When I was younger, my dad and I used to go on camping trips all of the time.  All fathers and sons have things they do together, and being from Southern California, it wasn’t too far of a drive up the coast to find a nice campground where we could relax, get away from society, and spend quality time.  One of my most vivid memories from these trips was that my dad would always instill in me the idea of leaving the campsite cleaner and nicer than when we arrived.  Much of the time, we would get to the site and there would be beer cans, trash, and other unsavory items around the campsite that were left by the rude people staying before us.  But, it was important to my dad to leave the site in a cleaner and more respectable condition than when we arrived.  Even if the campsite wasn’t too dirty to begin with, we always found a way to make it nicer for the next people who were to arrive.  I tell this story because I feel that it relates to the current state of our country, and my mentality towards it.  When I eventually pass on and leave this Earth, I want to make sure that I did all I can to leave it in better condition and in better hands than when I arrived on it.  Unfortunately, I feel quite strongly that a Donald Trump presidency would do damage to the country, and possibly the world as a whole, and that is why I feel that we have an obligation to openly and honestly discuss and bring to light his past speech and behavior in order to better educate voters in hopes of them being informed on who they may be voting to lead our country into the future, during these tumultuous times.

Up until about a year ago, last June to be exact, I didn’t give Donald Trump much thought at all.  Obviously, like most people, I knew who he was.  He’s an extremely wealthy businessman who made billions in the real estate market, as well as had a successful reality TV show.  Besides that, however, he had nothing to do with my life, and thus, didn’t take up too much space in my mind.  That all changed, however, when he decided to announce his candidacy for President of the United States.  Almost immediately upon announcing, controversy ensued, and has followed ever since, based on some of the language and rhetoric he has used.  He has become a household name, and although we do live in a country where free speech is protected, I am mightily concerned about a Trump presidency and the ramifications it would have on future generations, based not only on much of the rhetoric that has been used by Mr. Trump over the course of the last year, but also his actions and language throughout the course of his entire adult life.

Because of the fact that most people didn’t give Mr. Trump the time of day up until he decided to run for President, they are unaware of the fact that his nasty and arguably racist rhetoric has shaped much of his adult life.  Before I began the process of researching this man and his past transgressions for this article, I also thought that his worrisome thoughts and views were only over the past year.  However, I have learned that is false.  This article will not only discuss the comments he has made over the course of the past year that are cause for concern, but also his actions and comments over the course of his entire lifetime that should make people think twice before voting for him.  I feel like it should be the job and obligation of all Americans to make decisions not only based on themselves, but based on how it will affect their children, and their children’s children.  As a result, Donald Trump and his proposed policies should raise eyebrows and strike a nerve inside the heart and soul of every American.  In many ways, this country was founded on the principles of inclusion, and built on the backs of immigrants and other “undesirables” who wished to escape oppression and create a better life for themselves and their families, and during a time in which we have a candidate wanting to abort that lifestyle and abort that sense of inclusion, as a nation, we shall not succumb to the fear he is trying to instill in us.

As mentioned before, it is my deepest and most sincere wish that the reader gain a better understanding of who Donald Trump is both as a person, and a presidential candidate.  I hate to continue to drone on and on with this repetitive line, but it is so important to be informed about who one is voting for.  In that same vein, I will chronologically detail the past and current wrongdoings of Mr. Trump and discuss the things he has both said and done throughout his life that leave many, including myself, seriously questioning his ability to be the leader of not only this country, but the free world.

Starting all the way back in 1973, Donald and his father Fred Trump were building housing complexes all across New York City.  They became the subjects of a US federal investigation, based on the notion that they had been discriminating against minorities who wished to purchase apartments in those complexes.  Throughout the course of the investigation, it was found that Trump employees had been using coded messages to signify the race, or ethnicity, of the potential applicants.  Perhaps the most notorious mark that was used was the letter “C”, to show that the applicant was colored.  As part of a sting operation inside this larger governmental investigation, there was a white woman, as well as a black woman, who both went to the front desk at one of these complexes asking to purchase a home for them and their families.  Not surprisingly, they were given different answers.  According to the investigators, the white woman was treated with dignity and was helped, while the black woman was told that there was no space for her and her family.  At the end of the investigation, there was not a substantial enough amount of evidence to bring any criminal charges down upon the Trump Organization.  Donald did mention this in his autobiography, but definitely downplayed the significance of it.  He said that “the government was not able to prove its case and we paid a small settlement without admitting any guilt.”  While it is true that the government was not able to prove its case, it is quite unsettling and frankly, quite alarming with the evidence that they were able to find.

If we fast forward in time 18 years, to the year 1991, we come across a man named John O’Donnell, who was the president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.  When interviewing Donald for a book that he was writing during the early 90’s, according to O’Donnell, Mr. Trump said that “Laziness is a trait in blacks.  I truly believe that.”  Now, because of the fact that there is no audio recording, it is simply conjecture and speculation as to whether or not Donald did in fact say that quote.  However, it is still quite alarming that in the year 2016, about 150 years after slavery was outlawed, we still have a presidential frontrunner who is being accused of holding these pernicious beliefs.  Like he does with many people who disagree with him and say something negative about him, Donald has called Mr. O’Donnell a “loser”, but it still doesn’t take away from the fact that their seems to be a pattern that follows Donald when it comes to his hurtful rhetoric and shameful actions.

Up to this point, we have raised concerns about Donald’s candidacy for President based on two of the more notable times in his life that caused speculation about his racist views and actions.  Now, we will fast forward to the present day, and discuss both his words and his actions over the course of the past year.  During this time, he has said and done many things, covering a wide range of ethnic groups, that not only are hurtful and wrong, but give credence to the idea that both instances I mentioned in the above paragraphs could very well be true.

The three main groups that Mr. Trump has targeted over the course of his campaign have been African Americans, Muslims and Mexicans.  Now, lets work backwards and discuss how he has treated these groups since announcing his run for President.  In his opening speech, he viciously attacked Mexicans and immigration as a whole.  Not only did he call Mexicans rapists and murderers, but he also stated his goal to deport all illegal immigrants that are currently here, without giving thought to the repercussions that would have on families.  Now, I am from Los Angeles.  I know firsthand that most Mexicans and Latin Americans, whether legal or not, are simply hardworking people who wish to keep their noses clean and work to support their families.  Now, are there murderers and rapists among them?  Sure, probably some.  However, generalizations like the ones Mr. Trump makes when it comes to Mexicans are not right, and they are part of the problem that we have with racial stereotyping in our country to this very day.  In addition, he has gone after Muslims repeatedly with his rhetoric, again making generalizations that are both disrespectful and hurtful, but also not true.  Throughout his campaign, he has proposed torturing the families of Islamic terrorists, and said that any soldier not willing to follow those orders would have no choice.  He has also discussed patrolling Muslim neighborhoods at a more increased frequency than other neighborhoods, he has stated that Muslims in New Jersey were cheering on September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Center was being brought down, and he has said that as President, he would stop the influx of Syrian refugees into the country.  While his supporters say that he is simply doing this to keep us safe, there is no doubt that his vicious stereotypes and generalizations towards Muslims have offended many people, and much like his comments about Mexicans, are simply untrue.

African Americans have had a history in our country of being subjected to lower standards of living, as well as higher incarceration rates and higher rates of police brutality.  In a time when we should be figuring out how to quell their anger and figure out a way to create a more peaceful and accepting society for them, Donald Trump has seemed to ignite a fire and anger within the black community.  One of the most notable examples of his disrespect for their community came when he was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.  Instead of disavowing any white supremacist group, because of their treatment towards African Americans and other minorities, Donald decided instead to wait until he “got more information”, and then after much media scrutiny, finally decided to disavow.  In addition, another instance of his disrespect towards African Americans happened at a Donald Trump rally.  When a black protestor was punched by a white protestor, chaos ensued.  Now, instead of using his voice to calm the collective nerves of black people across the country, and show that he cares about them, Mr. Trump instead offered to pay the legal fees of the man who punched the protestor.  Not only is that juvenile and ridiculous, but it isn’t very presidential.

