When you take your first bite into that juicy cheeseburger or hearty burrito, I know I can attest for myself and I’m sure many more, that you’re definitely not thinking where exactly did that red meet or those vibrant colored vegetables originate, or better yet how harmful they can potentially be.

In just 2002, the typical American consumed an average of 137 pounds of beef, chicken, fish, and shellfish per year,” stated the article You are what they eat. While we are lead to believe that beef, chicken, fish and shellfish are the source of power and protein that are body craves, nonetheless, that is not always the case. Foodborne illnesses are becoming more and more prevalent amongst us. According to an article regarding food safety on behalf of NESTLE to Consumer Reports You are what they eat “Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella, and E-Coli are amongst the most common illnesses from these various foods, totaling 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths and most of us are not even aware of this.”

Unfortunately, many pathogens infect the animals we use for food without causing any visible signs of illness. Today a major proponent to these illnesses is the grand scale that our food is being produced on. Unbeknownst to many, the packaging on items is solely an illusion and only a few corporations control the whole industry. The monstrous production line today that all these products stem from allows for much more contamination, and less regulation.

Stated in Resisting Food Safety “In the late 1980’s health officials found salmonella in one-third of all poultry and estimated that 33 million Americans experienced at least one episode of foodborne microbial illness each year.” With this being said the outbreaks of food borne illnesses over time are becoming more dangerous and common. Even worse food producers are resisting the attempts of government agencies to impose controlled measures, and often pushing these issues in the dark. The article Resisting Food Safety clearly displays how the food producers are reacting when it states, “… food producers repeatedly deny responsibility for foodborne illness…” Having little cooperation from the production end makes it very difficult to improve the general standards as a whole.

Today, the most blatant illness is the E-Coli outbreak. E-coli derives from infections that come in direct contact with food and water that have been contaminated with feces; the virus then eventually kills red blood cells and can be lethal. Years ago people were only aware of undercooked hamburger, and ground beef to be the only sources of E. coli. However, today things such as fruits, vegetables, apple cider and sprouts have also been infected. A prime example of this was when E. coli unexpectedly swept Chipotle’s all across the country. An obstacle the company faced among the 58 cases that broke out was that Chipotle could not find the direct source of the E. coli, possibly stemming from the tomatoes or beef. In turn this prolonged the process longer and made it much harder for the company to detain the contamination.

Food, Inc. displays an instance in beef where the illness was lethal to 2-year-old Kevin. Kevin passed away from E-coli in his burger, and it turned out that the beef Kevin consumed was not recalled until 16 days after. Kevin’s mom sought justice in honor of Kevin, and now a law has now been put into place, “Kevin’s Law”- Kevin’s Law allows the USDA to shut down plants immediately.

We go to the supermarket and see dozens of options and brands, thinking that each came from different places. However, the truth is that this is just an illusion; while many have different logos and may look different to the eye, much of all the products come from the same places.

As quoted in Food, Inc. a farmer’s goal is to “produce a lot of food, with a small amount of land, at an affordable price.” Frankly, a few major corporations control the whole industry and small farms raising numerous kinds of crops and animals have been replaced by unfathomably large factory like methods.

Household brands such as Tyson, is a prime example of just that. Today, Tyson is one of the leading meat packing companies in the nation. In 1970, Tyson controlled 5-25% of the market; today Tyson now controls 40-80% of the meat packing market.

Unavoidably, when raising massive populations of chicken or cattle in the same location calls for more manure then can be contained or converted to fertilizer. When farmers normally raise an average amount of animals they can control and compost the waste, which is a process that usually generates enough heat to kill bacteria. Today that is much harder to get done with the volume of animals, inevitably, increasing the tendency for contamination and illness.

Another leading debate among the food industry is weather or not the suppliers and demanders should go organic or remain conventional.

Personally just in my local grocery store, I see the organic section continuing to expand each year. Years ago we didn’t have three isles dedicated solely to organic products with options that expand to organic shampoo, make up, toothpaste, and food. According to Food, Inc. the organic industry is growing at an annual rate of 20%, however as stated in Organic Illusions “The quantity of organic sales constitutes considerably less than 4 percent of the total market.”

Currently, the argument of organic food versus conventional food is also a rising topic among farmers. In the article You are what they eat discussed is going organic, “If all animals were raised organically on feed lacking pesticides, animal byproducts and antibiotics- would our food supply be safer? Yes in some ways. There would be less risk of mad cow disease, little or no arsenic in chicken … But there is no guarantee that organic feed is free of garden- variety bacteria, including salmonella.” Ironically when deciding between organic or conventional food, in organic food no check is ever done to test the reliability of these titles.

Although you are may be buying organically, organic foods have a higher rates of deadly E. coli, while conventional foods were higher in pesticide residue that substantially less toxic.

Even if we were to go organic there is not enough land readily available for production as quoted in Organic Illusions, “ If food demand nearly doubles over the next 50 years, as its predicted to do, there just isn’t enough arable land available to support a wholesale adoption of organic methods.”

Sadly today, the reality is that the food we consume on a daily basis is not always safe. Foodborne illnesses have had an affect all across the country in a variety of different manners. Many different kinds of illnesses have been seen with E. coli being the most dominant. The harsh reality is that our food is deriving from all the same places and it is very hard to regulate things on such a grand scale. Even organic “all natural” food is not always the answer. While, this may all be the circumstances today- I am hopeful that in the future with awareness, our food production ways can be changed and improved to lead a healthier lifestyle.

 

 

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Reflection Questions

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

When I first came in contact with Joseph Harris’s Rewriting How to Do Things with Texts article, I was slightly confused by all the information. He spoke about many different aspects in writing- defining the project of a writer, assessing uses and limits, some terms of art and about coming to terms with the overall text. After coming to class that week and braking down the subsections as a class, I gained a complete better understanding. To push beyond the test I found that you must a- figure out what the writer/artist is trying to do in the text. To my understanding what this meant is that you have to try and figure out what is the writer or authors overall motive with the text, why are they doing such a thing/creating this work of art? Secondly, b- you must understand what is his/her project?, what is the plan of work, set of ides and questions that a writer/artist presents, something that a writer is working on. Ultimately what part b is trying to convey is that you must understand how the writer is going literally to express part a, what is the plan of action? And lastly, part c- what someone has said and what she is trying to accomplish by saying it. What part c means is that you have to grasp the feedback of others and think about what you as a writer or artist is trying to get at, by presenting this piece of work?

•  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?

Due to unfortunate circumstances I was absent while the class worked on the sorting it out workshop. When looking at document on my own time, the organization as a whole helped me determine what you would be looking for in this assignment. The breakdown of everything made it very evident that you were looking for many sources with clear and concise arguments. Overall, the document helped to clarify exactly what you wanted in our final pieces.

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

To my understanding a synthesis is when you draw influences between a variety of different texts to display the writers understanding of a project and how they all complement one another. A synthesis is very important because when you are writing and having to collect information from multiple sources, knowing how to synthesize will help your further your overall goal in a more sophisticated manner- being able to take many different perspectives, compliments, and colliding views and combining them all. Learning about a synthesis undoubtedly helped me further my drafts and final blog article. Through out the course of unit one we gathered information from multiple texts and sources, such as Food Inc., You are what they eat, Organic Illusions and Resisting Food Safety. Having a better understanding of a synthesis allowed me easily combine them all together, drawing connection, perspectives, opinions between one another to form my final blog article.

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

Overall, my own personal accomplishment during this unit is that I know feel incredibly more comfortable being able to compose a piece using many different perspectives yet still come to a general consensus. I thought it was nice how we slowly worked in all the different pieces and gained a firm grasp on each before moving to the next one. The grids and handout that we made comparing the many different sources were very helpful. The unit was well organized and allowed me to understand each topic clearly.

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

The evolution of my main idea came from 500-word piece, and still remains in my final draft when I state in my introduction, “While we are lead to believe that beef, chicken, fish and shellfish are the source of power and protein that are body craves, nonetheless, that is not always the case.” I think that this is the evolution of my main idea because from such a young age we are taught the food is a need for survival, which it is. However, so many people are blind to the problems we as a nation are facing on so many different levels. Its progress is shown through out my whole piece. Reiterating the struggles that many of us are unaware of, and proving the blindness in the middle when speaking about how about only a few companies control the industry in its entirety and how organic food may just be an misconception.

•  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.

An organizational strategy that I implemented to create this blog article was in my first draft introduction paragraph I touched upon all three main ideas I was going to speak about. One being the illnesses itself, the second the grand scale that our food is produced on, and the third the debate between organic and conventional food. For example, “In just 2002, the typical American consumed an average of 137 pounds of beef, chicken, fish, and shellfish per year,” states the article You Are What They Eat. While we are lead to believe that beef, chicken, fish and shellfish are the source of power and protein that are body craves, nonetheless, that is not always the case. Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella and E-Coli are amongst the most common illnesses from these various foods, totaling 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths. Today a major proponent to these illnesses is the grand scale that our food is being produced on. Many argue that the answer to these unfortunate problems is to grow organically while many disagree and think that conventional food is just fine and if not better overall.” In my later drafts and making my work more “blog like” I broke pieces up and start off a little differently with my lede stating, “When you take your first bite into that juicy cheeseburger or hearty burrito, I know I can attest for myself and I’m sure many more, that you’re definitely not thinking where exactly did that red meet or those vibrant colored vegetables originate, or better yet how harmful they can potentially be.”

