Going into this class, I was a little hesitant, not because it was a writing class, but because it was a research course. I have done a couple of research papers between high school and freshman year but I have never taken a course entirely dedicated to it. I thought that it was going to be a lot of work and I was a little nervous because I never properly learned how to research. When we started Unit I, I was ready to jump in and give it a try. I thought that the topic of Food Politics was very interesting and unlike most classes, it would be something I would not mind writing and learning about. I enjoyed watching Food Inc. in class and reading the other sources that we used in our final articles. I thought it was cool to use different mediums as research. A major thing I learned from this was that you have to take who the author is into consideration. You have to determine whether they are a credible source and if they are biased in any way. I remember coming to class one day, after our homework was to read and annotate Blake Hurst’s article, Organic Illusions. I read the article, took notes, and came to class feeling confident on my take of his article. In class, when Amy asked for our opinions of the article, all of the people she had called on had said something that was the complete opposite of what I thought. They said that he was very sarcastic and that there was no evidence to support the claims he was making. Hearing all of these things, I sank in my seat and hoped to not get called on. That class made me realize that I just read the article and believed every word he said. I did not once question where he got his information from, who he was, and whether he was a credible source or not. This, to me, is a very important lesson you need to learn when you are doing research, and I am happy that it happened in the beginning of the semester.
Next, came taking pieces from each source and trying to connect them in a clear and cohesive manner. If you think that you can just do this on your first try you are wrong. This takes a couple of tries and it helps if you are very organized with your sources. The Sorting It Out Workshop was a helpful activity that allowed us to identify the project of each piece we read/watched and pick out pieces of information that connect with each other and support the claim we are trying to make. Doing multiple drafts and peer editing really made my final post so much better and made me feel more confident about it.
Multiple challenges arose for me in Unit II. Public speaking is definitely not something I like to do or think I am good at. Also the fact that we had to pick our own topic and start our research from scratch was a little intimidating. The good part about picking our own controversies was that we each got to pick something that we are interested in and eager to learn about. The topic that I chose was heroin and addiction. This topic was a little difficult because there are many problems that are fairly recent. This made finding information from databases a little bit difficult. The class where we learned about the different databases and which ones are useful for each topic is something that is super beneficial for future research and a great thing to know in general. Learning how to specify your topic and using different phrases and keywords really helped narrow the results and led to some really good findings for my Ted Talk and NYT article. Presenting my Ted Talk was probably the biggest challenge I faced in this course. I hate talking in front of people and presenting things, but I know that each time I do it makes it easier for the future. What also helped me give my talk was that I was really confident with the research I found and the claim I was making.
I truly learned a lot about heroin and addiction between Units II and III. Heroin is an up and coming issue for society today and some of the information I came across was frightening. The fact that there was a 286 percent increase in heroin-overdose related deaths from 2002-20013 was mind blowing to me. It was also very interesting to learn about the background behind heroin addiction and how it is so popular because people are initially addicted to prescription painkillers but then make the shift to heroin because it is a cheaper and very similar high. What I learned from these assignments made me want to continue learning about the topic and share what that knowledge with others. I am very proud of my NYT Article for Unit III and would choose to share that with people outside of class. Not only was this article a highlight of the semester, but also it made me realize how important it is to educate people on serious topics going on today. If enough people know about the dangers of heroin and addiction, it is possible for society to find a way to control and hopefully put a stop to it.
Each unit of this course presented some challenges I had to overcome, but in the end I think I was really happy and actually surprised with my final pieces. I learned a lot from this course about how and where to look for research and how to write for a specific genre and audience. I will take away many things from WRT 205 that will make my future assignments much easier.
Heroin is no longer a private activity. Residue from users can be seen anywhere, in parks, on the streets, even on public transportation. A serious threat is being imposed on society and unfortunately it seems more people are supporting it rather than trying to fight it.