Right now, the future of our country is at stake.  Just like my dad taught me, it is right to leave things in better condition than when you arrived.  That applied to campsites when I was younger, and it applies to our country now.  We are at a crossroads in our country’s future, and its important to recognize that the rhetoric and behavior that has been displayed by Donald Trump throughout this campaign, and throughout the course of his life is alarming, frightening, and isn’t right for this country.  As a result, I caution everyone to take this article seriously and to do your own research before voting for this man next November.

Lately there have been food industry related issues that raises questions on how the society aren’t raising eyebrows. Everyone loves Chipotle, and they do their very best to satisfy their customers, but sadly Chipotle has taken a toll on their number of customers. Usually you had to wait in a long line, which started the moment you stepped into their front door, but now we can walk straight up to the counter. Chipotle receives their so-called fresh supply of ingredients from specific farmers and ranchers who raise their animals humanely with organically nourished vegetables from healthy soils. If that’s the case, how did they receive meat contaminated with E. coli, or sickening people with salmonella with their tomatoes.

If you have been watching the news recently, you know that there probably are some uncertainties in the food you eat. It should only take a few minutes to take a look around the web through news articles in current food politics and food safety issues to find out that there are some serious problems in our food industry. Chipotle is a great example to start with, although it’s not going so great for them. They have been fighting a battle with themselves and the public about the e. coli breakouts. According to the CDC website, there have been past cases of food borne illnesses, such as salmonella, listeria, and e. coli, and most of the issues surfaced from contamination or the soil in which the produce came from.

As stated in the article “You Are What They Eat” by Consumer Reports, to assess this issue of the safety of the nation’s consumers, they have investigated on their own and interviewed feed-industry experts and critics, but none of the top executives were willing to speak. This was raising a lot of concerns about how the federal government wasn’t doing its job to protect the food supply, which we consume. For example, in the Food Inc. documentary, they have shown us that chickens are genetically modified so that their body grows much faster, and fatter, but because it is such an unnatural growth through medications, their organs don’t catch up to their physical body growth, which makes us question, how are their bodies staying healthy if their organs can’t even catch up fast enough to maintain themselves.

Why stop there? The possibility of our supply of produces being contaminated may not be the only issue. Only a century ago, according to Marion Nestle, the only issues that we had to be concerned with were spoiled milk from infected animals and spoiled meat from sick animals. Now, because we have made so many changes to our food system, the current problems of food safety haven’t shown any new diseases, but different symptoms of the same disease. There are many different aspects as to why this is an issue to the modern day, and our federal government aren’t the only ones to blame. Pesticides have been used by farmers to chemically clean the produce of microorganisms, whether good or bad, and that is what we intake into our bodies. Stated by Blake Hurst in the article “Organic Illusions” in The American, It is very true that there are farmers who use organic pesticides to treat their land, but because the concentration of the chemical in the organic pesticide is incredibly low, they have to end up pumping an immense amount just to keep up with a standard pesticide.

The Stanford study stated in the article of “Organic Illusions” have found how organic foods were significantly less prone to having pesticide residues, but much more likely to have e. coli. E. coli can survive in the digestive system and in fecal matter, so it is very possible that contaminated animals share the same soil with the farmland and the animals surrounding them, which is how it spreads. Overtime, our pesticides have been killing microorganisms, but we all know that even the hand sanitizers we use for our hands don’t kill all of the germs, as if it’s leaving one to survive to live to tell the tale of its lost brothers and sisters.

These pesticides are creating a new and different environment for these pathogens to adapt to, so what does that tell us? Our chemicals in these pesticides, whether standard or organic, are eventually habitable by pathogens to adapt to and create these, not new, but different illnesses. Although organic produces are labeled organic, it is possible that they may have traces of conventional methods. “Organic foods are labeled as organic because producers certify that they have followed organic procedures”, but there aren’t any precise procedures to tests these products for being 100% organic. It is possible for organic produces to have conventional pesticides present in or on them through leftover residue in the soil or the chemical drifting from neighboring farm fields.

If the pesticides weren’t bad enough, the medications that the animals consume may give you quite a shock. Of course even we, as humans, take medications from time to time to help ourselves with headaches or body aches, but we need to remember that everything the animal consumes, we consume as well. Because our chickens are treated with medications for the purpose of killing microbes and fattening them, the medication contains arsenic. I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t arsenic a toxic chemical?” Why yes it is, but because these medications, apparently, are necessary in the feed industry, the FDA has made a tolerance limit of 2000 ppb in the chickens’ liver and 500 ppb in its meat. Data was collected through the analysis of the chickens liver and meat, since it is the part most people eat, and the average level of arsenic was low compared to the regulations, but still, we need to remember that arsenic is linked to cancer.

Assuming these traces of chemical weren’t enough, we don’t even know if the seafood supply is completely safe. As reported in the “Consumer Reports” about seafood, the FDA is responsible for guaranteeing the safety of seafood, most of which is imported. The FDA, out of the 80% imported seafood, only tests about 2%, mainly for drug residues. Salmon is a widely popular seafood choice, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, but in farms, they’re fed concentrated fish and fish oil, which makes us question how heart-healthy these salmons are compared to the ones in the wild. The Hites team at Indiana University ran tests comparing carcinogens in wild and farmed salmons, and they resulted with farmed salmons containing more PCBs and dioxins than wild salmons, especially the ones from Europe. Still, the FDA was concerned about foreign fish and fish-feed producers for using unapproved drugs, leaving traces in food that may pose a threat to the human health.

We have come a long way as humans, advancing in different number of technological and chemical concerns, but if we have come to a point where we need to ask ourselves if organic products are truly healthy for us or not, then something is definitely wrong, especially in the food industry. Having said that, I’m afraid the soil that we pump our chemicals into, whether natural or organic, is altering the unrefined natural soil we used to have. Genetically altered produces are chemically treated to be more appealing in their physical form, but nutritionally, they aren’t any healthier. In Food Inc., the documentary showed us farmers who were wrongfully treated to treat their produce and animals the wrong way, but they have to make a living somehow so they don’t have a choice. They sign a contract to do the work they do and keep their mouth shut about it. Some even got their contracted permanently suspended by the people they worked for, which even they didn’t even come out for an interview to spill the truth.

We view endless commercials and public statement announcements concerning the health of our bodies and to keep fit, but how will that be possible if we can buy an entire meal at a fast food restaurant rather than one piece of fruit? Family income is the leading cause of obesity, which already says a lot, and we’re not doing anything to help this cause. If there is an issue, the first step is to address that issue in the first place, but we don’t see top executives coming out with apologies; only articles of people getting sick or dying of something contaminated that they consumed.

1) The writers project is a reiterated version of the source the writer is trying to emphasize on. It is to focus the writers beliefs and words from the writers point of view that they received from the source. I was able to obtain the view point of the writers project through, of course, the writers article itself, but also researching the sources that the writers said where they got their information from. My own project is to start from the beginning, as to where all these diseases and infections started becoming worse. Through multiple sources, it was found that our worries, in the subject of foodborne illnesses, have changed since we have made advance in the agricultural world.

2) The “sorting it out” workshop helped identify the experts, sources, main topic/idea, and sources the writer was providing. It helped categorize and separate each information that felt important to the topic, and although not every single piece of information written in the “sorting it out” workshop, it helped focus my topic into a specific idea of what I wanted the readers to know in my blog article.

3) My understanding of synthesis is a quick basic summarized idea of the topic one is trying to emphasize in order to expand and detail the idea more as the writing progresses. The importance of this is to start on the focus of ones topic so that they have an idea of what they need to fix, emphasize, or delete. I started out by writing a few sentences for what I wanted to talk about, and depending on the right transition between paragraphs, I emphasized the specific topic more in order to fully detail, as much as possible, the provided information for the readers.

4) My accomplishment in this unit is the in-depth research I had to do in a topic that I had zero experience in. I had absolutely no idea of the background story of farms, foodborne illnesses, political obstructions, and more. I had to intake a lot of information to fully understand everything.