• 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.

An example in my final draft where I successfully synthesize is when I say, “Unfortunately, many pathogens infect the animals we use for food without causing any visible signs of illness. Today a major proponent to these illnesses is the grand scale that our food is being produced on. Unbeknownst to many, the packaging on items is solely an illusion and only a few corporations control the whole industry.” This is a prime example of a synthesis because I use information from Resisting Food Safety, You are what they eat, and the film Food Inc. This synthesis along with my piece as a whole evolved throughout the drafting process for me because because each time I drafted  learned how to better compact, diverge, and collide ideas.

• 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 and prior to discussing ledes I did not have one incorporated at all. I started off my draft going straight into statistics and stating, “In just 2002, the typical American consumed an average of 137 pounds of beef, chicken, fish, and shellfish per year,” thinking this would excite the reader. While I think this can also be a good tactic, a lede is much better. In class when we did peer editing, my edior suggested I incorporate a lede instead of going straight into the facts, so prior to these statistics in my final blog I article I added, “When you take your first bite into that juicy cheeseburger or hearty burrito, I know I can attest for myself and I’m sure many more, that you’re definitely not thinking where exactly did that red meet or those vibrant colored vegetables originate, or better yet how harmful they can potentially be.”

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

During the next unit project and through out the course of this class I would like to work on making my writing overall less wordy and more concise.

Farm fresh, organic, anti-GMO. All are key words that pop out to any consumer when they are shopping in the grocery store. But how natural and safe is the food we eat? For some, it is shocking that here in the US, with all of our regulations and restrictions that food is produced the way it is. Think the government has control over the food industry? Wrong. Follow the money. It will lead right to multinational corporations who are the ones controlling food production. Several authors have articulated their own views on food production in their own publications, with arguments varying from whether organic or conventional farming is better and food borne illnesses, but all noting somewhere that these problems come from a lack of government control.

One of the biggest issues with food production in the US is where the power lies, and it does not lie in the government’s hands. Marion Nestle, an author and NYU professor argues in her publication, “Resisting Food Safety”, that the government needs to intervene more in the food production process.

 

Change is attempted in the 1970’s when the CDC begins conducting studies about food borne illnesses to find out how big of a problem they really are. “Nearly half the participating states were reporting no outbreaks or very few, suggesting considerable underreporting” (Nestle 38). One of the biggest reasons for their results is many people do not report when they get food poisoning, they think it is just something that happens from time to time. Are you kidding me? The fact that people accept that is why the food industry continues to have problems with quality control. The CDC attempted to expand what they thought be signs of food borne illnesses, such as a person experiencing diarrhea. Granted an episode of diarrhea does not necessarily mean someone has a food borne illness, but the CDC is just trying to get their numbers up and if that happens, then maybe policies will change.

People seem to be assuming that they were the only one who got sick from eating that food whereas in reality thousands of others could have gotten sick too, because an entire line of food that was produced could have been infected with a food borne illness. Like hello, there are other people that exist outside of you. One example of a food borne illness is E. coli. What is E. coli? Oh it is just a potentially fatal food borne illness that is transmitted via fecal matter. Now if someone gets a food borne illness from E. coli, it will be reported, as Nestle points out in her article, because of how potent the bacteria is. But for smaller cases that are not, there still could have been an entire line of food that affected thousands. Now granted, this study was done 40 years ago, more people today realize how big of an issue food borne illnesses are.

Reporting food borne illnesses however should not be solely up to consumers to make reports, the FDA should be cracking down on food producers. But as Nestle states, this is another area where problems lie. The FDA only has about 700 food inspectors nation wide and are tasked with overseeing 30,000 food producers, 128,000 grocery stores, 785,000 commercial and industrial food establishments, 1.5 million vending machines, and oh yeah, all the food imported into the US. What lamebrain in Washington said, yeah that’s humanly possible.

All of these places are supposed to be inspected annually, and with the nearly nonexistent number of inspectors, the FDA is only able to check about 2% of these places annually. Fantastic! In fact, in another article, “You Are What they Eat”, by Consumer Reports “loopholes still allowed certain risky feedstuffs to be fed to cattle and their ruminants…‘the FDA does not know the full extent of industry compliance’” (CR 29). This proves that the FDA does not have a handle on what goes on in the food industry and neither does the government because food manufacturers are able to get away with giving potentially disease infested feed to animals and if the FDA is not able to inspect producers, people will continue to get sick and the government still will not be able to do much without sufficient evidence.

These articles and statistics are dated so when looking at an article written in 2009, the picture of control in the food industry looks a little nicer. A 2009 article written by Common Dreams, claims the Obama administration is in the process of investigating Monsanto, a seed company that provides seed to nearly all farmers in the US, for anticompetitive activity. Common Dreams states at the beginning that Monsanto is not an entirely evil corporation responsible for issues in the food industry, but they are a big problem. Basically, Monsanto has become a monopoly in the seed market, which is illegal. However, Monsanto cleverly gets around this by spending big money lobbying to get their people jobs within the government. This is a classic case of a company exploiting its power to get what it wants. By putting its people on the inside, they now gain even more control and power over the food production industry and protect themselves. So this raises an important question, if the Obama administration is trying to sue Monsanto, will it even be possible with Monsanto’s people on the inside?

In addition to the government not having a firm grasp on the activities of multinational food companies, they are also lacking in the organic foods section. In an article written by Blake Hurst, he claims that no testing is done on foods with organic labels to see if they are in fact organic and the producer followed all the guidelines. Now, Hurst’s article, “Organic Illusions”, needs to be taken with a grain of salt because the man has no sources, he just sort of rambles on about his own beliefs about the food industry, while once or twice mentioning some Stanford study, but never giving real data. However, if Hurst’s claim is true, then lack of testing is a major issue. Hurst claims the reason for organic food’s success is due to marketing and people view organic food as healthier for them. The major issue here is if people think that what they are buying is better for them, but no testing is being done, then consumers are being misled. If government testing is required on organic foods, not all because that would be impossible, but testing of certain batches of food produced, then food companies will not be able to get away with selling something misleading.

While some argue that organic food offers no real health benefits, farmer Joel Salatin from the documentary Food Inc. says otherwise. The food Salatin produces contains considerably less bacteria and chemicals than food produced by major companies. And he was almost shut down because all of his food production takes place in the open air, instead of the much healthier disease infested factory. Salatin states during his interview that the government wants to shut him down because they think there are more bacteria and pathogens flying around in the open air that can contaminate his food. In Salatin’s case, the government is actually trying to shut down the wrong person because of his methods. This is just another prime example of the government believing the way major food companies produce is the safest and best way. If the government does its job and starts taking control over the food industry rather than just seemingly letting companies do what they want and not really having consequences, then food may actually become safer for consumers.

Ultimately, government control is necessary for safer and better food. As shown by the authors and documentary, the government does not have the control over the food industry that it needs to. The US food industry contains many problems from lack of FDA employment to allowing producers to give potentially bacteria infested feed to their animals and not testing organic foods. This lack of involvement means more consumers could get sick and food producers can continue to do what they do without consequence. Government involvement is just the first step in producing safer food.

Reflection:

For the writer’s project, my understanding was using the readings and film to find common arguments between all the sources and analyze and synthesize those arguments. In the sorting it out assignment, the most helpful section for me was finding the passages that connected and shared the same type of idea. That section definitely made things easier for me when I started writing the article and was trying to make connections. The connection section in sorting it out also helped me to figure out which ideas and arguments I should lead with, in order to make my article flow and also be compelling. To me synthesis is being able to make connections between articles and arguments. It’s important to do this because if you’re working with many different texts but never connect them the entire article feels disconnected. My accomplishment during this unit was definitely formatting my article to flow and sound the way I wanted it. When I started writing at the beginning I had 3 long paragraphs and once I was able to break them down more, the article seemed to come together well. For the main idea I looked at all the articles and tried to find common points they shared. This way it’d be much easier for me to connect the articles together by finding common ground between them. At the beginning my organization was pretty horrendous. My paragraphs were too long and had multiple arguments woven into them. I went to the writing center in order to work with someone to figure out how I could reorganize my article so the paragraphs were shorter, but I wasn’t compromising the writing. I successfully synthesized 3 texts in the beginning of my article when I’m talking about government control and food borne illnesses. The food borne illness part of my argument on government intervention had a lot of good information behind it, so the biggest thing for me was to make sure that the reader wouldn’t get lost in all the information, that I explain along with giving data. As the process went on, I found that my writing seemed to technical, lots of data, not enough analysis, so once I fixed that it flowed much better. For me the lede actually wasn’t too challenging. What I try to do when I’m working on an opener for a writing assignment is to just write whatever comes to mind and then work from there. When we did peer editing I was told my lede was too long, so I tried to make it as concise as possible, in order to grab the reader, but not bore them with a long sentence. One goal I have to work on for the next assignment is to keep my lede concise and to really try and get as much analysis out of the sources as possible.

