Food Inc: How your food is made

Happy Meals with your favorite toys

When I was in 4th grade, I loved McDonald's Happy Meals. They were my favorite thing to eat. My mom would take me to McDonalds every time I behaved good or got good grades. It was my favorite reward. Yes I would eat the chicken nuggets and fries but I loved those toys I would get at the bottom of the red box. I would also look at the outside of the box to see what new toys would come. I never realized how my food was being created.

     In the documentary Food Inc. we were able to see how our food is being created. We can see how farmers give our food to factories and they then give it to our providers.

     The first McDonalds restaurant had many workers and their food was cheap. When the owners came up with a new idea of how the workers would work it helped reduce the cost of food. The owners came up with an idea that similar to how factories worked.

    Of the food being produced in American 8 out of 10 paties are being controlled by four big companies.  Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef. Tyson is the biggest  food company. Brands names and labels can be misleading because some labels have a farm as the picture and the product has never even been to a  farm in all its life. Labels on food can also state "raised humanly" when they were locked up and never allowed to see the light as shown in the movie. Industrial cheap food can be "dishonest" because that doesn't it include the environmental, societal, and health cost. The enviornmental cost is the impact in the  enviornment. The societal cost is the impact in the society. The health cost is the health problems you can get.

     In 1950 chickens took a long time to grow, they had normal size breasts. Over the time the chickens were injected hormones which helped make the chicken breast bigger. This helped the people that bring our food to the supermarkets or restaurants because now people could get more meat for less.

     During the movie Food Inc. the producers tried to interview a farmer that provides crops for Tyson. Tyson didn't let the people interview the farmer because they didn't want people to know the truth the how they treat their chickens.

     In the movie according to the USDA which is the U.S. Department of  Agriculture a farm owned by a man named Joel Salatin is "unsanitary" which means it's dirty and unhealthy. The USDA say it's "unsanitary" because when the cows go and eat the grass they also fertilize it at the same time. That means that when they eat they poo and that gives the plants nutrients. The USDA  also called the farm "unsanitary" because of the way they clean and kill there chickens. He uses regular knives and other kitchen utensils. Unlike factories that use other things to kill them.

     The government orders farmers to grow corn cheap. They are paying to overproduce make the value go down. One of the reasons they need a lot of corn is farmers can feed their animals corn and its cheaper than grass.Corn is so important its used in ketchup, cheese, coke, potato chips, meat, bread, and many more products. Problems that have started because animals are eating corn is they get E. Coli.  E.Coli is a a type of germ that if people eat it , it can cause problems with your kidney or other parts of your body. People can get this germ through their meat.Young kids or elders can also die from that.

Corn is overproduced

     Kevin Kowalcyk died in 2001 because he ate a hamburger that had E. Coli. His parents talked to the people that check if the meats we eat don't have diseases and it took them 27 days to recall the meat because it had E. Coli. That means that they want that certain type of meat back because its infected. Factories put ammonia  which is a  liquid used in house cleaning supplies to their meats to wash down the E. Coli. They then put the washed meats together and call it pink slime.

     The cheapest food is fast food because they are made of corn. Like corn is over cropped its cheap and mostly all the food is made of that. When people don't have a lot of money people have to get fast food because they are the cheapest. Fast foods can cause obesity and type 2 diabetes. Cheap food
is high in fats, salt, and cholesterols.

     Many meat packing plants get many of their workers because of NAFTA. NAFTA stands for the North American Free Trade Act which allows immigrants workers to come help in factories. Food companies are protected by the veggie liabel law. It states that no one can criticize that company or there products. If someone does than you will have to pay the company.
   

America's Food Supply

        Perdue is a major chicken processing company located in Salisbury, Maryland. That has been accused of false advertising. The company stated  that they treated there chicken humanly when it was from the truth. In the article "Abusing Chickens We Eat" by Nicholas Kristof published in The New Work Times the author states that Perdue is a hypocrite because they put on there labels "humanly raised" and "cage free". The  author also states that chickens should be treated humanly.



This is how the chicken barns look with limited space. Source

      The author was able to talk to one farmer that raised chickens for the Perdue company. The farmer watched a video of Jim Perdue and how they mistreat the animals and he said "It couldn't get any further from the truth."  The author also talked about how the chickens live in the barns. He described how the chickens are all unable to walk a lot  do to the wait of their big breast. They are also always laying in excrement from other bird that were kept there before which causes them to be featherless.