5) My idea didn’t exactly “evolve” into something more. I basically had the same topic/idea from the very beginning, which I even emphasized during class about pesticides and such. I started with my draft, which was only a bit over 1000 words, and for the final 1400 word paper, I included another source to expand my reasoning as to why I believe agricultural advances in our history have made drastic, possibly dangerous, changes. Afterwards, I separated the paragraphs, bit by bit, as well as included hyperlinks in order to portray the view of a blog article.

6) This is the same question as question 5. The whole idea of “evolving” a draft of an essay is to organize it the way you, the writer, believes should be organized. Where is the lede going to be? What is going to be stated in the intro? What are you going to include in your first paragraph in order to pull in your reader? And so on. I organized by article by starting with the lede in order to pull in readers, which is talking about the love of many people around the nation; Chipotle. Then I compared Chipotles foodborne illnesses to other foodborne illnesses connected in my sources, and reasoned that this may have been caused by decades of changes in our soil and food system.

7) 3 things I synthesized on were antibiotics fed to animals, pesticides, and the lack of safety in the food industry. In the respective order that I listed, paragraph 3 & 4, paragraphs 4, 5, & 6, and paragraph 7 & 8 are examples of how detailed and concise the information I provided were. Again, through the process of my draft, I input all the important information that should be provided, and in my final, I simply included another source to expand my explanations and sources.

8) I did not provide a lede for my draft, for the reason that we learned about “ledes” on the day the draft was due. During class, I wrote out my lede in order to ease the readers into my article. I felt that if I started out the blog with statistical information, readers would find it dull and hard to take in the information, so I provided the lede to show a glimpse of what my blog was going to be about.

9) Now that I’ve learned about what a lede is, how to use statistical information to my advantage, numerous sources to back up my information, and transition between paragraphs, I’m eager to believe that my blog-writing skills have improved. Through peer reviews, I have learned that my paragraphs need to be spaced out more to fit the “blog” profile, and that I needed to include hyperlinks. Still, I was able to focus my argument and maintain the readers attention throughout my work.

Let’s not beat around the bush, America. We’re a pretty fat country. We love sports, but we have a pizza and wings by our side while we’re chillin’ on the couch watching them. We’re so fat, actually, that according to the Food Research and Action Center , more than two thirds of adults in America are fat.

There’s clearly a solution to being fat besides just exercise, and that’s substituting your cheese-sticks for celery. But trust me, eating healthier is definitely easier said than done, especially when broccoli costs more than a pack of brownies at the grocery store. The cheapest food is not only the least healthy, but it’s more likely that that food isn’t 100% organic.

Bottom line, folks — poor and marginalized people are the most affected by big corporations and their lack of transparency with where and how food is processed — this is because the most manipulated foods are more accessible and cheaper.

In the 2008 documentary Food Inc., which describes the deceitful processes involved with food processing, a working-class Hispanic family perfectly describes the struggle to eat healthily, The family consists of a mother, father, and two young daughters. The parents work extremely long hours, so they don’t have time to cook. Rather than buying vegetables or other healthy foods, the majority of the family’s income goes towards the father’s medical bills — the dad has diabetes, and it’s getting worse by the day.

And what is the only food this family can afford in the meanwhile? Burgers, fries, and sodas from the dollar menu at Burger King. And let’s face it, this family probably doesn’t really have access to anything like a farmer’s market, which is probably way farther than the corner convenience store selling Twinkies and Dorito chips, as well as fast food restaurants that are on every corner.

So basically, what we have here is a cyclic situation: the family can’t afford healthy food, so they eat unhealthy. Family eats unhealthy, family becomes unwell, and must pay lofty medical bills. Paying these expensive bills, family can’t afford healthy food — and family suffers in the process.

Not to mention, the food that poor people are able to afford is very far from face value. Meaning, a lot of the cheap foods in stores and supermarkets have been ultra-processed, to the point where the ingredients are barely identifiable: I mean really, what average American can really tell me what saccharin, polydextrose, xanthan gum, maltodextrin actually is? If people knew how much of these alien-sounding ingredients were actually in our food, I’m sure we would think twice before putting it in our bodies.

And you know what? Those alien ingredients are all made of corn.

Yep, you read right. According to Food Inc, 90% of processed foods on the shelf contain either a corn or soybean ingredient. This means that all those boxes and cans on the shelves, regardless of what they say on the front label, have corn in ‘em somehow. Apparently, scientists have decided that adding corn to everything helps with preservation and shelf life. This makes these foods unhealthy, not to mention very vague and untrustworthy. Because it’s being used in so many foods, in fact, 30% of United States land is being used for — you guessed it — planting corn. Fields and fields of it.

If you thought that processed boxed and canned foods were the only sketchy food items that need to be avoided because of corn, you thought wrong. Corn has something to do with the sketchiness of our meat and poultry items too. From an evolutionary standpoint, most farm animals should be eating grain and grass for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s logically cheaper because cows naturally fertilize the grass they eat, which produces more grass. Besides that seemingly obvious point, though, grass and grain digests much better, leaving the cows and chickens to be healthier, and the meat from them safer to eat.

Instead, cows, chickens, and other farm animals are fed corn, which as we know from the processed foods, leads to defective, unhealthy meat. Marion Nestle, a food safety professor and public advocate, points out that feeding corn to cattle basically fattens them up, so there is more meat available to sell.

And trust me, big meat packagers have taken full advantage of being able to make more money — as of 2010, the top 4 meat packers controlled 80% of the market. One of these meat-buying tycoons is home to one of America’s most prized possessions: the Big Mac. That’s right, McDonald’s is actually the largest purchaser of ground beef in the United States. This means that even if you aren’t necessarily eating McD’s, you are more than likely eating food that was processed at one of their slaughterhouses.

The problem with feeding cows corn, though, is that corn actually makes the meat that we eat from them more prone to disease — and not just any cute little harmless disease, either — it’s E. Coli 0157:H7.

If you know anything about E. Coli 0157:H7, you’d know a couple of things: First off, you’d know that this specific strain is heat resistant, and is still infectious even in small amounts. You’d know that nowadays, it contains a gene that basically destroys red blood cells, and we all know that without those, your health is in for loads of trouble — kidney failure, bloody diarrhea, you name it.

And of course, this yummy disease can be found sitting pretty right in that Big Mac of yours.

The fact that these cows eat corn instead of what they should actually eat doesn’t help anybody’s case–what do you mean?. It also doesn’t help that these cows are packed into confined slaughterhouses by the hundreds, and are standing in their own shit for hours at a time, making it more than easy for this strand of E. Coli to spread from one cow to the next. The worst part about all of this is that the ground beef mass produced by McDonald’s to make that one hamburger can have almost a thousand cows in a single patty, making the disease even more unavoidable.

With these disgusting facts about where the food that most American eats comes from coming to light, you may be asking: “why didn’t I know about all of this before?! I eat burgers all the time! They’re delicious!” Well, the answer to that is simple really: these meat-packaging tycoons don’t want you to know. You see, if you knew about the repulsive schemes that these large companies were imploring to make money, they wouldn’t be making money! And if you’re wondering whether you can write a stern letter to your congressman about this very relevant issue, you’d be wasting your time.

Why? Because the government is in on the scam too.

There’s a whole labyrinth of laws and laws for those laws, put in place by government officials who have roots in the food industries that they are supposed to be regulating. When it comes to food safety regulations, there are over 30 separate laws, implemented by over 10 different agencies, in six cabinet-level departments. If you think this is confusing and unnecessary, you are absolutely right. While the USDA may regulate corn dogs, for example, the FDA, which is a completely different organization, regulates bagel dogs. This makes it very easy for deadly Big Mac diseases to slip right underneath the government’s noses, making the American people sick.

One of the easiest ways to avoid all of this commotion and life-threatening food, of course, is to buy organic grown meats and veggies. But of course, this is definitely easier said than done for that working class family that is already in the vortex of unhealthy eating.

So in order for that working-class Hispanic family to prevent “death by corn”, they may have a couple of options. First of all, yeah, fast food? Stay far, FAR away from that as often as possible. Secondly,  every little change to daily eating habit counts. Subbing that celery stick for that chocolate every now and again is a step in the right direction, even if it’s just twice or three times a week. It definitely wouldn’t be easy, but to be honest, severe illness due to corn? It’s just not worth the trouble. |

Asile Patin is a sophomore at Syracuse University, focusing on food politics in her Writing 205 class.