Work Cited:

Hurst, Blake.  “Organic Illusions”.  American Enterprise institute.  1 Oct. 2012.  Online article.

Kenner, Robert, dir, Food Inc.  Magnolia Pictures.  2008.

Nestle, Marion.  “Resisting Food Safety”.  Online article.

Richardson, Jill.  “Sick of Corporate Control Over Your Food?”.  Common Dreams.  28 Dec. 2009.  Online article.

“You Are What they Eat”.  Consumer Reports.  Online article.

https://myaquanui.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Ecoli.jpg

http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/content/images/episodes/foodinc_444.jpg

http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/files/2010/02/foodinc2.jpg

How much do you actually know about what is in your food? In recent years several publications have examined the food industry. The discussion is complex, filled with criticisms and shared blame but most consumers are in the dark about the pertinent issues.

All issues related to and relevant to food safety are reflective of a three way power struggle between the industry, the government, and consumers. This matters because the industry is more impactful than the government in certain areas. Consumers should be concerned because they are increasingly at the mercy of the economic-interest of major food corporations. After reading various texts, there are a few topics that I could clearly identify at the crux of the debate. Criticism of government regulation over the food industry, and the dangers of foodborne illness was featured in almost every reading.

The Consumer Reports article You are What They Eat inquiries into the lack of government monitoring of the food fed to the animals we eventually eat and the adverse effects thereafter.  By providing the current narrative between industry and concerned officials, the article effectively attacks the credibility of food industry executives. After highlighting the inclusion of waste and antibiotics in the feed of farm animals such as cows and chickens, David Bossman the CEO of American Food industry Association is quoted as saying “You can eat meat with confidence that it’s not only safe but getting safer” (Consumer Reports, 27) Yet, other officials admit to being aware of the potential for the feed to still become contaminated in several parts of the process. Two key observations made by the text are that the appropriate organizations do actually have oversight and final approval over feed ingredients, and even still certain health labels and claims on food are unverified.  I wish to add that this is one of the most important manifestations of the food industry’s power over consumers. Families and individuals are severely disadvantaged, and at times endangered, when shopping because they don’t where there food comes from or how it is produced and must trust labeling. As a reader and consumer of food, I naturally wondered why the government would be so negligent in this area. The investigations conducted in the documentary Food Inc. do the work of providing some answers.

In the film, the directors and producers examine every aspect of food production in an attempt to spotlight controversial industry practices for an uninformed audience. Eric Schlosser, the author and co-producer, explains that “For years during the Bush administration, the chief of staff at the USDA was the former chief lobbyist to the beef industry in Washington; the head of the F.D.A. was the former executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association. These regulatory agencies are being controlled by the very companies that they’re supposed to be scrutinizing”. (Food Inc.) This is possible due the fact that only a handful of companies control the food system, another observation made in Food Inc. What Schlosser is speaking to at the end of that quote has actually been a continuing occurrence through recent history. The trend illuminates how the amassing economic power of food corporations is being transformed into political power, further tipping the balance of influence away from the government. The two publications I’ve discussed thus far attacked the issues of regulation from the outside attempting to peek in. Marion Nestle was able to provide more of an authoritative insight in her article Resisting Food Safety.

Pulling from her experience as the senior nutrition policy advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services, Nestle critiques the internal structure of regulatory agencies. She argues that the system is outdated by providing the facts and statistical details as to why government action is so limited. She insists that there is more protection for producers than the public, “If anything the demands on the FDA are even more unreasonable…The FDA’s budget allocation for inspection purposes was…minuscule by any standard of federal expenditure”. (Nestle, 59) The arguments made by Nestle about the daunting tasks provided to food regulation organizations stood out to me. Extending the text’s observation that regulatory government agencies are more concerned about vying for resources and jurisdiction than public safety, I wish to add that the dilution of their responsibilities contributes to the dilution of their power. It is this environment that influences the behavior noted by Nestle.

Foodborne illness is the danger fostered by current regulatory practices.  This issue is framed by power as well. As the current system is constructed, all the texts point to the fact that consumers, the industry and the government are all severely disadvantaged when it comes to preventing foodborne illness.

The major function of Consumer Reports as a publication is to caution and advise uninformed consumers. This particular article is characterized by explaining the source and risks of two major food related afflictions.  They are effective in this effort by clearly elucidating how infectious prions in beef feed can lead to mad cow disease in humans and antibiotics in chicken feed can expose people to arsenic, in a concrete and organized arrangement. Yet, even though the sources of the diseases are known, the author explains how preventative efforts are still hampered. “The FDA is aware of a handful of incidents worldwide in which salmonella infections in humans were linked to animal feed… connecting human illness to contaminated feed is difficult” (Consumer Reports, 28). Extending the text’s observation about the difficulty linking feed ingredients to foodborne illness, I wish to add that the dangerous aspect of this issue is that the industry again reigns superior in influence. If it is difficult to link the ingredients known to have potential for harm to actual outbreaks, it is easier to defend their inclusion.

In contrast to Consumer Reports, in addition to providing information Food Inc. makes effective rhetorical appeal to emotion in order to make its arguments. The inclusion of Barb Kowalcky’s story regarding her son Kevin emphasizes the dangers of foodborne illness in a way that effectively hits home. Ms. Kowalcky narrates how her son developed hemolytic-uremic syndrome in reaction to contaminated hamburger meat, while playful photos and videos of the deceased play on screen. Her experience expands on the difficulties of foodborne illness touched upon in Consumer Reports. “It took us almost two or three years and hiring a private attorney to actually find out that we matched a meat recall”. Kevin’s Law, passed after his 2001 death, gives the USDA the power to close down plants with contaminated meat. What was alarming to me was that the government didn’t already reserve this power and that it took death and years of lobbying for them to assume this power. The Kowalcky family was powerless to prevent their son from eating the tainted meat. The industry lacked significant power to identify and contain the contaminated food, and the until Kevin’s law the government lacked the power to shut down production of contaminated meat.

Nestle’s article, being more factual and educational in nature pinpoints, the specific challenges faced by organizations in identifying the source of foodborne illness. She notes “most episodes of food poisoning are not very serious… it is difficult to collect accurate information about the number of cases and their severity”. (Nestle, 37) She is also able to tangibly clarify what I have observed as prioritizing of economic interests over public safety.  Nestle provides data showing how foodborne illness presents a multi-million dollar cost to the industry in the form of recalls and loss of reputation. I similarly hold one of the text’s position that consumers do share some of the responsibility in issues of food safety.  This was a perspective touched on in all articles in fact. Food Inc., tries through rhetorical exercise to emphasize the power consumers have by selective spending when it comes to food. Consumer Reports urges people to utilize their local means of political influence to affect change by signing petitions and such. Yet, as Nestle observes the blame and responsibility is shared equally between producers, consumers, and regulatory agencies. Although, revisiting these issues of food through the framework of power, it becomes clear that power is concentrated in the industry. Therefore, so should accountability for food safety.

Our country’s food system is far from perfect. Marion Nestle accurately describes my attitude towards the issue when she states “The costs of foodborne illness to individuals, to society, and to food companies should encourage everyone to collaborate in efforts to ensure safe food.”(Resisting Food Safety, 61). We consumers have to stop buying into common narrative and false sense of security regarding what we eat. The potential dangers are very evident and acknowledged by all interests involved. We cannot rely on the government, their influence has been tempered by a complex system of checks and balances. A system where their power is imbalanced and too often checked. It is our best interest to demand better.

 

Reflection Questions

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

 

I understand the writer’s project to be the arguments or observations they are trying to make and how they go about making them. In order to identify the texts projects, I first tried to synthesize the author’s thesis, and then identify different compositional strategies they employed. My project with this particular blog article was to compile information on food safety and present it through the framework of power. My overall thesis was that consumers need to reclaim power in the equation, and I used the various arguments made by the texts to highlight where power currently lies.

 

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

 

I appreciated the Sorting it Out workshops for organizing my thoughts. I found the sections connecting passages in the text and identifying the various projects to be extremely beneficial when it came to writing the article. The workshop helped me address all prompts for the assignment and then figure out how to present it.

 

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

 

Synthesizing in my understanding if concretely expressing the main arguments of the text, providing key details and evidence, without summarizing. Its importance lies in the analysis of the text, which manifested directly into the article.