Heroin is becoming a very popular new trend in today’s society. The drug is cheap, highly addictive, and becoming increasingly available. Heroin addiction often starts from an original addiction to opiates, or painkillers. People are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin if they are addicted to prescription painkillers (US NEWS). In the nineteenth century, physicians played a major part in addiction, by using morphine and opium to cure common symptoms, unintentionally turning their patients into addicts (Unick, George Jay).[1] However, most of their patients were white upper, to middle class users, which supports the fact that prescription painkillers were not cheap. The steep cost is what makes users shift to heroin because they get a very similar high for a much lower price.
An estimated 13.5 million people in the world take opioids, or opium-like substances, including 9.2 million who use heroin (DRUG FREE WORLD). There has been a major increase in heroin use within the past decade. The rate of heroin-related overdose deaths increased 286 percent between 2002 and 2013 (US NEWS).
Despite what many people believe, heroin does not discriminate. It affects all ages, genders, classes, locations, and races. In fact, there has been a large increase among heroin use and young white males. Large metropolitan areas are said to be at the highest risk for heroin use, however now a lot of attention is being placed on white suburbs as they are becoming a problem area.
Although heroin is an illegal drug, it is becoming more and more public and its residue can be seen in many places. A video was posted on Youtube, on April 5th, 2015, of a young man shooting up while riding a city bus in Philadelphia, in full view of other passengers.
Since heroin is so cheap and so widely available, users are buying more often and shooting up as soon as they can, often in public places. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city had to close the bathroom of a historic church that was open to accommodate homeless people, because several people had overdosed in them (NY TIMES).
The reason for the public use of heroin addicts may be partially related to the root cause of the addiction, which is legal opioid painkillers. In many different places, such as Linthicum, Maryland, Cincinnati, Niagara Falls, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania, addicts have been found in public restrooms, often in fast-food chains, overdosed, sometimes with the needles still in their arms (NY TIMES).
There have also been public views of addicts overdosing and then being revived by Narcan, which reverses the effects of heroin. In 2014, about 125 Americans died everyday due to overdose (NY TIMES). The death rate from overdose is increasing at a much faster rate than other causes of death.
Along with the public use of heroin, is the increase in safety hazards in everyday life. After shooting up, addicts often leave behind dirty needles and syringes wherever they injected. In a documentary titled Heroin in America, by David Muir on ABC News, groups of young children were asked if they had ever seen needles or been exposed to other paraphernalia before. All of them raised their hands and said that they have seen them while walking down the street, or lying in the grass at the park. With dirty needles lying around everywhere, it is very dangerous for society. So many diseases can spread if the needles were touched accidentally, and children should not be exposed to or have to worry about these things while walking to school or playing outside.
The best way to put an end to this would be to stop the supply of heroin all together. However, that may be a little unrealistic. Heroin is so highly addictive that it those who are under its control will do anything to get it.
Opioids and heroin affect the brain in the same way. They increase the amount of dopamine that is released in the limbic system of the brain, which creates intense pleasure. The pleasure is so strong that people become physically and psychologically dependent on the drug. The drug also takes over other parts of the brain, such as the systems that drive judgment, planning, and organization. These areas now encourage using the drug and the brain serves to people’s addiction (NPR). This all happens so fast that people become highly addicted with their first use.
The things addicts will do when they are in need of heroin cannot be underestimated. Heroin affects peoples judgment and decision making so much that users may do things they never thought they would do in a million years.
Some users anonymously posted about their lives as junkies, how fast the drug took over, and how ashamed they were of the things that they have done:
“From the day I started using, I never stopped. Within one week I had gone from snorting heroin to shooting it. Within one month I was addicted and going through all my money. I sold everything of value that I owned and eventually everything that my mother owned. Within one year, I had lost everything.”
“I sold my car, lost my job, was kicked out of my mother’s house, was $25,000 in credit card debt, and living on the streets of Camden, New Jersey. I lied, I stole, I cheated.”
