The Beef with Meat
Emily Dilber
Grand Blanc High School
Most of us do not think twice about the foods we pick up from the supermarket. Many Americans have a preconceived belief that the food being sold to us is safe, and withholds the highest standard of quality. Certainly, compared to many places in the world, this is true. But is the United States sincerely trying to carry out these standards, or have we begun to see a reverse in the health and safety of our food- and more explicitly in our meat? Jonathan Foer, author of “Eating Animals” argues for reform within the food industry- not only for the humane treatment of animals but moreover for our own health. Although Foer exposes the ills within the food industries in order to persuade readers to change their diets for the better, his “vegetarianism or die” assessment may be too extreme for most Americans. The true ills do not start with the meat, but with industrialized production of it through methods practiced by factory farming.
Why is there not more of an up stir being caused by the rates of avoidable food-borne illness? Perhaps it doesn't seem obvious that something is wrong simply because it happens all the time. With 76 million cases of food-borne illness that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated happen in America each year, meat infected by pathogens “fading into the background” does not seem probable. (2010). In reality, most didn't "catch a bug" so much as eat a bug. And in all likelihood, that bug was created by factory farming.
Beyond illnesses linked to factory farming, factory farms are contributing to the growth of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens simply due to the overconsumption of antimicrobials. (Journal of...
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...armers’ markets, raise your own cow– the list goes on. These methods are all possible. But speaking as a “run-of-the-mill, suburban citizen”, even after knowing all the ills of factory farming, these methods are not appealing to me. We all like convenience and affordability, which these methods cannot offer AYYYY CITE And that is truly the issue here. The meat that we are getting– that convenient meat that none of us seem to want to live without– is quite frankly grotesque and unhealthy. But we keep eating.
Is it possible to come up with an all-inclusive evaluation to contrast the positives of meat consumption with the negative consequences of meat production? And is there a simple answer to the question: are the benefits of eating the factory-farmed meat greater than the undesirable cost of producing it?
As the Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham
Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we
This then brings up the issue of how our food is much worse than we had originally believed. Bryan Walsh, writer for TIME, wrote the article, The Real Cost of Cheap Food, “To stay and grow in such conditions, farm animals need pharmaceutical help, which can further damaging consequences for humans” (Walsh 34). From the chickens to the cows, animals are kept in “prison-like conditions” that causes them to become very sick (Walsh 34). To prevent animals from getting extremely sick to the point where they die before it’s their time, farmers feed them antibiotics. Not only are the animals eating corn and antibiotics, but so are we. We are eating so much more than we ever asked for. I’ve never asked to have antibiotics in my hamburger, and I’m sure many others haven’t either, however, that is the price we ought to pay for our cheap food. Not only must we ask ourselves if we are healthy, but now we must ask ourselves if what we are eating is also eating
Bost supports his claim by comparing the process of raising meat to the process of harvesting of crops; he argues both systems have their flaws, in the sense, they produce pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere and kill animals whether it was their intent or not. The author’s purpose is to inform both non meat eaters and meat eaters the ethics of eating any food in general in order to create an understanding of where their food comes from and how their food choices affect the surrounding organisms as well as the environment. The author writes in an objective tone for his audience who may be biased on the issue of the ethics of eating meat or crops, he equally provides the pros and cons of both opposing views and compares the overall effects they have on organisms, in the end Bost advices both sides to reflect on the ethics of eating
The food may be cheaper than organic farming, but it damages human health because the animals that produce the products (e.g. milk, eggs) does not eat natural/organic food/ give the organic. They are given a combination of additives to make them grow faster than the normal way. The chances are it lowers the quality of the products. The animals are not fed on a particularly healthy diet and often what they do eat is full of hormones and antibiotics, which have already had a damage in humans. The trouble is that a factory farm is not sanitary because the animals are compacted together and the condition are the animals is more likely to become sick and infect other animals, which is why antibiotics is used even though it has
Salmonella is one danger that has caused many effects to consumers. Walsh writes about one incident when an outbreak “from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600,” (Walsh 167). This incident left many people asking the same question, how can we trust the food that we put into our bodies? Salmonella, a type of food poisoning caused by bacteria found on different food types has caused an epidemic because of its domino effect on food and our health. Once one factory is contaminated, that factory could be housing both crops and meat, which is then transferred to our supermarkets and on our dinner tables. ...
It would only take five days of being grass-fed to kill all the bacteria in the cow’s stomach and yet, no one allows it. Everyone is aware of this simple fix but instead of this, beef is washed in chlorine to kill the bacteria, then sold to stores and customers. When the producers of “Food, Inc.” asked to interview these big companies, guilty of these practices, they refused. My sense of trust in the American food industry has most definitely been shaken. While it is understandable that companies are competing to cut as many costs as possible to sell their product at the best prices, it should really be recognized that their products are living beings and deserve to be treated humanely. I would much rather pay more for animals products if I knew the animals being used and killed were treated well and safely. The risk of an animal having a disease than their meat being chemically treated in order to make my lunch is way too high and it's not worth being able to sell meat at such low
Odder still, those who do choose to act in accordance to these uncontroversial values by refusing to eat animals […] are often considered marginal or even radical.” It is evident that factory farming is the best alternative and best way to get large amounts of food produced at an affordable price, I agree with the statements that Foer points out through “Eating Animals”. This statement that Foer is implementing is the fact that although most people are informed about what is occurring with produce and factory farming we still manage to let it keep occurring since we continue to buy these products. Furthermore, other people want farming to be humane yet, complain when the products coming from more humane source is more
Factory farming is a necessary component of our modern food production and supply system. In 2005, the U.S. produced 45.7 billion pounds of red meat. It efficiently produces and distributes huge quantities of food to feed the growing population of America. But the overfeeding of antibiotics in the U.S. meat industry has gotten to the extreme and it calls for a drastic change in order to prevent a potential public health crises.