 

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

 

I think the practice in synthesizing, helped me read texts more critically. An accomplishment for me was identifying and utilizing evidence from the differing text effectively in my article, finding connections and relevance.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

My original main idea was just the focus or thesis of my 500 word reading response. “After reading the texts, there were several issues prevalent throughout all of the texts. The topic of government regulation over the food industry was touched upon briefly in almost every reading. Two in particular went into depth over the actions and lack of actions on behalf of organizations such as the FDA and the USDA.” After the sorting it out workshop, my main idea developed more into my own observations and opinions about the food industry “All issues related to and relevant to food safety are reflective of a three way power struggle between the industry, the government, and consumers. This matters because the industry is more impactful than the government in certain areas. Consumers should be concerned because they are increasingly at the mercy of the economic-interest of major food corporations.”

 

 

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

 

My lede is designed to draw the readers attention the issue of food in general. My introductory paragraph is where I declare my observations and main idea. I tried to organize the article around the issues transitioning from text to text. After synthesizing the text as it related to the issue I was discussing at a particular point, I made sure to highlight how the argument or issue relate to my main idea and opinions. I often utilized my topic and concluding sentences to compare and contrast the articles and their various approaches. I nested the textual evidence in the heart of paragraphs to support the claims I made in my synthesis of the texts. My concluding paragraph revisits the main idea but ends with my own personal assertions and opinions.

 

 

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

 

“The Consumer Reports article You are What They Eat inquiries into the lack of government monitoring of the food fed to the animals we eventually eat and the adverse effects thereafter.  By providing the current narrative between industry and concerned officials, the article effectively attacks the credibility of food industry executives.”

 

“In the film, the directors and producers examine every aspect of food production in an attempt to spotlight controversial industry practices for an uninformed audience.”

 

 

“Pulling from her experience as the senior nutrition policy advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services, Nestle critiques the internal structure of regulatory agencies.”

 

In earlier drafts, my synthesis was just a statement of the author’s project or thesis. After the lede workshop, I revisited the synthesis and focused on being concise and informing the reader about the most important things I want them to know about the texts.

 

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

 

My lede did not undergo much change from first to final draft. I felt I really benefitted from the workshop we did in class. I immediately knew I wanted to incorporate a question in order to draw the reader’s attention. I figured it would work effectively since the issues of food involve so many questions.

 

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

 

I would like to improve on composing more concisely when appropriate.

What goes into a $1 MacDonald’s Big Mac? Well, according to McDonalds’ website, it includes two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame-seed bun. Now, let’s look a little closer and focus on just the cheese. Its main ingredients are milk, cream, water, cheese cultures and cheese enzymes. Looks good. The list doesn’t stop there, though. For creamy, even melting, there is sodium citrate and sodium phosphate in the cheese. For texture and flavor, there’s salt, citric acid, lactic acid, acetic acid, sodium pyrophosphate and natural flavor. For consistent color, there is “color added.” For slice separation, there is soy lecithin; and to prevent spoilage, there is sorbic acid. This is all that goes into one tiny slice of American cheese. But let us put aside how over-processed our food has become. The bigger question is, how can all that work culminate in a burger that cost a mere dollar? Is the system actually so streamlined and efficient or are there a multitude of costs that are deliberately hidden from us?

In 2008, the documentary, Food Inc shocked the public by revealing what goes into their food. It also exposed the laws and regulations that allow for such horrors to happen. While it seems like food policies are drafted with our interests in mind, it is actually the opposite. Many of the policies protect the food industry by deliberately withholding information and creating the illusion of cheap, safe food. Food industries fight almost desperately against any sort of transparency. They fought against calorie information, trans fat, country-of-origin labelling for meats and GMO labelling. Veggie Libel Laws make it against the law to criticize the food industry’s foods. In Colorado, you can actually go to prison for it. The Cheeseburger bills makes it incredibly hard for consumers to sue food producers for enabling obesity. The FDA and the USDA have such a convoluted division of responsibilities yet do not actually have the power to recall food products. The list goes on, but flies under the radar. Consumer Reports released an article focusing on what goes into feeding the meats we eat. Chicken can be fed processed feathers, feces, meat and bone. Downer cows—cows too sick and diseased to be sold for meat—are regularly fed to chicken, fish and other cows. Farmed salmon are fed concentrated fish meal and fish oil. It doesn’t take an expert to say that this sounds ridiculous. Why is nobody stopping this practice? Why do we never hear about this on our regular news outlets?

All this is enabled by the practice of regulatory capture. Many FDA and USDA officials were former employees of these big food companies that the organization regulates. Monsanto’s former executive, Michael R. Taylor is Commissioner of the FDA. Margaret Miller was a chemical laboratory supervisor at Monsanto but her job in the FDA now involves approving reports like those she wrote. This conflict of interest has resulted in heavy subsidies on the fast food industries that feed the big meat and corn industries. A meal at MacDonald’s isn’t actually cheaper to the consumer than a healthy, home cooked meal. It is heavily subsidized to make it appear so. Policies subsidize the ingredients, the factories and even the workers who put together these cheap burgers. Over half of all fast food workers are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, getting 7 billion dollars of aid. This enables fast food companies to pay minimum wage, which further subsidizes their costs. As these atrocities pile up, it creates the illusion that unhealthy fast food is cheaper, tastier and, by far, more desirable than healthy food; this creates a conundrum for the poor whose financial strains denies them the power of choice.

The individual consumer can, of course, influence this. This is where the business oriented system works in the customer’s favor. If there is a demand, there will be a supply. The prevalence of organic food is an example of this. Big companies such as Walmart and Wegmans started looking into organic options when consumers started to grow interested in organic foods. Marketed for their health value due to not utilizing chemical pesticides, organic food became popular with consumers seeking a healthier option after several prolific health scares. With increased demand, organic farmers were able to expand both their business and product line. Nowadays, most supermarkets have an organic section and the selection of organic foods are ever expanding. The same applies to safe food. We can choose to buy free-range eggs and pasture-fed beef. Every time we purchase, we are voting. It is our choice to vote for safety and transparency or blissful ignorance.

But of course, governmental policies are making it very hard to choose, even for those who have a choice. The choice is even harder, and sometimes impossible, for those who don’t. For those less well off, the choice between a cheap burger and a far more expensive healthy meal is made for them, whether they prefer the burger or not. This goes back to the idea of the $1 Big Mac. The poor go for the cheap calories. This produces the illusion of demand and feeds the industries. In turn, the companies produce more supply, resulting in a vicious cycle. Our policies does little to alleviate this and instead, most of them support this trend. It is not enough to educate the public if we are barraged by attempts to un-educate, attempts enabled by the very organizations that are supposed to protect us. Eating better needs to start from the policies, or even by ensuring that food safety laws are really ensuring only that.

Pierce Noonan

Prof. Amy Barone

WRT205

Unit 1 Blog Article

The Truth Behind Food Saftey

The way we eat has changed more over the past 50 years than the previous 10,000 years before that. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It is a great representation of the idea on how much change our generation has accomplished. However, when we have a food system that is being brought up with topics like federal oversight, E. coli breakouts, and even abusing and bullying local farmers and seed planters; there is definitely still room for improvement. Our food system is being blamed for lying to the consumers about the truth behind the production of food and exactly how safe these products on our shelves of a food market are. The major companies in our food system are abusive to smaller workers to an extent that it needs to be contained. Federal oversight to the point where the consumer is hurt by food borne illnesses is a major problem and there must be an answer to this issue.

There are food industries and producers that oversee consumer health in exchange for high production rates and vast money income. Federal oversight is a problem that occurs when it comes to the production of food. There have been numerous documentaries, articles, blogs, and other pieces of writing that try to state the overall issue of federal oversight. In one of the highest viewed documentaries ever, Food Inc., producer Robert Kenner said, “The industry doesn’t want you to know exactly what you are eating.” This is because what we are actually putting into our system is much different than what it tastes like. From a Consumer Reports article, “You Are What They Eat;” the title says it all. We are eating what the animals ate in the past and this is not always a good thing. From this article, it is spoken that “Cattle and chickens are still given plant-based feed: Corn and soybean meal make up 70 percent to 90 percent of most commercial animal feed. But the remaining 10 percent to 30 percent of feed can differ radically from what cows and poultry would eat in their natural habitat.” That 10 percent to 30 percent could harm the animals and then that means it is likely to harm the consumer as well. Furthermore, “The government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, has called the US Food and Drug Administration’s data on inspections of animal-feed producers “severely flawed.” When the FDA is being called out for flawed inspections, then what else is there to protect the consumers?