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REFLECTION

1.) I think that the “writer’s project” differs slightly from the meaning of the text. Instead, it’s basically what the writer’s purpose is in writing it, and how they have attempted to pursue that purpose through their writing style. When thinking about this in terms of the texts for this unit, I really had to understand the writer themselves, and what their background and experience is in their particular field. If I were to just read or watch the texts for face value, I would have missed the nuances that come with the writer’s particular “projects” and purposes. For my post, I made my particular claims based on my background, and my understanding of how food politics affect the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic latter.

2.) The term identification section on the “Sorting it Out” worksheet was the most beneficial. It made it easier to understand what the writer was trying to convey in a very literal manner. This helped me synthesize texts that had similar messages.

3.) Synthesis is important because it’s basically a consolidation of a lot of different texts. This consolidation makes grasping a concept, and later explaining it, much easier for me. The specific E. Coli information would have been very difficult for me to understand if I was reading the cold, manuscript style Nestle reading alone. However, synthesizing that information with Food. Inc and the Consumer Report article, I was able to realize a humanized understanding of what effects the disease could actually have.

4.) Overall, I think that I am proud of how simply I was able to explain my thoughts. Because this isn’t the formal writing that I am used to, I was able to say what I really meant, without confusing fluff.

5.) My main idea was basically that poor people are at “steak” when dealing with food politics that are controlled in a monopolistic manner. With this, I was able to follow a chain of thought style writing, talking about corn, the ill-quality of slaughterhouses, and E. Coli, while still being able to bring the conclusion about in a circular manner. I think the “Sorting it Out” workshop helped especially with this.

6.) Again, I used a chain of thought style writing technique. I wanted to make sure that the reader could understand how things were connecting in a manner that wasn’t too confusing. For my lede specifically, I became a lot more concise with what I was trying to say, which made it easier for me to follow that thought.

Draft: “The lack of transparency in the food market presents a level of concern from the American people about what we are consuming, and how the foods we eat affect our health. From the surface level, individuals concerned with their health should steer clear of obviously unhealthy food — fast food, fats, desserts and snacks, etc. With the steadily rising obesity rate in America (can I provide a statistic here?), healthier alternatives for these food items, such as leafy greens and organic food, should instead be prioritized. “Healthier” eating seems like a definite way to ensure the American people’s well being, and tons of ad campaigns promote a healthier lifestyle. However, for poor people, this is much more of a tougher battle.”

7.) In the paragraph discussing how disgusting cow breeding and meat packaging is, and how it breeds E. Coli, I synthesized information from Food Inc, from Nestle, and from Consumer reports.

“If you know anything about E. Coli 0157:H7, you’d know a couple of things: First off, you’d know that this specific strain is heat resistant, and is still infectious even in small amounts. You’d know that nowadays, it contains a gene that basically destroys red blood cells, and we all know that without those, your health is in for loads of trouble — kidney failure, bloody diarrhea, you name it.

And of course, this yummy disease can be found sitting pretty right in that Big Mac of yours.

The fact that these cows eat corn instead of what they should actually eat doesn’t help anybody’s case–what do you mean?. It also doesn’t help that these cows are packed into confined slaughterhouses by the hundreds, and are standing in their own shit for hours at a time, making it more than easy for this strand of E. Coli to spread from one cow to the next. The worst part about all of this is that the ground beef mass produced by McDonald’s to make that one hamburger can have almost a thousand cows in a single patty, making the disease even more unavoidable.”

8.)As stated earlier, I became much more concrete with my lede. Instead of speaking theoretically, I provided a concrete, relatable example that made sense.

9.)The conclusion was the most difficult for me.

“Trust is a Must”- Maddie Hinderstein

Producers and consumers are in need of some serious couples therapy.

When we put food into our mouths, our initial reaction is “I can’t wait to eat this!” It’s not like we think, “Hmm, I wonder what cow this hamburger came from?” But in that lies the problem. We shouldn’t have to question it because we should know where our food comes from right down to the cow.

Since we’re starting with the animal itself we have to go a little lower on the food chain to what the animals are eating. All farms are different, so there isn’t one overall way that they’re supposed to feed their animals. According to, “You are what they eat” by Consumer Reports 10-30% of animals diets are unknown. Cattle are allowed to eat processed feathers for protein and chickens can have meat and bone meal.

By doing this they fatten the animals quickly and cheaply. In addition to those tasty treats, animals are constantly being injected with steroids and other hormones to make their meet more profitable. I don’t know about anyone else, but personally I’d rather not be eating steroids and bones for dinner.

Even though those animals are most likely forced to eat the bones and take the steroids, there are industries where we can’t always control what the animals are putting in their bodies. Our seafood industry in huge especially because we import 80% of it, but the FDA only tests 2% of the imports for drug residues. Salmon and tuna are two of the biggest fish that we eat. Since there at the top of the food chain they eat everything that there prey has eaten. By the time that all of the toxins and chemicals build up and then get to us, it’s a disgusting amount of bad things to be putting in our body.

We shouldn’t be eating blindly and that’s what this author is trying to say. We should be able to know more about where our food is coming from, what the animals are eating, and in the long run what are we going to be putting into our bodies. Since many people eat from large conglomerate companies, it’s important for their reputation that the customers are confident in their products.

The author makes it very clear that there are dangers in the fact that consumers don’t know where their food is coming from or what it’s consuming. The only negative about this author is that it gives both sides of the story. I understand that that is what makes a good piece of writing, but since it’s coming from the perspective of the consumer it should be highlighting the problems and the ways that they can be improved.

There are many differences between different consumers and different producers. A big difference between producers is whether a business is small or large. Small businesses, like farmers markets, rely on loyal customers with good relationships. Large businesses have a huge base of customers and they don’t pay attention to whether or not someone starts using their products.

Another large difference is between the customers themselves. There are some people who have the luxury of being able to buy high end ingredients that are healthy and organic, but some people have to buy discounted things and don’t have the opportunity to properly nourish themselves or their families. Some people don’t really have the ability to choose what they eat. They have to just deal with what they’re given and that’s unfortunate because there are probably lower-class families that want to be healthy and be nourished and don’t have the ability to do so.

Although its thought to be “the way of the future” or “the only way to have a healthy lifestyle”, there are many secrets behind the organic industry that its consumers don’t know about. According to “Organic Illusions” by Blake Hurst, the organic industry isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Even though the industry itself is expanding, organic food sales only make up, “4% of the dollar value of all foods sold,” (Hurst). With his witty and sarcastic tone, Blake Hurst is able to connect with readers and make them see that not everything is so black vs. white in the food industry.

Companies can lose customers by the buzz that’s created about them, but if they prevent the buzz then nothing gets lost. That didn’t matter for one family featured in Food Inc., a documentary focusing on “America’s corporate controlled food industry. When a family was asked to be interviewed for the movie, they didn’t hesitate because they wanted to get their story out to public so that they could know the truth. The film captures the heartbreak and the struggles extremely well and has the ability to make viewers really feel something.

Barbara Kowalcyk is a food safety advocate and when her son, Kevin, was only 2 years old, he ate some bad meat and was stricken with E. coli 0157:H7. Within a matter of 12 days he was dead. She explains throughout her segment in the movie that she had a bill made, Kevin’s Law, that would give back to the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produced contaminated meat. President Obama eventually passed the law in 2011, but that was six years after the bill was introduced. And before the law even had to be made, the company the produced the meat tried suing the USDA because ‘they didn’t have the authority to shut down the meat plants.’

Barbara said that all she wanted was an apology from the company for the loss of her son, but she didn’t even get that. She just wanted to feel protected and she didn’t get that either. No matter how much power we think we have, it may never be enough to stand up against big companies. It’s sad to think that the death of someone’s child didn’t even make the company feel sorry for that poor family. It goes to show how screwed up the system is, just because you’re big and mighty doesn’t mean you get to step all over people.

