in these massive farms and slaughterhouses are inhumanely mistreated. Pollan says, “Plus they are now feeding corn to animals like cows who, by evolution, are designed to eat grass and in some cases farmers are even teaching fish how to eat corn because it is so cheap.” Aside from not giving these animals the proper space and freedom to grow, these farms are feeding the animals feed that they cannot naturally digest. The farms use corn feed and growth hormones to fatten up these animals so we can harvest twice as much meat as these animals were supposed to carry.

Besides cows, the chicken is another mass-produced animal that is raised in hellish conditions to satisfy the needs of our corrupt food industry. Several facts and statistics about how the chickens we eat every day are actually being grown are up on truthaboutchicken.org. Today, chickens are being grown to twice the weight of chicken sixty years ago in about half the time. An appalling fact found on this site included, “Many chickens lie in their own waste for much of their lives, with open sores and infections. These unhealthy conditions could potentially increase the risk of foodborne illnesses like salmonella.”

The processes used in our food systems are horrific and mind-boggling but, the worst part is these corrupt practices are potentially life-threatening for humans. Because of the unethical methods used in today’s food industry, humans are contracting various foodborne illnesses from tainted meats that are sold every day in local grocery stores. These illnesses are the result of the unsanitary facilities that are used to raise and prepare these animals for slaughter. Cows and chickens are raised on farms with very little space and little to no maintenance, meaning these animals are constantly walking, living, and sleeping in their own feces which is a great way to get exposed to infections and other types of illnesses.

The number of people that have been getting sick from these types of tainted meat have not necessarily been greatly increasing; the diseases have just been getting worse. Marion Nestle, a well known author and professor of nutrition at NYU, gives us some facts and statistics about these foodborne illnesses and how they’ve progressed in her piece, Resisting Food Safety. She says, “Some years ago, a carefully investigated Listeria outbreak among 142 people who had eaten a commercially produced unpasteurized soft cheese caused 48 deaths and 13 cases of meningitis.” Nestle goes on to talk about how foodborne illnesses used to be some small form of Salmonella or Staphylococcus or some pathogen that was easily treated and resulted in pretty standard, non-lethal symptoms like diarrhea, stomach pains, nausea, etc. However, since the early 1990s the versions of these viruses and bacteria have been getting much more aggressive and much more deadly than they have been in the past. Diseases are scary and its scary to know you can contract these types of diseases from the food you buy at the super market everyday.

If our food system is having all these problems, shouldn’t we be doing something about it? Shouldn’t there be some sort of authoritative body to watch over these food production systems to make sure our food is actually safe to eat? We do, the only problem is, the groups in charge of watching over how our food is made play a big part in how our food industry has become corrupt.

Government programs like the FDA, USDA, and CDC are supposed to watch over food processing facilities and make sure there aren’t any health code violations, unhygienic processing practices, or any other method that could lead to possible contamination of meats or other food products. Consumer Reports, You are what they eat, discussed a great deal about how our government and how our food regulation departments, like the FDA, aren’t really doing anything about the way our food is being processed. The members of Consumer Reports were able to talk to feed-company executives and they said, “Our investigation raises concern that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be.” Even the executives from these corporations agree that the production of their food is a potential risk to the health of their consumer. A major reason for this is that there are not enough inspectors to consistently watch over the vast number of slaughterhouses and livestock farms that are in this country.

The FDA has around 700 employees in charge of inspecting all the processing plants that produce meat, eggs and poultry; which results in each one of these places getting an inspection every one to five years. Even when there are certain health and safety violations that are found in these processing plants, if the farm is owned by one of the large corporations, the heads of the corporations always has a friend on the inside of the FDA or somewhere in these government-based departments to help them get out of it. The makers of Food Inc. were able to show how former corporation executives from places like Monsanto land authoritative positions in departments like the FDA and USDA and are able to help their old business partners when they get into a bind. It is difficult to think of a way to free our food industry from the clutches of big business when these corporate executives have monopolized the industry around them.

The corruption that has overwhelmed our food industry starts and ends with big business. We cannot rely on greedy business owners to take proper care of our food when they already hide so much from the public with their illusions. Large profits are not a reasonable compromise when it puts the consumer at risk. We know what is going on behind the closed curtain of our food system; now its just about making an effort to do something about it.

 

Reflection Questions:

• 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.

To me, the writer’s project is all about the writer’s mission to use his/her skills as a writer to convey whatever message they are trying to send to the reader as best they can through their words. For each text that we went through, I would need to read the piece multiple times in order to get the full understanding of the work. Once I understood the piece, I could pinpoint the main argument and the main message the author was attempting to present to his/her audience. For my “project” I really tried to just narrow the focus of the entire piece to one main point and then connect the dots between the texts we read and how they related to my piece and how they helped to strengthen my main argument.