Not only does the government and food industries neglect their flawed work, but consumers are being punished with food borne illnesses, like E. coli. E. coli is a bacteria that forms from fecal matter and is proven to be harmful and in some cases fatal. From Food Inc., expert Barbara Kowalcyk lost her 2 and half year old son to this deadly disease. This is a loss of life because of the lack of moral and sustainability in the food system. Along with the loss of life to her son Kevin, E. coli breakouts across the US have been sprouting including the most recent Chipotle Mexican food chain incident. According to the FDA website, “The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with state and local officials are investigating two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections that have been linked to food served at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in several states.” According to this credible website, as of January 27, 2016, the CDC reported a total of 55 infected people with 21 reported hospitalizations within these states. This along with all of the small cases of other food borne illnesses that aren’t reported are a major issue. How can we eat something if we are not 100 percent sure it is healthy enough to make it through the night without having to call a doctor? E. coli merits extra attention because it shows how well the food system and society changes and how to provide new opportunities for the spreading of disease through food. From an article by Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, “Resisting Food Safety,” “E. coli infections originate from farm animals, and such animals increasingly harbor this variant.” Running back to the original topic of federal oversight; where the food is produced is where the problem holds and turning the other way from such conflicts results in lack of trust in the food production process, especially sometimes resulting in the worst case, loss of life.

Not only does this disease erect at the hands of the producers watch, the ingredients farmers give their animals are creating other issues as well. From the Consumer Reports article, mad-cow disease is brought up and it is explained that such an illness is transferred up the food chain. From this article, a protein known as a prion, “can be malformed and infect cud-chewing animals with mad cow disease.” This illness is spread throughout the community it lives in and eventually infects other organisms beyond that ecosystem. Even in an article, “Organic Illusions,” by a Missouri farmer and frequent contributor to The American, Blake Hurst, he argues the effects of organic against conventional styles of farming. It is stated that, “organic foods were considerably less likely than conventional foods to have pesticide residues, although organic foods were higher in e. coli.” No matter how you make food or treat it, there are chances of e. coli. However, food borne illness is a problem that effects the consumer because producers and whoever is in charge do not commit to the responsibility of providing healthy food products.

In most cases, farmers farm for bigger companies and they are doing what their contract tells them to do. For example, an expert chicken farmer, Carol Morison, had her contract terminated by a bigger company because she wouldn’t upgrade to the closed window ventilation housing. She was one of the only people that admitted, on Food Inc., that what farming has become shouldn’t be called farming anymore, rather an assembly line. It is a problem that the people like Barbara Kowalcyk, who lost her son to a disease that came from a food that got passed by inspection, can’t even tell a documentary analyst what she ate and why because she was afraid of being sued by the food agency. Not only is federal oversight a major problem, but the way the food agency is protected by themselves is also a major problem.

Abuse is a word that is used in just about any category, you name it. Child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, verbal abuse, and even food abuse. Small time farmers are being abused and treated maliciously. From Food Inc., a seed farmer laughed when he was asked the question, “What happens if a farmer saves the seeds?” He then answered, “There is only one company that does this now and that is Monsanto.” Then, he explains that Monsanto will investigate anyone who tried to save seed. Another seed cleaner Moe Parr was brought to trial after Monsanto had set up an investigation into him and other local seed cleaners. Moe Parr said, “What scared me the most…” and then explained that Monsanto had records of every call, text, and credit card purchase he has made. Moe Parr had to settle with Monsanto because he could no longer pay the bills. Moe Parr was bullied by Monsanto and he is definitely not the only one to ever have been. The almost monopolized company of Monsanto, is not even worried about the government or other industries on stopping them because of the amount of income and power they indeed control.

There are so many questions that can be asked about what is being done to prevent the bad habits of our food system. How much can we, the consumers, do to make a change? Well we can only do as much as we are allowed to. The food system may have changed extremely, however it is in need of an even bigger change. Many people like Robert Kenner, producer of Food Inc., and Marion Nestle, nutrition specialist and writer of “Resisting Food Safety,” are announcing the truth and are fighting to make a difference in our food society. Others like Consumer Reports’, “You Are What They Eat,” and Blake Hurst’s, “Organic Illusions,” are arguing to inform the reader and let the world know exactly what is at steak(stake) when it comes to the food that we eat every single day.

 

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 writer’s project is the idea the writer wants to project to the reader. The project of a text is what the reader is objected to find out and is the idea behind the entire writing. A text that helped me understand what the writer’s project should be was Joseph Harris’ “Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts.” Joseph Harris explains in a professional point of view that, “A project is usually something far more complex than a main idea, since it refers not to a single concept but to a plan of work, to a set of ideas and questions that a writer ‘throws forward’” (Page 17). To identify a texts project, you must simply figure out what it is the writer wants the reader to think about the text. For this Unit 1 blog article, I was able to identify the texts’ project by first understanding the assignment. My project for my blog was intended to be telling the reader the actual truth about the food society. Telling the reading all about federal oversight along with the effects of it including food borne illnesses.

• 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 our workshop was very helpful for the completion of this blog. My most beneficial section was definitely section E. Getting a group of words about each passage and seeing which articles go together well and support each other was very helpful on linking references. Also the source direct passage section was helpful for going between the articles and maintaining a strong detailed paragraph.

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

Synthesizing a text does not just mean summarizing it, however it is similar. Synthesizing a text means combining ideas and allowing an evolving understanding of the text itself rather than just stating the important points of a text. Synthesizing is important because while you are indeed summarizing the text, you are combining and proving the facts at the same time. Combining two different passages from two completely different texts, however still getting the point across to the reader is a very good skill for writers. I synthesized in my sorting it out workshop a lot along with the drafts and final piece. I combined the ideas of 3 different writers’ blogs to correlate into one idea (Federal Oversight or Food borne illnesses.)

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

Personally for me I believe during this unit I achieved a lot. One big and important accomplishment that I think is because of Amy is speaking out in front of a class without being nervous or embarrassed. I am not a very loud person and public speaking is one of my least favorite things to do. Also, writing wise, I believe I have a better understanding on writing blogs or articles in general. Usually most of my papers in the past have been essays where i would not need all of the tools I used in this unit. Synthesizing, along with creating good leads were also two accomplishments I had.

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

The main idea of my blog for my paper really did not change much. From the first draft to the last I kept the same approach on writing the article. My main idea was federal oversight and the food borne illness we receive as the consumers. In my intro I state that pretty clearly and it was the basic structure for my entire piece. I began without an introduction and then produced an intro and closing at my final draft.

• 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.

While writing this blog article, organizational strategies were implied. I created a ‘sorting it out’ workshop to help me synthesize my article by combining multiple passages from multiple articles. I created drafts along with writing responses to blackboard about class activities which ended up helping a lot in the creation of this blog article. For example, the “thoughts on Nestle” discussion helped me get a better understanding of the article by Nestle. This along with the Kanye West writers project, which also helped by giving me a better understanding on how to synthesize an article with a song. Organizing this article was pretty simple with everything I was given to help me. Without these, my article would be all over the place and I would not have been as successful.

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

In my final draft I synthesized texts multiple times. In the second body paragraph I began talking about food borne illnesses and the effect federal oversight has on the consumer. I combined the works of Food Inc. along with “Resisting Food Safety” by Nestle and my own article from the FDA website. I talk about how a little boy was killed because of food borne illnesses and I then linked that idea to the recent outbreak of the chipotle Mexican restaurant e. coli scandal along with some information on e. coli from the Nestle article. I tried to involve as many articles as I could with as much information and combinations and this was definitely one of the trickier parts to this piece of writing.

• 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?

At first I had no idea what to use as my lead. So I decided to go with a fun fact if you would say about the evolution of our food system and it ended up working out for me. After thinking of the lead, which I got from Food Inc., I decided to run with it and my article ended up becoming more and more complete and organized. I got good feedback from my peer advisor on my article about my lead and that was a major reason why it ended up staying. Along with the fact that it is perfect for my project as well, I thought this was one of my stronger areas.

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

I would like to figure out how to incorporate better vocabulary along with different ways to keep the reader interested. I do not know a lot of tricks about writing in general and I would enjoy writing a lot more if I could read a piece I have written and say wow did I really write this it is really good! I read other students drafts and say wow, solid writing and then I read mine and I think the professor will not enjoy mine as much as others. Other than that idea, I would like to become a better reviser, meaning I want to be able to edit my paper with authority and believe in my changes to a draft. Sometimes I do not want to change too much to an article, maybe I am just lazy or I am afraid I will put a dent in my paper.

Brandon Wright
Amy Barone-Phillips
Writing 205
29 February 2016

Your Food:
What the Labels Don’t Say

Food, something humans consume in order to support the body. Historically, humans hunted and gathered, or farmed food in order to stay alive. Today, with the advances in technology and continuous increase of the world’s population, the food is supplied to us by the big bad food industry. The food industry is a very dangerous place. Much like every other business, big corporations are in charge, and that is not always a good thing. We are blinded by the lies told to us by food corporations and that needs to stop. It is time everyone knows the truth about the food industry. Food safety is a big issue and it is not regulated as well as it should be.