“If anything, death was better than the a life as a junkie” (DRUG FREE WORLD).
Supervised-injection facilities are a suggested new form of treatment for the epidemic. These facilities aim to decrease the amount of overdoses and ensure the use of clean needles and other paraphernalia. Instead of rejection and exclusion, this approach suggests that a lot of the harm caused by drug use could be reduced with decriminalization, education, and the provision of clean needles.
This is silly because it basically supports the normalization of illicit drug use. Drugs, especially heroin, are causing so many tragedies in our country that people should want to put an end to them. However, by believing that it is okay to do drugs as long as you practice them safely is just maintaining the epidemic. This approach allows users to shoot up whenever they would like and does not show any of the consequences of using drugs.
The most beneficial form of treatment for heroin and opioid addiction would be specialized rehabilitation centers specifically for heroin and opiates. These drugs are so strong and affect people differently than any other drug. “Treatment for opioid addiction includes a variety of services: medication, talk therapy, job support, all stretched out over years. Detox is not enough” (NPR).
These rehab centers should also be more proactive in wanting to really help heroin addicts. Tracey Helton Mitchell, a certified addiction specialist, who was once a heroin addict, describes today’s treatment centers as a “one-size-fits-all” approach. She believes society needs to “have a variety of different kinds of treatment interventions that address people’s needs” (NPR). We need to stop grouping addicts together and try to reach out to them as individuals and help them based on their unique needs and motivations.
Before these changes can happen, society needs to drop the stigma around addiction. Many intervention agencies deem heroin addicts as powerless and incapable of reason and self-control. Treating people as if they have no chance of getting better will make them lose all hope and will to even try. In no way should addicts be praised, but they should be treated like everyone else. Heroin is a drug that can affect everyone. Like I stated earlier, it does not discriminate based on race, age, gender, or class, and it works so fast that it only takes one time to be addicted for life. Once people start treating addicts as individuals and not as a “troubled group” a lot of self-respect, rational subjectivity, and autonomy will be restored among addicts, and hopefully the addiction rates will decrease.
The last thing I believe will help put an end to the heroin addiction that is sweeping the nation, is truly educating people of all ages about the dangers of heroin.
Other than a health class in sixth and ninth grade, I have never really been exposed to much information about heroin. I learned that it was bad and illegal but a lot of drugs people use are bad and illegal. However, those other drugs do not affect people’s lives even a quarter as much as heroin does. If people were really submerged and saw how heroin changes almost every aspect of a person’s life and how they become completely dependent on it, it would make society, especially the youth, realize that heroin and opioids are not something to mess around with.
As simple as it seems, it could really be effective in reducing heroin addiction rates within the United States.
Putting an end to heroin and trying to reduce addiction is something that needs more attention and more support. With the way it has increased in the last decade, let alone the past couple of years, I am scared to see what the future will be like if nothing changes. People need to start now otherwise in the upcoming years there will be more supervised-injection facilities than McDonalds restaurants.
[1] Unick, G. J., Rosenblum, D., Mars, S., & Ciccarone, D. (2013). Intertwined epidemics: National demographic trends in hospitalizations for heroin- and opioid-related overdoses, 1993-2009. PLoS One, 8(2) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054496
Reflection
I think that my topic alone is something that people are very curious about and are interested to read about. I tried to be very gripping with my title and lede by using the word “epidemic” and informing readers that something big is affecting society and that it is very serious.
My introductory section does a good job with exigency because it talks about today’s society and how people are being affected by heroin, whether they are the ones using or just bystanders. It also talks about the increase in numbers from past years to today.
I reiterated my main idea multiple times throughout my article. Each paragraph, whether I was talking about statistics, the background of heroin addiction, or ways to prevent it, I supported my main idea and used sources as well.
I think I did a really good job organizing my piece. I went through everything I wanted to tell the reader and put it together so it flowed nicely and made most sense.