As humans, we’re programmed to want to know things. The absence of knowing leads to suspicion, worry, and lack of trust, which is exactly what people, are feeling towards many companies. According to, “Consumers Want Food Companies to Pull Back the Curtain,” by Charlie Arnot the only way to earn a consumer’s trust is through transparency. Companies have to be honest with their customers and if they’re not honest it’s because they’re trying to hide something. This source had an excellent view from a passionate consumer that wanted to be part of the conversation with producing companies. They want there to be a good relationship between producer and consumer so that loyalty never has to be compromised or questioned.

Another thing that a lot of companies hide is their information on illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths. According to “The Politics of Foodborne Illness” in 1999 there were millions of illnesses, thousands of hospitalizations, and hundreds of deaths due to foodborne illnesses. One of the worst parts about this is that the chart in the article only lists the best-known pathogens that cause foodborne illnesses. There are so many more bacteria or other things that could be causing the illnesses the consumers don’t know about.

It’s unfair that the consumers and the victims of the illnesses aren’t even aware of why they’re becoming sick. It’s pretty sick and twisted that the relationship between the consumer and the producer isn’t strong. It’s unfair that consumers have to suffer and producers can just slide underneath the cracks like nothing has happened. Consumers need to have a voice in the conversation!

With the chart, the article is able to inform the readers of the statistics that stand. It’s one thing to hear about an illness or a death in the news, but to know that the numbers are so large is another thing.

Trust is a must. It’s crucial for any functioning relationship even if it’s such a large relationship in the food industry. For it to succeed, it needs work and effort from both sides. Consumers need to trust, but producers need to give them a reason to trust. There needs to be constant communication and equal communication from both sides or else the relationship will fail and the food industry will collapse.

 

Unit 1 Reflection

To me, a writer’s “project” is a culmination of a few things. The most important thing about a project is the point that one trying to get across to the readers and what is trying to be proven. The more secondary things are the types of genres one uses, the tones, the word choice and other things that help support the point that is trying to be made. For my blog, my project is that consumers need to be able to trust producers that are giving them food.

Especially since I got a late start on the project, the “Sorting it Out” workshop was a life saver for me. It helped me organize my thoughts in a really concise way and helped me figure out what message I wanted to get across.

Synthesis is crucial when reading something because you want to be able to grasp the meaning that the author was putting into their writing. The point of synthesizing is to figure out what the author meant and why they said something. They wouldn’t have said it if it didn’t have importance.

This unit I was able to become confident in my writing again. When I took WRT 105 last semester I wasn’t confident in my work and that made me want to share less and it didn’t make me want to be honest in my work. I usually just faked it til I made it and I now understand that that’s not the way to succeed.

From the beginning this was going to be my main idea. I know it sounds like I made no improvements on it but that’s what it is. For a while now I’ve been very passionate about my main idea the issue behind it and I knew from the beginning that this was what I wanted to do.

I started with talking about examples from each of the sources I used. I then synthesized them and gave my opinions. Then I talked about the article itself, meaning the aesthetics of it like the tone and word choices.

Throughout the blog I talk about each of my articles and the authors projects. I go into detail about their tones and how they come across to the readers.

Originally my lead was very long and choppy and it didn’t seem like it was going anywhere. Since I started my project so late I really just sat down and started writing and I never really had a traditional first draft. But when I was reading over my lede to make sure it made sense, I didn’t. So I looked at other leads on Huffington Post and I was able to get some inspiration.

I’d like to learn how to revise better on my own. I usually rely on others for revisions and I’d like to learn how to use myself as a resource and no depend on other people.

Do you know where your children are…because I doubt it’s the fruit section of the supermarket. But does that even matter anymore when the entire system has formed its own agenda?

The idea of food safety is so common in our day to day lives but it is still not taken seriously enough when both major companies and the government thrive on the fact that they can cover up these safety issues in spite of their ‘publicized efforts’ to help. The food industry has not been helping anyone but themselves, and this has become apparent in the last few years.

Many investigative journalists and brave writers have gone out in search of the truth about the food industry and what they found was definitely a wake up call. It is one thing to hear about an outbreak or two on T.V and brush it aside; it is another to completely disregard countless warnings about food safety that could endanger your well-being or even life. This is why when it comes to seeing who is really being protected we must look into the big food corporations and how the government is allowing them to get away with so much.

Food safety has become something completely different than what the average American comes to think of. It used to be the idea that both the corporations and government were on the people’s side, fighting for our health and vitality; it is no longer so.

Food safety has now become big corporations fighting to gain as much leeway from health regulations so they can stay within ‘code’ and adding other ingredients to counter balance the bacteria living within. Safety has become fighting against the bacteria that is already there, rather than fighting to never have it present at all. This then becomes a vicious cycle. The more the government allows this to go on, the more and more leeway the government gains and continues to abuse the system.

So when it comes to food safety, who is it really saving?

When looking at statistics on food-borne illnesses in the U.S. alone, we begin to see just how careless our government has been. “The most authoritative estimate of the yearly number of cases of food-borne disease in the United States defies belief: 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, 5,000 deaths” (Nestle, 27). Now what could be so safe about that? Nestle is a revered professor on food safety and wants to inform us all on what the dangers could be, because aren’t we all what we eat? She wants to bring forward facts from her own research and knowledge and give true information to those willing to listen. Because if all we ingest are toxins and runoff medication, what do we then become?

This doesn’t sound like food safety at all, this sounds like food politics. Covering up this immense number and making it sound as if these small outbreaks didn’t truly affect many people at all. “It was only a few people” (or so we saw on T.V.), “why should we stop our daily lives to worry about such an issue?” This excuse cannot be used so loosely anymore, especially when we begin to see how the government responds to these issues.

If you go on the internet to see how the government responds to food-borne illnesses, it seems to take it much more seriously on paper. The steps that need to be taken just aren’t being taken to the best of the governments ability and it is beginning to show. When searching the internet on how the government deals with food borne illnesses we are directed to a site named FoodSafety.gov. How convenient. The page that promotes safety has the url of GOV and yet the protocols they promise to enforce are not being taken seriously.

This all becomes relative to the American people until one sees just how close this could be to their own front door. This is why the government should be stepping in and helping rather than covering up. As both a large enough entity and ‘protector’ of the people, this is one of their largest tasks, and they are failing. And to an even further extent, they are guilty. We see this plainly in the documentary Food, Inc. 

In Food, Inc. we learn so much about the food industry and what this enormous job entails if we want to improve our food. We get to not only hear but actually see where our food is truly coming from, and it is not a pretty sight. Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc. felt it was time the people of the United States could finally see where their food was coming from and what was being put into it.

“80% of all antibiotics are used on factory farm animals. This statistic at first seemed unrealistic. How was it possible that all the people in the U.S. were only using 20% and then we essentially were eating what was left. What ends up happening is now Americans have a much larger intake of antibiotics than they thought. They are consuming all these products without realizing the consequences behind them.This then becomes an enormous problem that the government isn’t taking care of. This ‘overdose’ of medication is too much for the body and more than usual, they are left regretting that last burger at 2AM.

In Blake Hurst‘s article, he speaks about how although some produce is organic it doesn’t mean it is completely free of pesticides or additives. To grow organics they are allowed to use certain pesticides as long as they are natural ingredients. This is one of the large inconsistencies that Americans have. Even though something is organic, the fine print doesn’t mean the same thing that has been ingrained into our heads. This then goes back to the main issues in Food, Inc. and Nestle’s article, even though things may be understood to be a certain way that is not always the case, and even Hurst, who is on the ‘other side’ of food safety can see holes in the system in which he works.

Organic doesn’t always mean completely free of pesticides and that can be a common misconception. The food industries are thriving on these misconceptions so they can label certain items and charge more, even when the content isn’t completely true. Although Hurst is for conventional farming and it seems he is anti-organic, he is still fueling the fire and informing us on what he feels are issues with farming and pesticide quantity. And the government allows this to happen without a second glance. Once we look deeper into what the contents are, we learn just how misguided and malinformed we are.