Organic Foods

One of the fastest growing markets in the food industry is the organic market. We have been sold on this idea that organic foods are the greatest thing in the world. We have been told that they are less fattening, provide more nutrients, and taste better than nonorganic products. Well how much good do organic foods really do for us? Organic Illusions, by Blake Hurst discusses the overhyped value of organic foods. “A recent study by a group of scientists at Stanford University found that the nutritional benefits of organic food have, to say the least, been oversold. Apres moi, le deluge. A furor has erupted.” We cannot be blinded by the big corporations and their motives. The truth is, organic foods are more expensive than conventional foods. As Hurst goes on to say, “Despite the growth in organic food sales, they only constitute 4 percent of the dollar value of all foods sold; and since organic foods often cost twice what conventionally grown foods do, the quantity of organic sales constitutes considerably less than 4 percent of the total market.” As we can see, we are paying way more than we should be for organic foods when we compare it to the overall market. Even more startling, we may be paying more money to actually get sick. “The Stanford study found that organic foods were considerably less likely than conventional foods to have pesticide residues, although organic foods were higher in E. coli.” Yes, organic food may not have as many pesticide residues as conventional food, but diseases like E. Coli are more abundant in these foods. Why should we be paying twice as much for food that is not 100% safe to eat? Organic foods are not what they are made out to be, and we need to think long and hard before we buy them.

Safety First?

We assume that packaged food is always safe to eat, but that is not a good assumption. Marion Nestle is a Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, and in her article Resisting Food Safety, she states “Safety is relative. 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… Such numbers undoubtedly underestimate the extent of the problem.” About 25% of the entire US population will get sick from food this year. That is one in every four people. So we get sick from something that we depend on to survive? That should not happen. Obviously some of these reasons have to do with allergies and other external sources, but 76 million is way too many. We are so surprised when one gets food poisoning of some other illness from food because we do not see it as a common occurrence. We are clearly wrong about how rare foodborne illnesses are. Nestle later goes on to say “Centralized food production has created even more favorable conditions for dissemination of bacteria, protozoa, and viruses. We call these organisms by collective terms: microbes, microorganisms, or ‘bugs.’ If harmful, they are pathogens. Many pathogens infect animals we use for food without causing any visible signs of illness.” If we are not concerned about food illnesses yet, then when will we? Since food production happens in mass quantity, bacteria and other viruses are more prone to be attached to the food. In Food Inc., an Academy Award-Nominated documentary film that examines corporate farming in the United States, Eric Schlosser, an American journalist and author known for his investigative journalism, states that “Now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where the animals and the workers are being abused.  And the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are being deliberately hidden from us.” Still don’t believe that food safety is not a concern? Let us ask Carole Morison, a former contract poultry farmer who raised chickens for international corporations for over two decades and appeared in Food Inc. According to Morison, “The companies don’t want farmers talking. They don’t want this story told.” Carole Morison was silenced by multimillion-dollar food corporations about the conditions of the chickens she was raising on her farms. The chicken coops were not big enough for the amount of chickens she had, which caused numerous problems. The chickens lived in an enclosed coop with hundreds of each other and barely could move around. Many of these chickens had bacterial infections and other diseases due to the filthy conditions, but that did not stop the corporations from packaging them and selling them to the people. We are under this spell that corporations are looking out for the consumer at all times. They want us all to think that is the truth. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. Food safety is not being regulated well enough, and that is no longer a myth, it is a fact.

The Government

While big corporations are at fault for many of the food safety issues, the real culprit is the Federal Government. The Federal Government has ties to the to all the big food corporations and that is not good. Consumer Reports: You are what they eat looks into the Government and how they are turning a blind eye to food safety. They investigated the issue of safety and here is what they found. “Our investigation raises concerns that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result, the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be: Regulatory loopholes could allow mad cow infection, if present, to make its way to cattle feed; drugs used in chickens could raise human exposure to arsenic or antibiotic-resistant bacteria: farmed fish could harbor PCBs and dioxins.” Loopholes in the federal government will get eaten up by big food corporations and will use those loopholes to gain advantages. Loopholes are every lawyers dream and big corporations have plenty of lawyers. The fact is; these companies can get away with this as long as the loopholes continue to exist. The big winner in all this is Monsanto, America’s most hated corporation, who has a long history of corruption. Here are just a few examples of Monsanto squeezing their way into powerful positions in the US Government, courtesy of Seattle Organic Restaurants. “In 2001, Anne Veneman (who was on Board of Directors of one of Monsanto’s biotech subsidiary called Calgene) was appointed as head of USDA in charge of regulating genetically modified organisms… In 2001, Linda Fisher who previously was Monsanto’s VP of Government Affairs was appointed as Deputy Administrator of Environmental Protection Agency… In 2002, George Poste (the former Monsanto’s animal specialist) was appointed as head of bioterrorism division of Homeland Security… In 2008, Obama despite his promises to label GMO foods appointed Michael Taylor, (Monsanto’s former attorney and VP) as Deputy Commissioner of FDA. He also gave his blessing to soda companies to continue the use of aborted babies as flavor enhancer in sodas and soft drinks.” As we can clearly see, Monsanto has very powerful friends in the three most significant agencies relating to food safety, the FDA, USDA, and EPA. If this is not corruption at its finest, then what is? We cannot sit around and watch as food corporations take over Government agencies, we must take action in order to protect ourselves from a food crisis.

Conclusion

The food industry is a very dangerous market to get involved in. Farmers have the toughest jobs in the US because they have to work long and hard hours everyday, get paid very little for their work, and are forced to keep silent about the conditions the animals goes through before being turned into food. Organic foods are not as healthy as we are told, safety in the workplace is nonexistent, and the Government is just as involved in the corruption as the big businesses are. These issues were swept under the rug for a long time, but now we all must know the truth. The food industry has been lying to us all. Food safety is a big issue and it is not regulated as well as it should be and it starts at the top, and we the people must fix the problem by having our voices be heard. For if not, nothing will change, and food safety will never get any better.

 

References:

Food, Inc. Directed by Robert Kenner. Food, Inc. Accessed February 28, 2016. http://www.takepart.com/foodinc.

Nestle, Marion. Politics of Foodborne Illness.

“Organic Illusions – AEI.” AEI. Accessed February 28, 2016. https://www.aei.org/publication/organic-illusions/.

“Political Corruption of Monsanto and Its Influence.” Political Corruption of Monsanto and Its Influence. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.

“You Are What They Eat.” Consumer Reports. January 2005. Accessed February 28, 2016.

The writer’s project to me is the central focus or idea that a writer is trying to make a point about. While doing this, the writer wants to inform the audience of his/her about the ideas and how they are important. I was able to identify the texts “project” by reading each one and figuring out what there messages was to the reader and what they wanted me to take away from it. That is what I tried to do for my own “project,” get my point across and make sure the readers comes away for it with a good understanding of what is being discussed.

Food Companies: Is Food Safety A Priority?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Safe and Healthy Foods: Responsibility of The Consumers, Producers, Or Regulators?

We all tend to go to the store, read a few labels, compare prices and buy whichever food fits our interest and budget, correct? We buy things that may sound healthy or seem to have the best price. We are quick to trust the labels that say “all natural” or “organic”, and trust that we are getting our money’s worth. But is this always the case? Are these labels really as factual as they seem? Are producers as concerned with our health as we think they are? In order to be certain that products are healthy, not only do the consumers need to be more aware of what goes into the food they buy, but also there must be tighter regulation on food production.

Companies function in ways that will help them achieve their ultimate personal wants, and people forget to take this into consideration when they shop. Some companies’ main goals are to make the most profit from their product, while others actually aim to ensure safe foods for their customers regardless of the cost. In the article Resisting Food Safety, Marion Nestle states that food safety politics involves diverse stakeholders with highly divergent goals. She is getting at the fact that companies function differently depending on their personal desires. In addition, Consumer Report’s article You Are What They Eat discusses how companies choose to feed their animals and prepare them for the market, stating that the goal is to “fatten animals as fast and as cheaply as possible.”(pg. 1) This claim shows that they are focused on efficiently increasing profit rather than the health of consumers or animals, while traditional farmers put more focus on their product. With this in mind, the big producers are going to feed the animals whatever it takes to grow the animals quickly as economically reasonable as possible. The health of consumers is not their number one goal. Most consumers do not understand that the chicken and other produce they consume are placing them at a higher risk for food poisoning or possibly even obesity. Despite the fact that the FDA and USDA have approved all of the ingredients used in animal feed, we should not assume that it is good for us as humans. Consumers must understand that certain foods are not necessarily healthy for us just because they are FDA approved.

For consumers who believe in buying the most healthy and appropriate food, there are always the organic options. Consumers tend to believe that organic products are better for them, while Hurst, a conventional farmer, arrives at a different conclusion. While the Consumer Report article supports the option of shopping organically, Hurst’s article Organic Illusions, opposes organic farming and proposes conventional farming because of its economic and environmental reasonability. Hurst’s article sheds light on the hidden facts about the unreality of organic food. His claim is that conventional farming is more reasonable for today’s economy and supply demand. Hurst states that it takes fewer acres to produce the same quantity of food conventionally than it does organically, even though there is a yearly yield decline for organic products. This also confirms that different farmers have different beliefs in farming- Hurst’s being that we should farm in ways that helps sustain the environment. Hurst also helps us understand that the organic foods people buy may be just as unhealthy as conventionally grown food, yet it is more expensive because of “special” qualities. Despite Hurst’s not so positive connotation of “organic”, he does believe in consuming food that is good for you, while doing so in a more economically reasonable way. One interesting claim that Hurst makes is that companies get away with numerous things that fool organic consumers, such as organic foods being “labeled as organic because producers certified that they have followed organic procedures. No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims.”(pg. 4) This ties into the issue of poor regulation by the USDA and FDA. Hurst makes the point that if they can get away with many faults that people don’t know about, why spend so much money on the product?