      Nicholas Kristof wrote in his article "So "cage free" is meaningful for eggs but not for chicken meat. Moreover, Perdue's chickens are crammed so tightly in barns that they might as well be in cages. Each bird on the Watts farm gets just two-thirds of a square foot." I think this quote is the best quote because it describes how the chickens live in the barns.



Kids would play in alleys full of trash. Source 

      In the novel "The Jungle" by Upton Siclair he described how the factories were in bad  conditions for the workers. In 1906 people would just throw their excrement out the window. The factories were full of rats. Where the meat was stored it was at room temperature and rats could eat it. Flies were always on the food.

     During 1906 when the book was published the president at that time Theodore  Roosevelt had read it and sent investigators to check how the meat was being handled. His investigators backed up what Siclair had written in his book so he did something about it. He passed the Federal  Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Thanks to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 the meat now is clean and not rotten. The act prevented adulterated or misbrand meat to be out in the market.

       In my opinion companies should not mistreat the chickens. The barns were the chickens are being held should be clean every time that new chickens are being brought. The chickens should also get a little more space because that's why some of them die because there is not a lot of breathing air.

What Happened to the 43?

     


This is the Ayotzinapa school were the 43 missing students. source 

          The Aytozinapa School is a college located in Guerrero. It helps train future teachers in rural areas. It teaches the students with limited amount of supplies. The students are tought with communist ideas. Government doesn't agree with the political beliefs of the Ayotzinapa students wich creates a lot of tension between the police and the students.
          On the night of September 2014 three buses full of students from the Ayotzinapa school were intersected  by local policies. The polices then started to open fire. Three students were killed and three bystanders.  Later 43 of the students are kidnapped and haven't been seen since that day
          Jose Luis Abarca was the mayor of Iguala. Maria de Los Angeles Pineda was the wife of the mayor. Both the mayor and his wife were linked to the drug cartel in Mexico. People believe they had something to do with the case of the 43 missing students.
      The Mexican people want the government to do something about all the missing people. They already lost fate in the government and have started there own search parties to hopefully find the missing students. The Mexican government hasn't been taking that much interest in the case of the 43 missing students. The parents of the missing students are demanding the government to return there kids alive. The parents have also made marches and rally's to demand there kids back.

Enrique Pena Nieto is the current president of Mexico. source

           Enrique Pena Nieto is the president of Mexico. Infront of the parents of the missing students he signed a paper saying he would keep the investigation going.



          Angel Aguirre is the governor of Guerrero. He has personally helped out with the investigtion but then gave up on the case
       


         

Public Education & Inequality

The first schools only had one or two classrooms. Source

      The purpose for the first public schools was people needed better training. People believed that education was key to finincial security and social status. They also saw education as an opportunity to merge millions of immigrants.

      Some problems with the first public schools were that the students only were required to go 4 years. If students didn't pay attention or follow the strict rule in school they were hit. The schools also didn't have that many resources. In the schools the teachers would make the students read the Protestant bible. They would also encourage only speaking in English which made most parents with other culture mad.



Kids on their way to school. Source

        Schools were able to help families by taking care of them while the parents were working. The schools also helped take kids out of sweatshops. In schools the kids were able to learn how to write and read. They were also thought math and science.

       On problem was that schools perpetuated inequality. Opportunities differed sharply for white and black students. According to statistics taken 62%  of white children attended elementary school while only 34% of African American attended. After 60 years public schools became available for the majority of black children in the southern states.

       

Has the U.S. Moved On From Racism?

Source

        I belive the U.S has not moved on from racism.  In the article "Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism?" the author talked about how racism has changed during years. People often time are incarcerated for minor offenses(ie. vagrancy or homelessness). Very few families discuss about racism. Only 37%  of the families talk openly about race, which make racial discussions uncomfortable. We know that Racism still exists  today because 44% of the African-American families own homes versus 73%  of white families. If the U.S was colorblind than the percentages of people that own houses would be more equal. African -Americans die four years earlier than whites because they have lower income which leads poor healthcare and leaving in bad neighborhoods.