This becomes extremely apparent once we read the Consumer Report, “You Are What They Eat.” This is a non-biased publication that brings different information to the table on food safety. It provides countless professionals as well as company players to give info and statistics on food safety subjects. One of their biggest points is if it is okay to eat meat that has been fed animal feed.

David Bossman, recent president and CEO of the American Feed Industry Association recounts its safety. “The food supply as it comes from the production source is very, very safe. We’ve seen that from all sources. And you can eat meat with confidence that not only is it safe, but it’s getting safer because of all the things that industry is doing” (Consumer Reports, 27). This man is a key player in the government as he has a job in the American Feed Industry Association. He has a much larger say in what would be fed to the animals we eat than the people, of course he would defend the actions of the food industry, for he is the man making money from it. Being president of the company only enforces his opinion to support it.

Those fighting against feed had another opinion entirely. Carol Tucker-Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, said nearly the opposite. “Rules protecting the feed supply aren’t as strong as they should be, and the FDA enforcement has been more wishful thinking than reality. Contaminated animal feed can result in contaminated food, putting the public health at risk” (Consumer Reports, 27). This woman has no ties to the large corporations or feed developers. She is just a woman who wishes to better the lives of countless Americans with the knowledge she has. This is the kind of information that the government isn’t giving us and in turn is betraying our trust in the government.

So before you decide to trust everything you hear on the news or something in a magazine, just think. Stop and think. Am i being told the truth about what I’m eating or should I take another look. It may end up saving your life.

Reflection:

1. My understanding of the writer’s project is to get deeper into the meaning of a text. Not to have one main thesis and base your entire paper on it but to have a more fluid project. Of course you need to have a certain main idea, but the rules are slightly changed. You don’t have to live in the parameters given by conventional writing but rather are given the freedom to choose words, phrases, and ideas that may otherwise have been left out from the argument. In my own article I feel I did this by making my main argument on food safety and drawing different opinions and quotes together to support how the government is failing to deliver on the subject. I also got to use more of an opinionated mindset in this paper which I usually do not get to do in the more conventional pf papers.

2. The sorting it out workshop I feel was most useful for its organizational skills. I personally do not enjoy the outlining process and this workshop forced me to sit down and truly think before I wrote a word of my blog. This was an odd experience for me, since I do all the outlines in my head. I found what was most useful was having to look for the passages ahead of time. I usually look for passages to fit my arguments once i reach that part of a paper. In this assignment I had to do the opposite. I shaped the argument around the different key passages I was taking from the articles. This became extremely helpful in this format since I am used to a different and much longer writing style, while these were choppy and to the point.

3. Synthesis was to somehow take different opinions and ideas and shape them into a singular argument. This was a challenge since some of the articles had completely opposing views from the others. For instance, when using Hurst in this article against food safety, I took how although he was for conventional farming, he was bringing other less reviewed safety issues to light. This was a way to use the source and still get valuable information.

4. During this unit I truly feel I have learned so much about food and where it comes from. I never found myself so involved at the grocery store. I usually just went for whatever it was that I usually bought, but I now take a second look. This would have gone on the same if not for this class. I also like the writer’s project. Having to veer from the thesis style writing was something I never thought I would do!

5. My main idea came with the title of this article “Food Safety, Who’s Safety.” I feel this is already honing in on what I wish to convey to my fellow readers. It is important for me to give them the info offhand since this is a blog post. Therefore, I made sure it was right in the audience’s face. The evolution then continued once I began to attack the main topic in the first few paragraphs, most specifically in the 5th when I go on to say exactly how I feel about big corporations and the governments lack of control. This is where my paper truly builds momentum.

6. When I wrote the first draft of this paper I just wanted to get all my ready information out there, so I did. I put all the passages I had ahead of time first. They were what I used to fuel my argument, but I obviously couldn’t start with them. So I worked around these main passages that I really wanted to be center arguments for my paper and went from there. In my later draft we can see that the passages are not right at the beginning but I have put my argument (and sass) at the beginning. This then allows for my point to be set and then the support afterwards.

7. One example of how I synthesized was near the middle of my paper. It shows two similar views and one alternative view, but they all come together for my argument. This then goes back to the main issues in Food, Inc. and Nestle’s article, even though things may be understood to be a certain way that is not always the case, and even Hurst, who is on the ‘other side’ of food safety can see holes in the system in which he works. This came together towards the end of my draft when all these passages were already down.

8. The lede that I had in my first draft was not very enticing, but rather more informative. “The idea of food safety is so common in our day to day lives but it is still not taken seriously enough when both major companies and the government thrive on the fact that they can cover up these safety issues in spite of their ‘publicized efforts’ to help.” That was my first lede, and although it was good for my paper later on, it was not my final lede. It was not until I was in class that I realized how much better it could get. This is when I came up with my new lede, “Do you know where your children are…because I doubt it’s the fruit section of the supermarket. But does that even matter anymore when the entire system has formed its own agenda?”

9. I would like to further work on the writer’s project since it was very difficult to stride from the thesis base paper that has been engraved in my mind. As an ETS major I adore using large vocabulary and make the piece fluid and nice to the ear. It is one of my favorite parts of my writing, but I cannot always get away with it. It isn’t the only writing I will need to do and I have to more easily veer from its coarse.

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.

Bernie Sanders: Monsanto and the FDA (6/17/1994)

Yes, we’d all like to know what is in our food. At the moment, we do not have a way to track our meals from the animal it came from to its packaging at the supermarket, and we’ll likely have to wait decades before we see any improvement on that front. However, with the elections coming up later this year, now would be a perfect time to address what the government is doing to make sure we all eat pathogen-free meals.

Who is on Our Side?

The debate on what we should put in our food is one that has been occurring since before many of us were even born. Humans have been eating for… well, just about as long as we’ve been around, and the argument over what we should and can eat cannot be traced back to a single source.

For just as long as we’ve been discussing our food, the question of who holds power, not only related to what we eat, but to our lives in general has been discussed. Long ago we created organized government in order to help us answer these important questions. Nowadays, we wonder if the government we helped create is really on our side in choosing what we should eat. Although discussing what we should put in our food is a meaningful debate, we should be addressing how the government needs to take further steps to convince us that they are concerned with our health.

We are the scientists who conduct research on various foods. We are the article writers who report the findings of our own kind. One could even argue that we are the people that choose what we should and shouldn’t eat. There is one problem in this debate, though. We’ve segregated ourselves into different groups lobbying for the abolition of different foods others of us may have enjoyed. This tear in our society has blurred the lines of who “we” are. Who is looking out for our best interests? Who is in the food business for selfish reasons? This new school of debate is relatively new compared to what we’ve been used to.

The Food Dispute

Since the dawn of the food debate, it has been a fairly black/white argument against the major food corporations. Companies like McDonald’s have been feeding us unhealthy food since its inception in 1940. Critics argue that McDonald’s does not care for our health, and is only in the market to make money. In the 2008 American documentary Food Inc., major corporations like Monsanto Company, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, and Perdue Farms are asked to be interviewed on what methods they use to manufacture our food. Every single one of them declined an interview.

While people on the other side of this debate agree that these companies are nowhere near innocent, they retort that it is up to us as individuals what we want to feed us and our children. This disagreement has led to the debate on organic vs. non-organic means of production.  Thousands of people have argued, with experts like Blake Hurst and Food Inc.‘s own Michael Pollan leading each side of the debate.

People like Pollan and Hurst have been arguing on the use of antibiotics and different chemicals in our food for the better part of a decade now. In their article You Are What They Eat, Consumer Reports offers a viewpoint on the argument. They raise the question “If all animals were raised organically – on feed lacking pesticides, animal byproducts, and antibiotics – would our food supply be safer?” responding “Yes, in some ways. There would be less risk of mad cow disease, little or no arsenic in chicken, and fewer bacteria able to resist antibiotics. But there’s no guarantee that organic feed is free of garden-variety bacteria, including salmonella.” Consumer Reports takes a mildly impartial stance on the issue, at least compared to experts Blake Hurst and Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health Marion Nestle.