• 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?

I was a little confused at times during the workshop but, overall I guess it helped narrow down the ideas we had on how to best complete our article. The most helpful sections in the workshop were section D, where we had to basically summarize the main argument of each piece into a few sentences, and the last section where we had to relate different passages from different articles to the same main idea because they helped really narrow down the great deal of information we had to absorb to a few main points. I used the workshop to narrow down the possible arguments I could make for my article to which topics I could best use that included all of them.

• 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 the breaking down of an article, or other piece of literature, to the bare essentials of that work. At first, you may have a very lengthy text about several different topics but, once you use synthesis, you can narrow the article to one main point and the different sections the author uses to strengthen and prove that main point. I needed synthesis to get the main ideas out of the texts we read and to get a couple ideas for a man argument using the information it provided. I pretty much drew an outline for my article laying out which sections would be where and how they would connect to each other and back to the main point. In all the works we read, there were a lot of immoral practices going on; so, I decided to write about the wrongness and corruption in our food industry.

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

I have a hard time getting the main points out of pieces of literature, like understanding what they really mean, so I was happy that I was able to learn how to extract main ideas from these articles.

• 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?

Basically, whenever we read one of these articles, there was always something wrong happening in the food system. I decided to show the complete corrupt process of our food industry and all the ways it is affecting the consumer. At first it was just the idea of corruption and how the food industry was able to get away with all this stuff. Then, after the revisions, I was able to expand a little more and discuss the immoral processes they use and how it is affecting people and I was just able to get a better understanding of what they were doing and how it was wrong. Just going back over the works and really paying attention helped with my article’s evolution.

• 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.

I used an outline, I laid out exactly what I wanted to talk about from each article and how I wanted them to relate back to the main idea. I knew I wanted to use Food Inc. for their inside knowledge of the food industry and how it is corrupt from the farm to the supermarket. I wanted Nestle for her knowledge on foodborne illnesses and how they are affecting consumers through our food system. And I wanted consumer reports for their intel on how the government regulation departments, like the FDA, aren’t doing nearly enough to keep our food safe. I would jump straight from one topic to the next without having some sort of bridge between them. I would move from Pollan to Hurst without any context as to what they were saying and how it related back to my topic. In my final revision, I was able to connect each of their views to how the food industry has become corrupt.

• 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 my final draft, I used Schlosser, Nestle, and Consumer Reports closely to talk about the corruption of the food industry. I believe they are best utilized to bring their own unique take on my main idea. I couldn’t bring them together into one main point because each of them has their own part in adding up to them total idea that our food system is corrupt. That is why they are necessary to my article.

•  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?

My first ‘lede’ looked something like this, “During the time that we, as a class, have focused on articles and topics regarding our food system, the thing that disturbs me the most is not the foodborne illnesses or the hellish, inhumane was our food is being produced; it’s the corruption of our food system.” I really didn’t draw the attention of a reader and sort of just jumped right into the facts about the food system. After several revisions it changed to this, “Today, the majority of people in the United States do not know where their food is coming from. This is probably because the people in charge of our food industry do not want people to know that our food system is completely corrupt.” I sort of get to draw the reader in by talking about something that might effect them which makes them concerned so they read on. I started with corruption, it led to how is the food system corrupt, and it lead to how are food system corrupt and how it is affecting you.

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

I would like to try and find different ways to best narrow the down the key points in an article or piece of literature because although, the synthesis and “writer’s project” techniques worked, they weren’t the best solution for me to get the most out of each article. I would also like to try and use each piece we discuss to their full potential instead of trying to cram them with others in attempt to make our argument stronger, each one is credible enough as it is. I like this class but, the methods and ideas could be a little clearer.

One would think that the government would prioritize public and animal health when it comes to putting food on our table, but the real priority for food producers, the government and its regulatory agencies: money. A lot of it. The food industry is continuing to grow and change rapidly with a rise in demand and production. The United States Government is the watch dog over the food industries giving the responsibility to a handful of agencies. An example that can prove how the food industry has changed is the time it takes for a chicken to grow. In the 1950s it took about 3 months to fully raise a chicken, now it takes only 49 days. That’s about half the time! How does that happen? Something is doesn’t seem right and this is what we will discuss in this post. The food industry has evolved substantially in the past century, however, the government hasn’t been able to properly enforce regulations thus creating regulatory loopholes that food producers are able to bypass. Although the government is heavily influenced by these top companies, change can happen with the public being exposed to and aware of all of these faulty practices that are putting money at a higher priority than the health of its consumers.

GREED: MONEY OVER EVERYTHING.