While reading these articles, it seems as though the issue of consumers not buying and consuming what they think is good for them comes from limited FDA and USDA regulations and extremely strong power held by large companies. Referring back to the article Resisting Food Safety, Nestle states that “it should be evident that people involved with every stage of food production, from farm to fork, must take responsibility for food safety to prevent animal infections (producers), avoid fecal contamination (processors), and destroy food pathogens (handlers/consumers)”(pg. 28) She is ultimately saying that everyone blames each other for the issue of unsafe food. Nestle’s claim is that when it comes to food safety, billions of dollars are at stake, and industry, government and consumers collide over different beliefs over interest in product value, economics and political power. She demonstrates how powerful food industries oppose safety regulations and deny accountability. Similarly, You Are What They Eat extends the idea because it discusses about poor regulation monitoring. Companies are going to feed whatever they want to their animals, knowing they may get away with it, but then blame the consumer or deny the fault when something goes wrong. Companies will blame the consumers for improperly cooking their product, making it seem as if they are not at fault for consumers getting different types of food poisoning like E. Coli and Salmonella. This issue cannot be blamed on consumers when new bacteria and diseases are arriving yearly.

The documentary Food Inc. is a good example of how the blame for unsafe food is also being tossed around. Food Inc. questions the efficiency of the system of food production and regulation. In the documentary there is a story about a young boy from Colorado named Kowalcyk, who died in 2001 after developing hemolytic-uremic syndrome from eating a hamburger contaminated with E. Coli. After Kevin’s death, Kevin’s Law was proposed which would give the United States Department of Agriculture the power to close down plants that produce contaminated meat. The law was finally passed after 4 years and many claims from companies that they were not at fault. The fact that it took so long for the law to pass shows how much power the food industry has over consumers, the USDA and the FDA. The company that is responsible for his death would not take the blame for the incident and it seemed as if the problem did not matter. In the documentary, Michael Pollan along with Nestle’s argument expresses that the industry is changing rapidly, creating more and more unsafe food. With their arguments, we should take away the fact that we must more aware of what we buy and where we buy.

Furthermore, the article GRAS Out: Surprising Number of Unregulated Chemicals Found in Food by Twilight Greenaway expresses how laws created by the USDA and FDA are intended to apply to common food ingredients like vinegar and vegetable oil. The laws allowed companies to consider certain foods “generally recognized as safe.” This does not necessarily mean they are good for us. This also confirms that companies can get away with their own ways of production easier than we think. The FDA and USDA have limited control on how companies grow their food, which also coincides with an argument from Nestle’s article that the USDA and FDA have different responsibilities and only search for a limited amount of things when inspecting our food.

Labels, certification stamps, and prices are not always the best way to choose our foods. All they do is make their product seem the healthiest. They distract us from the hidden facts that their product may cause future health risks or that a product is produced at the lowest level of organic as possible while getting us to pay as much as possible. Should the FDA, USDA, and government allow this? As a consumer, it is important to do your own research if you want to buy the best things for yourself. Although we need to be aware of what we are buying, it is also the ethical responsibility of the companies to have interest in the consumer’s health while making their products. Until the FDA, USDA and government begin to centralize and up their standards and regulation process, we will never be 100 percent sure about the production and safety of our food. This issue may seem insignificant to some, but it will become a bigger problem once things previously accepted as “healthy” turn out to be unhealthy, and our hard-earned money spent on “healthy food” goes to waste.

Reflection Questions:

• To me, the writers project was a way to get a better understanding of the writers’ purpose and goal of the article. I was able to identify a text’s “project” by picking out the main focus and analyzing how they chose to send out the message. My “project” was to help consumers understand that our products are not usually as good for us as we think. I try to get this point across by pointing out the flaws in the regulation system and explaining how most companies’ main focus is not the actual health of the consumer.
• The sorting it out workshop was a little bit difficult to complete. Especially part E. The part I found most useful was part F (the last part where we connected, found similarities and differences in arguments). It made it easier to see the connections between the articles when writing the final paper.
• Synthesis is tying in main ideas and points together to create an argument of your own. Synthesizing helped me come up with more points and topics that I was able to use in order to fuel most of my article.
• One accomplishment that I was able to achieve was comparing and contrasting opposing views to help support a main point in my argument.
• To create a main idea, I took a few points that stoop out to me in the articles, then compare and contrasted them in order to find a common theme.
• I started by having the readers see how this issue affects their lives. (Talking about the things they purchase and food labels in the beginning) I transitioned into talking about why companies function they way they do (personal interest: first main paragraph) and ending with how they are able to function how they do. (Regulations: toward the end)
• I was able to synthesize 3 texts in my article when I use Nestle, Consumer Reports, and Food Inc. to talk about how the blame for unsafe foods is tossed around.
• For creating the lede, I found the article we read useful. I tried to incorporate the 5 W’s. When we looked at examples, I picked the style that worked best at grabbing my attention to use in mine. I found asking questions very useful. In my first lede, I asked questions pertaining to food safety, and then in my final draft the questions shifted the questions to the consumer’s interest in the foods they are buying.
• In the next unit project I would like to work on synthesizing even more. I still believe in need more practice. Synthesizing better will make my whole paper better as a whole.

Out Of Our Hands But Onto Our Plates

We live in a country that was founded on the freedom of choice and people’s say in government. Is it not ironic then that we have so little say on what we are actually eating? The most fundamental element of our very human existence is out of our hands and into the hands of those who have the power to control it.

It’s not just about choosing what we consume, it is also choosing our safety in consuming it. In a country whose food industry is based off of profits and efficiency, it is no wonder that regulations put in place to protect our safety, actually might not be as safe as we would like to think. Even more troublesome though, is the power the food industry has. With the government backing their every move, they have little to no reason to actually care if their regulations are not acting as they should.

“These companies have legions of attorneys.  And they may sue even if they know they can’t win, just to send a message.”

According to Eric Schlosser, in the documentary Food Inc., the food industry in our country has an insane amount of power.

The documentary Food Inc. aims to show the food industry as it really is. In other words, it shows the food industry from the side that consumers do not usually see. For example, consumers do not see how powerful the food industry really is until they are the ones fighting it.

An example that the documentary used was the battle between Monsanto and a farmer who they were sewing for saving soybeans.

Monsanto is a company that essentially has control over all soybean production because of their patent on the bioengineered soybean. Monsanto has the money and the resources to fight average farmers even if they only have suspicion that the farmer is using their patented soybeans against their patent agreements.

There are some farmers who support big companies such as Monsanto, only adding to the argument of the food industry’s actual power. For example, Blake Hurst, a farmer backs up Monsanto and conventional ways of farming. Although a farmer himself, his alliance with big companies just shows his position in the conversation.

Monsanto is one company that shows power that the food industry has over producers. Those who produce our food our essentially puppets controlled by the food industry. Therefore, issues of food safety are widespread and out of reach not only by the consumer, but also by the producer.

To show the extent of how important food safety is and how it is neglected by the food industry, Food Inc. highlighted the story of Kevin. Kevin was two years old when he contracted E. coli 0517h7 from food and ended up hospitalized where he then died from the infection.

Even Hurst’s controversial article positions E. coli as an important factor when looking at the food industry. The argument the article makes is that the Stanford study found that E. coli is more prevalent in organic food. While this argument is one from Hurst in support of conventional farming, it still acknowledges how food safety is less important than the profits of the industry itself. In Kevin’s situation, his mom has been in a legal battle ever since the E. coli infection.

Unfortunately, the food industry, highly backed by the government, is not easily budged and it has been a long and hard battle. “Food safety (or the illusion of safety) is being positioned to secure capital rather than public welfare.” States Laura B. Delind and Philip H. Howard in Safe at any scale? Food scares, food regulation, and scaled alternatives.

 Adding to the E.coli conversation, this article discusses an E. coli outbreak in contaminated spinach that sickened people in 26 states, over the course of six to eight weeks, and caused at least three deaths. It took about a week to find the distributor (Dole) and the article said that it would have taken even longer to find the contamination source insinuating that that was never discovered.

Steps were only taken to secure the contaminated food but not to actually find the contamination to prevent it. It is no wonder Kevin’s mom is having a hard time working with the government in response to regulations that do not work.

While the food industry claims that there are many safety regulations put in place to monitor the safety of food, evidence has surely proven otherwise. The article You Are What They Eat provides various reasons to be concerned with the meat we are eating in the United States of America in regard to animal feed.