Hurst, one of the most vocal supporters of the non-organic side of the argument has made his point very clear over the past 10 years. 4 years ago he published his article, Organic Illusions to reiterate his conclusions. He believes that “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…That means that when organic and/or conventional farmers provide the environment necessary for growth, plants and animals respond. It would be a shock if this did not occur, and it shouldn’t really be a story at all.”

A very controversial opinion to hold, indeed. Hurst’s ideals are met with opposition from many people like Nestle, who believe that “The use of antibiotics in animal agriculture affects food-borne illness in ways that are especially troubling. Growers treat infected animals with antibiotics, of course, but they sometimes give antibiotics to whole herds or flocks as a preventative measure.” Nestle argues that giving antibiotics to entire herds can make bacteria like salmonella grow resistant, and survive the cleaning process of the meat.  The problem is that there are simply too many variables that can influence bacteria in our food. In many cases of breakouts of illness, the point at which the food became infected is almost never known. This debate will therefore continue into the foreseeable future, perhaps for long after we are gone. Therefore, this article is not written to address the issue of what we should put into our food, but who we can trust to make sure we do not fall ill.

The Government and Our Food

Although the experts mentioned disagree adamantly on how we should process our food, they all agree on one point: our government may not have our best interests in their warm hearts. We can all agree that we must put a certain amount of trust into our government. Hurst mentions that “It is the position of the critics that you just can’t trust the government on these issues, which may indeed be the case. But the question arises: How can you trust the same government to enforce organic rules or guarantee the safety or organic pesticides? Or to approve the pharmaceuticals you rely upon to cure your illnesses?” The short answer? We can’t. Well, not to the extent that we do.

According to Consumer Reports many investigations “[Raise] 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.” Nestle shares the same opinion, stating that “We will see that food-borne illness is more than a biological problem; it is strongly affected by the interests of stakeholders in the food system – the food industry, government (agencies, Congress, and the White House), and consumers.”

Roberto A. Ferdman of The Washington Post also addresses issues of FDA and USDA oversight in his interview with Bill Marler, a lawyer specializing in food-borne illness. When asked to speak about his “few major frustrations with food safety in the United States,” Marler solemnly explains that “On the FDA’s side, which is 80 percent of our other food supplies and imports, there’s a skeleton crew of inspectors,” and that “Most of the food-borne illness outbreaks that [Marler has] been involved in over the past 20 or 30 years, most of the manufacturing facilities have never had an FDA inspector in them.”

So, everyone is in agreement that the government is not doing as much as they can to monitor the safety of the food we are eating and feeding to our children. Instances have occurred in the past decade where organic and non-organic foods alike have cause food-borne illnesses in people. Why not address the oversight of both foods instead of uselessly discussing which food we should eat? It seems concerning that not only are members of the government not regulating the food we eat properly, but also are making money from these big name companies. The candidates running for office cannot answer questions on steps they will take to ensure that our food is safe if they are not asked. It is up to us, the people eating these meals to bring it up. After all, when is the last time you heard of a government official suffering from the effects of E. coli?

 

Reflection Questions

Unit I / 10%

Using the homework, in-class workshops, revision workshops, etc.

 

• 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 thorough analysis of the texts before we began writing definitely helped me better understand the “writer’s project.” Analysis helped me look at this organic vs. non-organic debate in a more objective manner. Deeply analyzing what strategies these different writers implemented into their pieces helped with my own final piece immensely. Also, looking deeply into the ideas presented in these sources helped me find a topic that they all discussed and work on synthesizing all of their ideas to discuss my “project.”

• 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 workshop was probably the most useful tool in helping me write my blog article. The very meticulous organization was something I was never used to. I always used to grab ideas from hundreds of notes I had taken on different pieces, but this workshop helped very much in synthesizing specific ideas from each article. In particular, looking for similar words in article assisted me very much in locating related passages. It was then easy to pick out quotes from pieces that were related and synthesizing them into my piece.  

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

Synthesis to me is an accurate and fair way of incorporating sources into an argument one is trying to make in order to further strengthen ones argument and, by extension, piece in general. This strategy helped me a great deal when trying to mention the sources we had worked on. For example, I used Nestle and Hurst’s very opposing points to bring into light the heated debate that has been occurring for many years now in the food industry.

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

This unit not only taught me to consider what I should and shouldn’t eat, but also helped me grow as a writer. I realized halfway through discussing the sources in class that choosing points addressed in two different sources and comparing them is a very effective way of really understanding what it is that these writers/directors are trying to accomplish by making the pieces they make.

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

I began with an event that I thought was interesting and would generate a ton of controversy from the very people we’ve discussed in class (outbreak in Chipotle) to the topic of government oversight and power in the food industry. I made this shift because speculating what the experts we’ve discussed would think about an outbreak seemed less effective to me than writing about something these experts have all actually discussed in their pieces.

• 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.

Splitting the article into different sections with titles was most effective in organizing my piece. It helped me determine when I should start making transition sentences and when I should start wrapping up an argument I had been working on. For example, the passage “Although the experts mentioned disagree adamantly on how we should process our food, they all agree on one point: our government may not have our best interests in their warm hearts,” uses the topics discussed in the previous section to strengthen points made in the coming section.

• 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.

The entirety of the “Food Dispute” section is spent analyzing different opinions held by experts we have discussed. The following section then synthesizes an argument every source we have read makes, displaying how it should be a topic of discussion.

• 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 earlier drafts, I was not even aware that we would have to incorporate a lede. When we discussed what a lede is and examples of it in different articles, I realized that a lede is something I had read in almost every article I’ve ever read, but didn’t know there was a name for it. Making the lede concise was quite a task, and gave me new appreciation for the meticulousness of writers.

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

I would like to seek out more help from the on campus writing helpers. I know that as writers we tend to miss mistakes we make, and that other people are more likely to catch both spelling/grammar and writing mistakes we make. I’ve also always been generally weak on revision and wish to spend more time revising my work.

We as a human race and as a society have evolved and grown over time, so changes happening dramatically and some happening slowly. Every facet of human life has changed since the dawn of time. The food we eat know is much different than what our forefathers ate for the past hundreds and thousands of years, what’s startling is that “the way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000”(Food Inc.). As a result of this the human body is struggling to adapt to the rapidly changing diet. Subsequently, humans are paying a high toll and the government does not seem to be doing anything to fix this.

Often times the journey that our food takes may seem simple taking it from the farm to our table, it is much more complex than that. The food arrives to our tables after it makes its way through a complex network of farms, slaughterhouses, transport systems, processing plants, and then finally to the grocery stores where we buy our food. In addition to all of this there is also a bureaucratic environment that complicates the process of getting the food from the farm to our tables even more difficult.

Being that the process of getting the food from the farm to the table involves so many different people, organizations, and processes there is a litany of experts on the topic. Each expert has their own knowledge on their individual area of expertise in the process. As a result of this, every expert has their own story to tell, or a set list of responses they can reply to interview questions that their company permits them to say. Subsequently these responses paint two polar opposite pictures of what actually goes on during the process of getting the food from the farm to the kitchen table. As a result of this, the journey is shrouded in secrecy that often results in the deceit of the customer, that could either leaving them feeling satisfied with their meal or feeling ill from the results of negligently handled food.

While the text argues that there needs to be more government regulations in regards to the handling of the food we eat, my own view is that the government does not have enough resources to do so, nor the power to do so because of the lobbying done by the industrial food complex. The United States government relies upon two agencies to thoroughly inspect the food that we as consumers eat. These two agencies are the United States Department of Agriculture(USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration(FDA). The USDA is tasked with inspecting and regulating the meats being processed at the slaughterhouses, the carcasses of animals, as well as poultry. Whereas the FDA is responsible for regulating drugs consumed by both humans and animals, tobacco, the safe and responsible transportation of food, and the additives that are put into food. Though these two agencies have different responsibilities, they are faced with the same issue, a stunning lack of resources to effectively complete the task they are given. The federal government employs about “700 FDA inspectors [who] must oversee 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 20,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores, and 1.5 million vending operations”(Nestle). Similarly to this account, the USDA “has 7,000 inspectors or so, and they oversee 6,000 meat, poultry, and egg establishments –and– that slaughter and process 89 million pigs, 37 million cattle, and 7 billion chickens and turkeys, not to mention the 25 billion pounds of beef and 7 billion pounds of ground beef produced each year”(Nestle). Due to the tremendous responsibility that these organizations are tasked with, food that is not fit for human consumption often slips through the proverbial cracks and onto the dinner table.