One thing that I have recently started to realize is that money runs this country. It’s as simple as that. As populations grew so did the demand for food. Farmers needed to produce more and faster. The example mentioned above truly shows how farmers have been altering their practices in order to keep up with the rising demand. How can the amount of time a chicken fully grows be cut in half? One answer that I can give you is that it definitely is not natural or healthy. Not only is it unhealthy food but it’s food that costs nothing (I wouldn’t even consider it food). In a debate between Michael Pollan, who is an author, journalist and activist who has been featured in many publications highlighting the problems of the food industry, and Blake Hurst, who is a scholar and farmer, many of the problems in the food industry were brought up Michael Pollan said, “our food system is broken. It’s not serving consumers and it’s not serving farmers. Farmers have to get much bigger to get even. Farmers are not making a lot of money and they are dependent on federal subsidies. There is this flood of cheap food which turns out to not be a good thing.” Like Pollan mentioned, farmers are barely breaking even so one can see why such cheap food is being fed to animals. As a matter of fact in You Are What They Eat, they say that “every year in the U.S., 11 billion pounds of animal fat is recycled into animal feed.” We’re feeding the animals that we eat recycled animal fat? Why is that? Because it’s cheap. In addition the article says that for food producers and companies “the goal: to fatten animals as fast and as cheaply as possible.” Now, what are the consequences of trying to fatten animals as fast and cheaply as possible?

In Food Inc., Michael Pollan said that “E. Coli is the product of the way we feed these animals.” We have all heard of the recent outbreaks of E. Coli that have happened at Chipotle which even made the store close all of its chains on one day. E. Coli is no joke and people can lose their lives but one thing that really angers me is that the practices the food industry is using today produces more E. Coli. Michael Pollan also goes on to say “give an animal grass in one day and 80% of the E. Coli they have will be gone.” But why don’t they feed their animals grass if it got rid of all that E. Coli? Because they wouldn’t achieve their “goal” and their chickens wouldn’t be able to grow fully in 49 days.

 

REGULATORY LOOPHOLES

One of my biggest concerns about the food industry are the regulatory loopholes that are present and so easily accessible. In You Are What They Eat by Consumer Reports the problem is introduced right off the bat. “Our investigation raises the concerns that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the food supplies……Regulatory loopholes could allow mad cow infection.” Regulatory loopholes can allow any type of infection! The United States Government has the responsibility to protect its citizens but yet there are regulatory loopholes in an industry that provides the food that we put on the table for all types of people to eat from little kids to the elderly. Make’s sense, right? Food is a life necessity and we cannot live without it but yet we can’t be sure about the safety of the food we put on our tables? That’s scary. One question on my mind is how are there regulatory loopholes? I believe the following reasons from a few experts help answer that question for us.

In Organic Illusions by Blake Hurst, he points out something that doesn’t make me feel any better. Hurst says, “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. So, even if all procedures are followed, it’s possible that conventional pesticides are present—either from drift from neighboring conventionally farmed fields, or because the producer has been less than honest in his certification.” Although he says organic foods, what makes me think that only pertains to organic food? How are food producers able to lie about how they grow their food? God knows what type of containments people have been consuming with there food. This is a prime example of the government and regulatory agencies not doing their job. If these loopholes are present in the food industry, I can only imagine what kind of loopholes can be exposed in all other industries. In You Are What They Eat, it is also mentioned that “about 80 percent of seafood sold in the U.S. is imported. Yet the FDA tests only about 2 percent of those imports, mainly for drug residues.” Wow. If food that is imported is barely tested for contaminations (mainly drug residue but they should be looking for ALL possible containments) then it must be extremely easy for food that is produced domestically to pass tests and end up on our plates. The inspection and testing procedure is completely broken and it needs to be fixed. Farmers can lie about the way they grow their food and much testing isn’t done. The government can do more but they haven’t and in You Are What They Eat, it says that “the Government Accountability Office, has called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s data on inspections of animal feed producers “severely flawed.” Yet federal food-safety agencies have failed to tighten restrictions.” How have these food agencies failed to tighten restrictions?

Marion Nestle helps answer the question of how these food agencies have failed to tighten restrictions and how they have failed to protect the consumer’s health and interests in his work called The Politics of Food Safety. Nestle says, “attempts to give federal agencies the right to enforce food safety regulations have been blocked repeatedly by food producers and their supporters in Congress, sometimes joined by the agencies themselves.” I can only think of one word to describe this: corruption. Marion Nestle even goes on to say that there has been a “historic closeness of working relationships among congressional agriculture committees, federal regulatory agencies and food producers.” How can it get better if there is such heavy influence from these top companies? According to Food Inc., “in 1910 the top 4 companies had a market share of 25%, today the top 4 have a market share of 80%.” In addition to that, at one point in the documentary it showed how some of the top company executives ended up holding a high level position for the same regulatory agencies that were regulating the companies they used to work for.

