The food industry in America provides a facade of wholesome farms and pastures where animals are well-fed and left to roam freely before they are humanely slaughtered and packaged for our convenience. However, a closer look at the treatment of these animals reveals that even buying cage-free products, for instance, still supports an industry of inhumane treatment of animals and disgraceful practices. Animals are forced into cruel, unhealthy situations, frequently in cramped pens without enough room to even turn around, and often artificially forced to grow so quickly that they are unable to move. In 2011, a woman named Aliza B. wrote to Farm Aid (founded in 1985 as a grassroots activist organization to provide support for family farmers) …show more content…
discussing what she had seen in Food Inc. and asking how the U.S. could support such a heinous industry as meat processing. According to Farm Aid “just four companies [Tyson, Cargill, JBS USA, and National Beef Packing Company] control 83.5% of the beef market.” therefore, these companies nearly have a monopoly that allows them to influence any regulations they want without a risk of being penalized. These monopolies feel secure in our need for their product to support a country with such a large population; this is an issue because it leads to corruption in the industry and can lead to a drop in the nutritional value of our food due to the practices being cheaper and faster. In the 2008 documentary Food Inc., director Robert Kenner explores the food industry behind the fresh farm-to-table illusion we are shown as consumers. Kenner speaks to farmers working for large food processing businesses and uncovers the inhumane treatment of both the animals and the workers, exposing how the food industry is not what we’ve been led to believe it is. Food Inc. drives the argument that food is produced in a way that is harmful to the animals, as well as to the farmers compelled to raise these animals in inhumane ways, whether they agree with the practices or not. Food Inc. also argues that Americans are ignorant about how our food is produced, enjoying the instant gratification of buying our meats from the store without a question about how it got there or how the animals are treated before they become our food. DISCUSSION 1 - The Inhumane Treatment of Animals and Farmers Food Inc. adamantly argues that food production in America is unnecessarily inhumane as it treats both animals and farmers in abhorrent ways. Animals raised for food are treated poorly. Factory farms introduce hormones that make them grow at such a rapid rate that they can’t support their own weight. The animals are kept in living situations where they are barely able to move, incapable of grazing like they would naturally. Along with the brutal treatment of animals, the contract farmers raising those animals are constantly in fear of losing their jobs, while having no say in how they are to raise the animals. Furthermore, they receive little financial support for the means of farming they are forced to utilize. When Kenner visits farms to first see how chickens are raised, many places will not show him and his crew what happens behind the doors. He talks with a farmer working for Tyson, who is deterred from showing them in the windowless chicken houses by calls from Tyson, threatening his employment. He then refused to be interviewed for the documentary (Food Inc.). The one farmer who allows Kenner to record in the chicken houses, Carol Morison, discusses the poor treatment of the chickens she is raising and how she doesn’t agree with it, but explains she has no real say in the practices, stating “to have no say in the business is degrading, it’s like being a slave to the company” (Food Inc.). Kenner also visits different cattle and pig farms to see how they are treated and is shocked by the way they are forced into disgusting situations with little room to move while they are essentially tortured by those working there. Food Inc.
fails to provide counterarguments to its statements. While failing to provide counterarguments is a problem from the standpoint of a documentary, all research I have thus far looked at points to the same conclusions about the treatment of the animals and of the farmers. The article “Fowl Play: The Chicken Farmers Being Bullied By Big Poultry” discusses a man named Alton Terry who worked for the Tyson company. When Terry refused to make unnecessary changes to his operation at his own expense, his contract was cancelled. Terry was proclaimed to be an “independent farmer” by the Tyson company, but goes on to say “we were independent in name only when it benefited the company” (“Fowl Play: The Chicken Farmers Being Bullied By Big Poultry”). Despite this being Kenner’s fourth documentary, he doesn’t use his own ethos in the making of this documentary as much as he relies on the ethos of those he interviews. When he is interviewing Morison, it is clear that she has an ethos as an actual farmer working for a large food production industry. Throughout the documentary, the many images of animals being treated in horrid ways, as well as employees fearing for their jobs, employs pathos to make the audience feel both for the workers and for the animals that we eat without a question. Those images also provide a good amount of logos in the documentary since it’s photographic evidence of these practices. The audience’s investment in pathos makes it more susceptible to the logos …show more content…
that is also presented with footage from these places. In Food Inc., Kenner argues that the treatment of the animals that are raised to be eaten by us and the treatment of the farmers forced to raise them to be eaten by us is inhumane and harmful to everyone involved. Animals are kept in terrible living situations until their deaths, and farmers are given few choices in how they raise their animals. This is an issue because the food industry is forcing these animals to live painful lives, and not taking care of those working to raise them. DISCUSSION 2 - The Ignorance of Consumers Food Inc.