Throughout the process of getting the food from the farm to the table, it becomes exposed to certain substances that can cause detrimental effects on human health. One particular foodborne illness that is common is the E. Coli virus. E. Coli bacteria is found in the digestive tracts of livestock, it becomes exposed to the consumer when the bacteria laden manure is used to fertilize crops. Though there is no way to eradicate the E. Coli bacteria found in the digestive tract of livestock, there is a way to reduce the chance of having food tainted by the bacteria, and that is the growing system utilized by the farmer. According to Blake Hurst there are two farming systems, those being the conventional approach and the organic approach. The conventional approach involves the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers in order to help the plant grow and remain healthy. On the other hand, the organic method does not use such strong pesticides and fertilizers in favor of organic alternatives. After detailing the differences between the different farming methods he then goes on to say “organic foods were considerably less likely than conventional foods to have pesticide residues, although organic foods were higher in e. coli”(Hurst).

The issue of food safety recently garnered national attention when the popular fast food restaurant Chipotle recently had an E. Coli outbreak in some of their locations. The Center for Disease Control found that there were two different outbreaks of E. Coli. The first outbreak was much larger than the second one and “55 people in 11 states”(NPR) whereas the second outbreak “infected 5 people in Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Dakota”(NPR). Another thing that contributes to the issue of food safety is the food that livestock consumes before being slaughtered. In a report published by Consumer Report it was found that “10 percent to 30 percent of feed can differ radically from what cows and poultry would eat in their natural habitat”(Consumer Report). The purpose of doing so is that a farmer can fatten up their livestock in the most rapid and cost effective manner. However, this does come at a price, the difference in dietary substanance often has adverse health effects on the animal which in turn leads to the increased of foodborne illness on the consumer’s end.

Due to the attention that this food safety crisis caused, there has been an increased call for the government to step in and introduce stricter regulations regarding the safety of the food that we consume. As previously the government already employs two food regulatory agencies, those being the FDA and the USDA, however, they do not have the resources to effectively protect the general public. Though the government has tried to increase its regulatory power, special interest groups and the large agricultural companies lobby and try to prevent the federal government from being able to enact harsher regulations and legislation. The 2008 documentary regarding the U.S. agricultural system, Food Inc., reveals that during the Bush administration several of his appointed leaders were part of the special interest groups who would have suffered had tougher regulations been enacted. For example, the head of the FDA during his presidency, Lester M. Crawford Jr. was the former executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association. In addition to this, the appointed chief of  USDA James F. Fitzgerald was the former chief lobbyist for the beef industry in Washington. Coinciding with this, in 1998 meat and poultry associations used their influence by suing the USDA into stripping them of their power to shut down food processing plants if they repeatedly failed microbial testing done by the USDA.

Clearly the journey our food takes from the farm to our table is far more complex than what it seems. The journey displays the complex relationship between the industrial food complex, government regulatory agencies, and the special interest groups who are trying to get their agenda pushed to the forefront of public attention.

Now after reading this you may find yourself asking if what you can do to try and solve the issue at hand. Though there are many things we as consumers can do, the most effective one will be what we choose to do with our money. By refusing to buy certain products or choosing to opt with a more organic choices we are able to show the major food corporations that control American agriculture that we demand change. Cutting into these companies’ bottom line will certainly attract their attention and garner change in their policies and actions.

Works Cited:

Nestle, Marian. “Resisting Food Safety.” (n.d.): 1-19. Print.

Hurst, Blake. “Organic Illusions – AEI.” AEI. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Kennedy, Merrit. “E. Coli Outbreaks At Chipotle Restaurants ‘Appear To Be Over,’ CDC Says.” NPR. NPR, 01 Feb. 2016. Web. 21 Feb. 2016.

You Are What They Eat. Rep. N.p.: Consumer Report, n.d. Print.

Food, Inc. Movie One, 2008. DVD.

Reflection Questions:

1. The “Writer’s Project” essentially argues that the traditional way of interpreting a piece solely by its thesis isn’t exactly the best way of going about and doing that. It argues that a better way of doing so is to consider the aims, methods, and materials that the author used throughout their piece.. I was able to identify the text’s “project” by carefully annotating the text and discussing its findings with the rest of the class. By listening to the findings of my peers I was able to see another perspective on the same material. My “project” was to inform the audience about the dangers of the American agricultural and how governmental oversight is largely at the root of the problem.
2. I believe that the “Sorting it Out” workshop was highly beneficial towards helping me complete the project. By completing it I was able to organize my thought into a rudimentary draft before I went about doing the leg work of writing the preliminary draft. The section that helped me out the most was Section E. In this section I had to take the summary of the sources and then utilize them in the terms of my own project. Through doing this I had an even better idea on how I will formulate my piece and in what I order I will utilize all of the sources.

3.From what I understand, I believe that synthesis involves analyzing all the given pieces in order to determine what stance they have on a particular issue. This is crucial because if I wasn’t able to tie all of the sources together in a clear and logical manner, my argument would crumble and cause me to lose the reader’s attention. The synthesis process manifested in my final draft because I was able to connect all of my sources in a clear and concise manner in order to form a stronger argument in the piece that I wrote.

4. One accomplishment that I felt that I achieved during this unit was learning how to blend persuasive and research writing. Through the blog format of this piece it is crucial to attract the reader’s attention through persuasive means, in addition to providing them with carefully researched facts in order to reinforce the claims made throughout it. In addition to this, I also learned what a lede is, and how to construct one. This is an important skill to know because a lede allows for me to attract the reader into reading the piece that I have written.
5. At first I wasn’t entirely sure what the main idea of my piece would be. After doing some of the workshops in class I was able to come up three main ideas, they were “While it seems that Organic food is healthier for the consumer, it does come at an increased risk of foodborne illnesses.”, “Although Monsonto produces seeds that do grow faster and provide cheaper seeds, they unfairly target farmers who do not use their product”, and “While the text argues that there needs to be more government regulations in regards to the handling of the food we eat, my own view is that the government does not have enough resources to do so, nor the power to do so because of the lobbying done by the industrial food complex”. Throughout the drafting process and peer review I was able to get a stronger idea on what idea I wanted to use, I decided that I could write the stronger argument with the third main idea that I came up with. I can attribute the evolution of my main idea to the workshops that were done in class and through peer review.
6. In order to structure this article I wanted to be able to connect the “project” of each piece together in a logical and coherent manner. Earlier in the drafting process I didn’t have my interpretations of each piece in any order, I simply just took what each piece was arguing and explained it. After doing so I began to connect them with my interpretation of them and how they can be tied together and how they tie together with my version of the ‘Writers Project”
7. In order to make this piece flow I needed to synthesize all of the sources I used in a logical manner. In order to do so I had to first have a clear idea on how I can connect them all. I decided to write my paper on how foodborne illnesses are becoming increasingly dangerous to society due to the lack of government action. Since not all of the articles played a direct hand in contributing in this argument I had to pick out the pieces that did. For example Blake Hurst’s piece didn’t mention government oversight, however it did mention the prevalence of foodborne illness in the American farm system. This then evolved into me being able to tie all of the sources together in order to make my argument stronger, as demonstrated in the essay above.
8. After being introduced to the concept of a lede I wasn’t entirely sure how to create an effective one. The first draft of my lede was too lengthy and didn’t have any of attention grabbing features that were in the examples on the lede and synthesis workshop activity. After receiving some peer review I decided to introduce a quote in it from one of the sources that I found to be particularly interesting. To be fair my lede did become more lengthy than the average lede, I think that the extra wordage was necessary to attract the reader’s attention and summarize what they will be reading about in the piece.

9. In the next Unit projects I want to be able to write stronger and more effective ledes. Being that this unit was the first time I was introduced to ledes, I feel that with even more experience and practice I can grab the reader’s attention and motivate them to read my work.

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.