I think that when writing this piece, I read through my research and the stance I took on the topic, and really thought about and tried to address counter arguments in my article. I tried to fully develop my point of view and support it completely.
I looked through a lot of sources when researching my topic. I wanted to make sure I was very informed and the information was accurate. I connected the research I found and used it to help support my stance and show flaws in other counter arguments.
I used many sources in my article to provide statistics and expert’s views and opinions. I relate some of the views of different sources to show how others support my point of view as well.
I used sources at good times when I was trying to make a point and a source supported that and provided reason behind why people feel that way and why it is a good point of view.
I think I used ethos, logos, and pathos, well. I tried to connect to the audience through pathos the most because I tried to make the reader see how heroin can ruin your life. I provided examples and quotes from heroin addicts describing how they feel about being a junkie and showing how dependent they are on the drug.
I used multiple visuals in my article. I used a lot of graphs showing the differences in people and places that have the most heroin users. I also used another graph showing the amount of deaths from heroin in each state from 2003-2014. The visual I thought was most effective was the video of the heroin addict shooting up on a public bus. This video made me sick to my stomach when I watched it and I think it will have the same effect on others.
I think my final article is a million times better than any of my drafts. When I first started this assignment I was not really sure where to go with it or how to fit all my information in in an organized manner. Each draft was more organized, and I think my final article is very well organized and full of information.
I used hyperlinks to immediately direct readers to the full articles and videos I used for my article. It allows the reader to get more knowledge and read other interesting articles on the topic as well.
I think I did a good job with grammar, style, and usage. I tried to sound very credible by making sure my writing was for a more mature audience.
The food industry is one of the most overlooked industries there is. The safety and regulation of the food is in the hands of big businesses that dominate certain areas of the industry. The consumer knows what the big businesses want them to know and it is very hard to find answers to questions as simple as where their food is produced. Anything that goes wrong is blamed on the consumer. The lack of knowledge and government regulation raises many concerns within the industry, and more needs to be done to make the system more transparent. The everyday human has countless things to worry about, wondering if their food is safe should not be one of them.
Food is defined as any nutritional substance that people or animals eat or drink in order to maintain life and growth. This means that food is a necessity. Often when it comes to food, people go grocery shopping, order in, or go out to dinner whenever they feel slightly hungry. A lot of times people get food not even because they are hungry but because they are bored and it is something to do. It is natural to want to eat food because a person spends so much of their life doing it.
However, it is very uncommon for people when deciding where to eat or what to buy, to consider where that restaurant or supermarket, gets their meat and produce from. Rarely do people when ordering a salad ask where the lettuce or tomatoes are from, or what the diet of the cow that became their hamburger was. People do not question their food and assume that since they need it to survive, it is safe.
Marion Nestle, a nutrition and public health professor at New York University, sums this up completely in Part One of her book Food Politics, when she says that most people view food poisoning as an “uncomfortable inconvenience” and “random bad luck” rather than “industry and government indifference and outright obstructionism.” They simply do not feel well for a day or two and then go about their lives like nothing happened.
She is entirely right when she says that people do not take food poisoning seriously and it is a serious problem. The numbers of cases of food poisoning cannot be completely accurate because a lot of times people do not report them. Since it is seen as not a big deal, many people will just not return to the restaurant that gave it to them, or will stay away from whatever food made them ill. Nestle states, “The most authoritative estimate of the yearly number of cases of foodborne disease in the United States defies belief: 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, 5,000 deaths.” Foodborne illnesses are nothing to be taken lightly. Bacteria such as salmonella and E. Coli can have serious negative effects on the human body and may even be life threatening.