also argues that people are insulated from the treatment of the animals that become our food and that we happily choose to remain silent. We buy and eat different processed meats with no question about what it took to reach us, and we choose ignorance to the whole process. Kenner starts the documentary by eating a hamburger and explaining that he has never taken the time to ask where it came from or how the animal was treated up until it was put on a plate for him to eat. The main purpose Kenner started with in making Food Inc.was to explore how the food got to our plates, but he ended up uncovering the mistreatment of animals and farmers along the way. The documentary became very influential in raising awareness of these situations. Kenner visits many different factories where animals are slaughtered to be processed as food. Throughout the documentary, the audience sees the different treatment of animals in a chicken house, a factory for cattle, and a factory for
pigs. The first place Kenner visits for the documentary is a chicken farm where he learns about the chickens being unable to walk due to their artificially increased size (Food Inc.). He then visits a factory where cows are raised on corn, which their stomachs are not made to digest, in undesirable situations with little room to move and with increased chances to catch diseases from the other cows (Food Inc.). Lastly, he visits a factory where pigs are kept in similar conditions as the cows and slaughtered in painful, inhumane ways (Food Inc.). When Kenner is visiting the factory for the cattle, he discusses the situations they are housed in, showing “the animals stand[ing] ankle deep in their manure all day long,” meaning any disease one cow gets the others will get soon enough (Food Inc.). The animals spend their lives in situations like this and are distributed to us to be consumed. Most citizens do not know how our animals are treated and do not think of how the conditions under which our food is produced could affect us and our well-being. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) supports Kenner’s argument that Americans can be hypocritical about our concern for the well-being of farm animals. The ASPCA states in an article titled “Factory Farms” that “94% of Americans agree that animals raised for food deserve to live free from abuse and cruelty,” but “most of our meat, milk and eggs come from industrial farms where efficiency trumps welfare—and animals are paying the price,” going against what a majority of the population claims to oppose. In Food Inc., Kenner has a strong ethos in his claims that we are unaware of the treatment of animals that become our food because he quite literally shows us how they are treated and admits that is a surprise to even him when he first sees the conditions. The fact that he, himself, is surprised by the conditions he uncovered helps to demonstrate that he began his project not fully set to a single point of view. He learned more than he anticipated learning and admits to it, amplifying his ethos as someone willing to be open-minded through the process. To provide logos, he continues to show these terrible situations, the abuse of animals and farmers, that are logically not right to anyone watching them. He appeals to the audience using pathos by showing those horrifying images and connecting with the audience by describing his own original ignorance to the industry that plays such a large part in our lives. He employs the conviction-persuasion duality by convincing us through footage that these conditions are something that we should not logically accept. He then persuades us to care via the emotional connection he makes with the audience and by making us care about the animals and workers. While Food Inc. is a persuasive and informative documentary, it fails to address counterarguments. Luckily for Kenner, the images he shows are hard to dispute; most research will show the same outcome as his documentary. However, along with not providing counterarguments, he also fails to offer any good solutions to the problems he discusses. While he provides some small solutions, he doesn’t provide anything that would really remedy our dependence on these poorly executed farming practices while also providing food for all the people in the U.S.. Kenner argues that we are ignorant to the inhumane and unsanitary conditions our food is in before it is in our hands, and he shows this by providing evidence of the mistreatment of the animals that become our food as well as the farmers who are responsible for supplying us with that food. Conclusion Food Inc. is a powerful documentary. It challenges the food industry and our knowledge of what we put in our bodies. While failing in some aspects -- for example, the lack of counterarguments or a viable solution to these issues -- it does show the inhumane treatment of both the animals we eat and the farmers who raise them, while making it painfully obvious to the audience that we don’t know what we are eating or how it’s affecting us. We are all affected by the food industry even if we think we are doing the right things to purchase the most cruelty-free products. In my opinion, the only possible permanent solution to our need for these companies would be synthetic meats. Synthetic meats would eliminate the need for these heinous practices, but we don’t yet have the technology to mass-produce this product. Unfortunately, the food industry is not going to change any time soon because it is the only way we know how to produce such a large amount of this food for our population. As consumers, we allowed the food industry to get to a dangerous level of poor practices and abhorrent behavior and are just now getting a glimpse of the unethical operations that have been affecting our lives behind a charade of green pastures and healthy animals.