Whose interests are put first at that point? The company or the consumer? The company. You would think that it couldn’t go any further than the government and its agencies being heavily influenced however, Blake Hurst from Organic Illusions brings up another controversial point. In his article he references a study that was published from scientists and researchers from Stanford University. The article says that “a group of scientists at Stanford University found that the nutritional benefits of organic food have, to say the least, been oversold.” Later in the article Mr. Hurst then brings this into light that “Stanford University and the authors have been accused of being in bed with food producer Cargill, and all the bishops of the foodie orthodoxy have responded by disagreeing and, in many instances, changing the subject.” Why would food producers, such as Cargill, love a study that says organic food has the same nutritional benefits as food that is grown conventionally? Because growing organic food is more expensive than growing food conventionally. However, that is not the part that strikes me. The part that strikes me the most is the fact that a private university, including professors and scientists that helped with study, are also being corrupt/heavily influenced by these food producers. A study from a private university that used scientists and professors should be telling the truth and if they were telling the truth they wouldn’t be “changing the subject.” Hurst then delivers the final blow by saying, “How can you trust the same government to enforce organic rules or guarantee the safety of organic pesticides? Or to approve the pharmaceuticals you rely upon to cure your illnesses?”

To say this is scary can actually be an understatement. Money is starting to run everything, or maybe it already has and I’m just starting to realize it now. When it comes to the food industry, politics shouldn’t be involved as much as they are and money shouldn’t be a higher priority than the health of the consumer. People’s lives are at stake, including young children. Why should I be questioning my trust with the government when it comes to the food industry? I shouldn’t be. Then I start to question many other things such as the medicine that we are prescribed. What’s in it and where is it coming from? I guess the answer to that is that we won’t really know. Change can only come with the public becoming aware of the flaws in the system. With the corruption of these agencies and the amount of influence the food producers have on Congress, it only makes the fight harder. But with wide public support and more flaws being exposed this can change and it will.

 

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.

My understanding of the writer’s project is to be able to express your own point of views on a particular subject by being able to synthesize outside sources and use them to your own advantage when you are expressing own opinions and when you want those opinions to be expressed as efficiently and clearly as possible. The writer should also establish the credibility of the experts that they are using in their project. I was able to identify texts’ projects by highlighting their main arguments and the evidence that they use to support it. My project was about highlighting the flaws in the food industry and how food producers and regulatory agencies have the wrong priorities in mind.

2.)  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 most beneficial section to the development of my ideas was the last section. The last section made it much easier for me to synthesize texts because the arrows are literally pointing at direct quotes from other sources that complement each other. The sorting it out workshop was a huge tool in helping me synthesize my texts as best as I could.

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

My understanding of synthesis is to use the outside sources in your own project in order to add some sort of evidence/credibility/reason to why you think about a certain topic a certain way. In addition to that, synthesis is using the texts to complement each other in order to further strengthen your arguments. For example, in the last two paragraphs, I felt that I was able to use Blake Hurst and Marion Nestle really well with each other to develop my arguments and to add some weight to my arguments as well.

4.)  Describe your own accomplishment (of something) during this unit.

This unit really taught me how to synthesize a couple of text’s and use them to strengthen my own argument. I think that this is something beneficial for me while moving on but I also can probably use more work on synthesizing. In addition to that, I learned about the issues of the food industry and food politics. I also wrote my first blog post ever!

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?

My main idea was always mainly focused on the greed and regulatory loopholes that exist in the food industry. There wasn’t a huge amount of evolution in regards to the main idea, however, as I learned how to synthesize better and better it felt like the amount of evidence I can use to support my ideas kept just piling up and up.

6.) 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.

My main organization strategies were to introduce a quote from an expert and just build off of that. After I would throw in the quote, I would say what I would have to say and then I would bring in another source and expert in order to just keep building off the first quote and to really strengthen my point of views on the particular topic.

7.) 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.

I think the best job I did synthesizing was in the second and third paragraph of the regulatory loopholes section. It might not be as concise as it should be but I feel like it is my best job because one source just leads to the other and so on. I think it is also the best part of the project where I use the sources to really strengthen my arguments.

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?

My lede didn’t really change since earlier drafts. However, when I wrote it, I wanted to get right to the point and I needed something for the reader to catch onto in order for them to keep reading. Hopefully I was able to accomplish that.

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

I think that one of the next things that I would like to work on is to probably be more concise. This was a big topic for me because I felt like I had to say a lot and there was a lot that I wanted to say. I would’ve really struggled if we were not allowed to go over the 1400 work limit.