Food Inc., a documentary by Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser, featuring Michael Pollan, shows some of the corruption within the food system. The journalists interview a woman whose life was personally affected by the damage done by E. Coli. Barbara Kowalcyk’s whole world came crashing down after a vacation she went on with her family. While away, her two-year-old son, Kevin, consumed a hamburger that was contaminated with E. Coli 0157:H7. Blood was found in his stool and his kidneys started to fail. This little boy went from being perfectly healthy to passing away in just twelve days. Kowalyck is a Food Safety Advocate and was fighting for what happened to her son. She would schedule appointments with government agencies such as the USDA, but they would only see her for about five to ten minutes. Nothing was ever done by the government in regard of her son, and the meat company was never held responsible.
One thing every part of the food industry has in common is that they fail to take responsibility when something goes wrong. This is present in every step of the farm to fork process. Nestle puts it simply when she says, “producers blame processors for foodborne illness, and processors blame producers; government regulators blame both, and everyone blames the consumers.” The lack of taking responsibility is the first thing that needs to change in order for bigger changes to be made. In an article written my Michael Moss of New York Times, Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Food Safety on Consumers, Moss informs readers about how big companies try to dodge taking the blame in any way they can. In 2007, a product of ConAgra Foods, frozen pot pies, contaminated about 15,000 people with salmonella. The company tested the ingredients to find out what exactly caused the illness in so many people, however, they could not pinpoint which of the ingredients was responsible. Instead of doing more tests and finding out exactly where the food that goes into their products comes from, ConAgra decided to avoid all accountability by making anything that happens the consumers fault. The company wrote food safety instructions on the pot pie packaging saying, “Internal temperature needs to reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.” Therefore if a person gets sick because the actual pot pie was contaminated with bacteria, the company can argue that the consumer did not follow the instructions and heat the product right. This was also seen when General Mills had recalled about five million frozen pizzas in 2007. The instructions on the box now suggest to “avoid microwaves and cook only with conventional ovens.” Other major companies including Nestlé, and The Blackstone Group are also guilty of shifting the burden to consumers. These food giants make up most of the brands that fill the shelves of supermarkets, yet they are “unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients.”
The food industry is a very delicate system and should have more government regulation. Although agencies such as the FDA and USDA exist, they are not as thorough as they could and should be. It is very easy for good ingredients to get contaminated at some point in the production process, as seen in the article You Are What They Eat. Starting at the farm, it is important that the animals are fed and taken care of properly. What is most important is that they eat feed that is safe and uncontaminated. Consumer Reports exposes what items go into the feeds that farmers give to cattle, chickens, and fish. While the feeds consisted of some disturbing things, such as poultry litter, feathers, feces, bone meal, and waste from coops, they were all FDA approved and said to contain nutritional benefits to the animals. With this array of ingredients it is incredibly easy for the feeds to get contaminated, “simply by being stored in the wrong bin.” When meat from contaminated animals is produced and sold throughout the world, it can do a lot of damage to a lot of people. This is why it is important that everyone at each stage of the process must take responsibility for his or her actions.
There are constant debates about the nutritional value of organic farming versus conventional farming. Organic is believed to be better nutritionally because it does not contain chemical pesticides. Blake Hurst raises some concerns in his article “Organic Illusions”, by questioning that declaration. Hurst, who is a third-generation farmer, explains how easy it is for pesticides from neighboring conventional farms to drift and pollute organic farms. Products are labeled organic due to the producer’s claim of following organic procedures. “No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims,” according to Hurst. If organic foods are not really what they are said to be, this is another way for businesses to take advantage of the consumer. Organic products are often more expensive because they are produced in a more natural way. If the products are not actually produced by organic procedures, the consumer is once again in the dark and held subjective to the food system.
This is another issue within the food system that could easily be fixed with more government regulation. People should not have to guess or be unsure if their spinach is actually organic or if the chicken they are planning on making for dinner was stored improperly and now contains bacteria. More emphasis needs to be put on food safety practices and big businesses should not be allowed to find loop polls out of taking responsibility for the foodborne illnesses that arise from their products. In the words of Barbara Kowalcyk, “We put faith into our government to protect us and we’re not being protected.”