The director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, Carol Tucker-Foreman, is quoted in this article saying “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.”

Meanwhile, Fred Angulo, who is the chief of the CDC’s foodborne and diarrheal branch, is also quoted saying that “connecting human illness to contaminated feed is difficult.”

While it is hard to pinpoint human illnesses to animal feed, the article also notes that there have cases of salmonella linked to animal feed and the most recent case occurred in 2003. With that being said, it is obvious where the concern lies and that is with consumers.

The fact that human illnesses are hard to trace already puts the food industry at an advantage. Safe at any scale? Food scares, food regulation, and scaled alternatives already put that into perspective by describing how they never found the source of contamination even in such a widespread illness outbreak that resulted in deaths.

Want to know how tracing food illnesses can be difficult? Nestle highlighted an instance where health officials traced one hamburger back to slaughterhouses in six different states and around 443 cattle. How could one possibly find the source of contamination of a hamburger induced foodborne illness? The fact that the food industry operates in such a way leaves them and the government off the hook.

In response to that, saying that they are hard to trace does not mean that they are not a concern because even the CEO of the American Feed Industry Association in You Are What They Eat said that feed can become contaminated because “people make mistakes.” Thus putting the consumer on the end of the mistakes that may result with them getting a foodborne illness while the food industry can blame it on an accident, if in fact, they are even caught.

Another way the government and food industry are off the hook when it comes to food safety is because many illnesses go unreported according to Nestle.

Nestle states that even with 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths yearly in the United States of America “most episodes are never reported to health authorities and their cause is unknown.”

Nestle not only highlights the severity of foodborne illnesses, but also how the use of antibiotics in animals can make foodborne illnesses even more severe.

Using antibiotics creates a resistance to bacteria and therefore “If antibiotic-resistant bacteria infect people and cause a disease, the disease will be untreatable.” However, this article goes on to state how the drug industry does not agree with any attempt to hinder the use of drugs in animals for food even with the alarming evidence of how dangerous it can be to humans. In this scenario, the drug industry, as well as the food industry uses their power to maintain control over production even when the health of their consumers are at stake.

Does the food industry and government’s monopoly over the food in this country really leave consumers in jeopardy? Should consumers be concerned when buying a package of meat because what the meat previously ate is not listed in the ingredients? Food that sustains their lives nowadays can end it just as easily. The fact is that regulations are put in place, but that does not mean that their health standards prevent food from contamination. Nor do these regulations protect the average consumer in the face food foodborne illnesses. Put in the position such as Kevin’s mom, whose son died from contaminated food, what more could possibly be at stake? The fact is that no one wants that to be their loved one but that is also what is at stake when it comes to the food industry and the government’s jurisdiction over it.

 

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 writer’s project is what an author intends to get across to their readers. It is what the author wants the reader to take away from their piece. To identify a texts project, one must thoroughly read through the entire text and take note of keywords, arguments, and phrases. Then one must think, what did the author intend to help me understand and intend to show me? For example, my project for the Huffington Post Blog article is to add to the conversation about the power of the food industry and how it effects the safety and health of consumers. I aim to show how the food industry is more concerned with their own power than with the safety of their consumers and how their negligence when it comes to food safety is able to happen because of their said power.

 

• 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 an all-around helpful worksheet to complete. Actually writing out the writer’s project for each source was very helpful because I was then able to see in a few short sentences what the author’s purpose of the text was. Then that really helped at the end of the worksheet when I was pulling out quotes to connect and synthesize the texts. Since I was already able to see the purpose of the articles, it made it easier to find quotes that could relate to each other. It gave me a good starting point to find out their similarities. For example, while all of the articles had to do with safety in the food industry, I was able to find that they all talked about food borne illnesses. By knowing that Consumer Reports talked mainly about animal feed, I then looked for a health issue with animal feed and one that was very prevalent was food borne illnesses. Knowing this, I was then able to go back into the texts and pick out quotes that had to do with food borne illnesses from each source.

 

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

 

Synthesis is the ability to connect different texts in a manner that creates a cohesive argument. It is not just summarizing the different texts and explaining similarities between them, but it is looking for patterns between the texts on certain topics and being able to use information from each text to build upon each other in a cohesive manner. This is very important because in doing this, a writer is able to pull important information from each text and use it in a way that makes sense and shows the important information, all while creating one’s own piece of writing. For my blog article, I used synthesis throughout my entire piece. For example, after identifying the writer’s projects for each text and looking for patterns within them in the Sorting It Out Workshop, I was able to see that they all talked about the problem of foodborne illnesses in the food industry. For example, I used Nestle’s example of how one hamburger was traced back to slaughterhouses in six different states and around 443 cows to show how contaminated food is hard to trace back to its origin, to add on to the point in Delind and Howard’s article when they mentioned how an E. coli outbreak was never traced back to the original origin of contamination.

 

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

 

During this unit, I learned about the importance of hyperlinks to online articles. Although it might not seem like much, this was a big accomplishment for me. My background in writing comes from my Sociology and Women and Gender Studies majors where writing research papers and reading responses make up a good portion of my course load. With that being said, it has been engrained into me to cite cite cite and cite! Even if I am unsure if information is just common knowledge still be safe and cite! I am used to professors telling me that there is no such thing as too many citations. This was a difficulty when writing this online blog because I was writing it in terms of citing it back to the different sources I used rather than using the sources to make a cohesive argument for an interesting article. When I learned of the hyperlinks however, that made me feel one hundred times more comfortable with writing the article. The hyperlinks became my way of citing information and it thus made me more comfortable. It also showed how this writing technique is a lot different than what I am used to, but helped me become more comfortable with it

 

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

 

My main idea started with the Sorting It Out Workshop. When I was looking for quotes that I could use to connect each text I started with the Consumer Reports article because of how specific it was to animal feed. I realized that a main concern of this article was foodborne illnesses and realized that every other source also had something mentioned throughout it about foodborne illnesses. So then I searched through the other sources to find what the aid about foodborne illnesses and found that they all had one thing in common: foodborne illnesses are a problem that should not be overlooked. That is how I got the main idea. What is at stake? Foodborne illnesses. Who does it put at stake? The consumers. Then I looked for specific examples within each text to show how foodborne illnesses put the safety of consumers in jeopardy because of their danger and the food industry and government’s help in fighting them and putting in place regulations that are effective. That is how I came to create my final draft, by using the examples I found within each text and synthesizing them to fit my argument.

 

• 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.

 

In my first draft, I just organized my article by the different sources I used. I did them one by one and described their position on how they add to my article by using specific examples from the text. Then when working on my next draft, I reorganized the article by seeing what examples fit where and what texts could I put together tomake the article flow better and synthesize the texts and their arguments. So then working on my final draft, I had my article organized by the different examples I found within each additional text and by how what I wrote about with each article fit together with the others.

 

• 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.

 

“To show the extent of how important food safety is and how it is neglected by the food industry, Food Inc. highlighted the story of Kevin. Kevin was two years old when he contracted E. coli 0517h7 from food and ended up hospitalized where he then died from the infection. Even Hurst’s controversial article positions E. coli as an important factor when looking at the food industry. The argument the article makes is that the Stanford study found that E. coli is more prevalent in organic food. While this argument is one from Hurst in support of conventional farming, it still acknowledges how food safety is less important than the profits of the industry itself. In Kevin’s situation, his mom has been in a legal battle ever since the E. coli infection.

Unfortunately, the food industry, highly backed by the government, is not easily budged and it has been a long and hard battle. “Food safety (or the illusion of safety) is being positioned to secure capital rather than public welfare.” States Laura B. Delind and Philip H. Howard in Safe at any scale? Food scares, food regulation, and scaled alternatives.”

 

This is a section from my paper where I show three sources to shape my initial argument. I show how food safety in regard to foodborne illnesses is a problem within our food system by describing Kevin’s story of how he died from contaminated food with E. coli 0517h7 present in it and then showed how even though Hurst is controversial when discussing food politics, he was even able to agree that E. coli is a problem within our food system. Then to tie the problem of foodborne illnesses back to the initial question of whose at stake, I used a quote from Delind and Howard to show how the government makes us believe we are safe when we really can see that we are not.

 

• 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 just used something that I thought would be interesting and pull readers in to read. Then, after completing the body of my first draft I was able to use a lede that still meets the requirements of interesting enough to pull readers in, while at the same time making it specific to my particular discussion. At first my lede was very long and wordy, and advice I received was to separate my lede from my introduction. In doing that, my lede for my final draft was able to be more consise, relevant to my article, and still maintain its specific purpose of grabbing the reader’s attention.

 

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

 

During my next unit projects, I would like to work more on the ability to adapt my writing style for the specific purpose of writing. As stated earlier, I had some trouble creating an article that did not read like a research paper. Although I feel comfortable with my ability to write an article now, I would like to work more on my writing adaptability so that when I sit down to write anything, I am better equipped to write in a style for a specific purpose and feel comfortable writing whatever I am given to write.