Most American beef is raised on feedlots, to provide a lot of beef in a short period of time. These feedlots are crowded, which can cause the corn-fed cows to breed diseases that could be potentially harmful to the consumers. Feedlot owners have to give cows antibiotics to try to prevent the spread of diseases from animal to animal. Yet, sometimes these antibiotics are often unhelpful, and, therefore, it is possible for the number of these diseases cross over into humans. Bacteria such as Salmonella and others can cause infections in cattle and calves in turn affecting humans, if tainted meat from the
directed by Robert Kenner does a great job portraying all of the issues with the American food industry. He talks about one of the major issues regarding our health and the meat industry when he mentions the health risks associated with meat consumption. Cattle are now being fed corn which results in a mutation of a strain of E. Coli called E. Coli 0157h7. This is a product of the diet we’re feeding the cows on feedlots. Even if these animals are infectious, they still slaughter and sell them which results in the consumer’s health possibly being effected. Another way our meat gets infected is when the animals stand in their manure all day long so if one has it, they all will get it. Also, since they stand in their manure, all of the hides are covered in it which gets in the meat because they slaughter about 400 cattle an hour so they cannot keep the manure from getting on the carcasses. One person in specific that was effected by E. Coli 0157h7 is Kevin Kowalcyk. He was just two and a half years old when he passed away, due to eating a hamburger that was infected. It is unbelievable to think that this little boy could go from being healthy to dead in just 12 days and we consumers are putting our faith in the food industry to protect us from these viruses. Since his passing, Kevin’s Law was implemented which gave back to the USDA the power to shut down any plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meat (Food Inc.). Although, E. Coli isn’t the only
In the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, the author talks about, not only vegetarianism, but reveals to us what actually occurs in the factory farming system. The issue circulating in this book is whether to eat meat or not to eat meat. Foer, however, never tries to convert his reader to become vegetarians but rather to inform them with information so they can respond with better judgment. Eating meat has been a thing that majority of us engage in without question. Which is why among other reasons Foer feels compelled to share his findings about where our meat come from. Throughout the book, he gives vivid accounts of the dreadful conditions factory farmed animals endure on a daily basis. For this reason Foer urges us to take a stand against factory farming, and if we must eat meat then we must adapt humane agricultural methods for meat production.
Today’s medical experts say that avoiding meat helps you avoid saturated fat. They have found out from studies that women who eat meat daily have a fifty percent greater risk of developing heart disease than vegetarian women and a sixty-eight percent greater risk in men (staff writer). People may not know about serious diseases meat can cause such as, mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease. In the September 1999 issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases, approximately 76 million food-borne illnesses- resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths occur in the United States each year from improperly cooked or diseased meat (Licher). That is a lot of fun!
For the past years the global demand for meat has multiplied and with that the world meat consumption is expected to double and double which is a crisis. Meat factories have consumed huge amounts of energy, contaminated water and generated lots of greenhouse gases. Therefore if you eat less meat there is less demand for it and fewer animals are killed which means less greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere. In the article Mark Bittman who is an American food journalist talks about how animals have a big effect on the environment and public health by giving an example on how cattles are fed and raised, “cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.” Here Bittman gives only one example out of millions examples on how animals are treated in an unethical way which affects our environment and our health too. In the article Flesh of your Flesh the author Elizabeth Kolbert considers many issues on how we humans live in a two face guide on how we look at animals versus meat. America consumes roughly thirty-eight billion pounds of poultry, twenty-seven billion pounds of beef, and nine billion birds and numerous more of the animals that are slaughtered annually to provide meats for American people for food (Kolbert). We americans are meat eaters. We consume a lot of meat and at the end of the day we face huge health problems such as obesity. Meat is not the only source to rely on for protein. Whoever says that eating meat means survival that is not true because of the large amount of resources
Many people pick up food products off the shelves and put it into their shopping carts without actually knowing what exactly the product has been through. The documentary “Food Inc.,” directed by Robert Kenner helps us realize all the predicaments we have in our Food Industry. For example, one of the main problems we have is that our food is no longer being produced in all American farms, but instead in dirty abusive factories. Not only is this processed food unhealthy for us, but the workers and animals are being severely abused as well. Our food industry is spreading many different diseases rapidly amongst our American society, ranging from brain damage to miscarriage and birth defects.
As the turn of the twentieth century approached, the livestock industry became increasingly more powerful than ever before, and meat became much more affordable for working class families (Best). That was, until Francis Moore Lappé’s book, Diet for a Small Planet was published in 1971, and exposed the grave danger that the meat industry set upon the environment and specifically the earth’s land (Best). With a population that grows as rapidly as the human civilization does, it is imperative that changes are made to ensure habitat conservation for years to come, and it seems that a vegetarian diet is the way to help. Livestock farms and land to grow feed for those animals has taken the space of some of earth’s most wonderful resources, using up recreational land, wildlife habitat, and wilderness. The average American diet consists of 270 pounds of meat each year, and that rounds up to approximately 20 acres of land (Vidal). Livestock is said to take up 30% of dry land on earth, and 80% of the agrarian land within the United States. Becoming a vege...