Food safety is a very important issue and more people need to become aware of it. By laying back and being uninformed about the severity of foodborne illnesses and the effects that bacteria’s such as salmonella and E.Coli can have on individuals and their families, people are prolonging the changes that the food industry, and more importantly, the consumers, desperately need.
Reflection
Describe your understanding of the “writer’s project”? How were you able to identify the texts’ “project”? Discuss your own “project” as it pertains to this particular blog article.
The writers project is the main point that the author is trying to get across in his or her piece. You can identify it in a piece because it is the main claim the author makes and what other parts of the piece are trying to support. My project in this piece was to show people that there is a lack of government regulation in the food industry and that there are many issues that arise because of that.
Describe your completion of the “Sorting it Out” workshop? What sections were most beneficial to the development of your ideas—and why? Discuss how this workshop assisted in development of draft and/or assignment organization?
The workshop was beneficial because it made it easy to see what the main point of each piece was and how they related to each other. Also listing important themes and people in each made it helpful to not forget anything important that you wanted to include.
Describe your understanding of synthesis. What is its importance? How did it manifest within your drafts and/or final blog article? Provide examples.
Synthesis is when you analyze multiple texts and then relate them to each other. You talk about each piece, but you do not summarize them, and you make connections using direct quotes and important ideas. I got a better understanding of synthesis after Amy showed us her paragraph from the four quotes of the VMAs. I tried to do that in my piece, using direct quotes that really supported what I was arguing in a major way.
Describe your own accomplishment (ofsomething) during this unit.
During this unit I think I became better at arguing one thing and sticking to it. In past papers I have written, sometimes I would jump all over the place and argue multiple things at one time. With this paper I think I really stuck to my main argument and used the sources to support it very well.
Discuss the evolution of the main idea. Where did you begin (include the example) and show its progress (again, include example) throughout the drafting/revision process. To what do you attribute its evolution?
When I began this project, I was a little overwhelmed because there were so many sources that portrayed so many different aspects of the food system. My main idea was rather broad at first but what still mostly about how many people do not know where their food comes from and the secrecy of the system. As I wrote my first draft, I focused a lot on who hold the power in the system and how big businesses such as Monsanto, contribute to the lack of knowledge of the consumer. When I sat down to write my final paper, I sort of combined the two but focused more on how more government regulation could fix both of these issues. Each source we had to use gave examples of issues that could be fixed with more government involvement.
Discuss what organizational strategies you implemented in order to structure this blog article. Provide examples from a section(s) of an earlier draft and other excerpts in later drafts to support your response.
For my blog article I started off with trying to inform people about how serious foodborne illnesses can be and why it is important to be informed about the issues. I then took arguments from each source that supported why more people need to be more concerned when it comes to their food and how more regulation could fix these problems.
Provide an example of the final draft where you successfully synthesize 3 texts in a concise and direct manner. Discuss how this evolved throughout the drafting process for you.
“Marion Nestle, a nutrition and public health professor at New York University, sums this up completely in Part One of her book Food Politics, when she says that most people view food poisoning as an “uncomfortable inconvenience” and “random bad luck” rather than “industry and government indifference and outright obstructionism.” They simply do not feel well for a day or two and then go about their lives like nothing happened.” In the next paragraph I then talk about Food Inc. and how the little boy, Kevin, was affected by a foodborne illness. I also then talk about my outside source, which deals with how big companies are trying to not be held accountable for illnesses by making it the consumer’s responsibility.
Discuss the evolution of the ‘lede’ in earlier drafts and its final version (provide examples of each): where did you begin, what feedback did you receive, and how did it end up in final blog article?
In my earlier drafts I did not even include a lede. I did not know what he term was or how it would affect my paper. In my later drafts I worked on making a lede that was informative and concise but also creative enough to get the reader to want to continue reading my paper. In my final blog post, I tried to relate to the everyday person and grab their attention, while stating facts about how little people know about the food system.
Name a specific writing/researching/revision goal you’d like to work on during the next Unit projects.
I would like to work more on my writing and making it stand out. I want people to want to read what I have to write about and make it more fun, creative, and informative, rather than just dry and informative.
Food politics is a very tricky system to understand. The main reason being there are many things that the food industry keeps hidden from the everyday consumer. There are many issues being raised regarding the safety of the foods we consume, the different consequences and benefits of different farming styles, and foodborne illnesses and what the government does to prevent them from happeneing. A lot of these issues fly under the radar and are seen as no big deal to a number of people out there, however it is important to know what is really going on in the food industry and the effects the food we eat may have on us physically and environmentally.
One issue I find as the mother of all the other issues in the food system, is the lack of transparency. The food system is often run by big brand producers who have control of certain areas of the system. The Documentary Food Inc., displays this for us by showing how there are a couple companies who run the meat industry, as well as companies who own the produce industry. The film specifically talks about a company called Monsanto, who is a chemical company who created a soybean that was resistant to a weed killer they created. This was a big deal because farmers could plant the seeds and then spray round up to kill all the weeds, leaving only the soy bean ready to go. Monsanto patened this seed and “by 2008 over 90% of sobeans in America contained Monsanto’s patened gene.”[1] Since this one company pretty much owns almost all of the soybean production, it is difficult for other farmers to get involved and produce their own seeds. Monsanto runs over all of the small farmers and businesses which gives them the power to share only what they want to share with the public. Often times people from the company refuse to be interviewed or answer questions regarding what they do. Also other farmers who are not even involved with Monsanto have to watch what they say because they could get sued. It is a big problem when big companies take over because it leads to increased secrecy within the food system.
This lack of knowledge about what goes on inside the food industry leads to other issues such as foodborne illnesses and concerns with how healthy the food we eat actually is for us. Consumer Reports came out with an article titled “We Are What They Eat”. It talks about what is in the feed of animals we consume daily such as cattle, chickens, and fish. It was found that some pretty repulsive things are added to the feeds of these animals. Cattle were given poultry litter, feces, feathers and waste from coops, chickens were fed meat and bone meal, and fish were fed meat, bone and feather meal. These ingredients were all approved by the FDA, however something could easily go wrong from something as simple as a storage mistake. The feed could become contaminated and go on to effect the animals who eat it, along with the people who eat the animals. This could lead to widespread diseases that could be found in many different human products. Marion Nestle, a nutrition, food studies, and public health professor at NYU, believes that there should be more government regulation in the food system. I agree with her stance completely and believe that it would resolve a lot of the issues that are present. A topic that Nestle focuses on is food borne illnesses. She says that people today consider food poisoning as an inconvenice rather than a serious issue. It is hard to find an accurate number of the cases of food poisoning in certain time frames, because a lot of times people do not report it. They are uncomfortable for a couple of days but do not think more of it to actually do something about it. However, when somebody does decide to take a stand, nobody in the food industry takes the blame. Each person who had contact with the food that caused the sickness whether it be the person who fed the animals, to the person who served the plate. Most times, the blame is put on the consumer. The idea of a company being associated with food poisoning can ruin so much for the business that instead of taking responsibility, they put the blame on whoever they can.
The government needs to be more involved in the regulation of foods to prevent foodborne illnesses from breaking out. Food Inc., tells a story about a family who was effected by E. Coli, and fatal bacteria that can be found in foods that were not cleaned properly. A little two year old boy who was completely healthy, passed away twelve days after eating a hamburger that was contaminated with E. Coli. When the mother tried to fight for what happened to her son, she did not get as little as an apology from anyone. The food system saw it as another casualty, while that family just lost their whole world. It is so important for people to understand how dangerous food can be when it is not properly cooked or produced. So many things can go wrong that can affect the lives of so many people. It is very disturbing that something so essential to our lives can come along with so many consequences.