Jonathan Safran Foer wrote “Eating Animals” for his son; although, when he started writing it was not meant to be a book (Foer). More specifically to decide whether he would raise his son as a vegetarian or meat eater and to decide what stories to tell his son (Foer). The book was meant to answer his question of what meat is and how we get it s well as many other questions. Since the book is a quest for knowledge about the meat we eat, the audience for this book is anyone that consumes food. This is book is filled with research that allows the audience to question if we wish to continue to eat meat or not and provide answers as to why. Throughout the book Foer uses healthy doses of logos and pathos to effectively cause his readers to question if they will eat meat at their next meal and meals that follow. Foer ends his book with a call to action that states “Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.” when dealing with the problem of factory farming (Foer).
One issue the documentary highlights is the abuse of animals and workers by the food companies, in order to reveal how the companies hide the dark side of the food world from the public. In several instances, we see animals being treated cruelly. The workers have little regard for the lives of the animals since they are going to die anyways. Chickens are grabbed and thrown into truck beds like objects, regulation chicken coups allow for no light the entire lives of the chickens, and cows are pushed around with fork lifts to take to slaughter. Many chickens are even bred to have such large breasts that their bones and organs cannot support their bodies. These chickens cannot walk and they even wheeze in pain for the cameras. The film is clearly using the unacceptable premise fallacy of appeal to emotion in this instance, because the viewer is meant to feel pity at the sight of the abused animals. This supports their conclusion, because many American’s imagine their food coming from a happy, country farm and would be horrified to know the truth.
Fast food consumption is taking America by a storm and it is for the sake of our lives. Fast food relies heavily on industrialized corn because of how cheap and easy to grow it is. With that being said, animals are being fed with corn rather than being fed with grass. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Rich Blair who runs a “cow-calf” operation s...
American consumers think of voting as something to be done in a booth when election season comes around. In fact, voting happens with every swipe of a credit card in a supermarket, and with every drive-through window order. Every bite taken in the United States has repercussions that are socially, politically, economically, and morally based. How food is produced and where it comes from is so much more complicated than the picture of the pastured cow on the packaging seen when placing a vote. So what happens when parents are forced to make a vote for their children each and every meal? This is the dilemma that Jonathan Safran Foer is faced with, and what prompted his novel, Eating Animals. Perhaps one of the core issues explored is the American factory farm. Although it is said that factory farms are the best way to produce a large amount of food at an affordable price, I agree with Foer that government subsidized factory farms use taxpayer dollars to exploit animals to feed citizens meat produced in a way that is unsustainable, unhealthy, immoral, and wasteful. Foer also argues for vegetarianism and decreased meat consumption overall, however based on the facts it seems more logical to take baby steps such as encouraging people to buy locally grown or at least family farmed meat, rather than from the big dogs. This will encourage the government to reevaluate the way meat is produced. People eat animals, but they should do so responsibly for their own benefit.
Pollan believes that American factory farms are places with technological sophistication, where animals are machines incapable of feeling pain (368). In other words, factory farms use plentiful of technology where they do not pay attention to animals feelings. For example, beef cattle who live outdoors are standing in their own waste, and factory farmers do not considered that wrong and unsanitary. Hurst alleges that “turkeys do walk around in their own waste, although they don’t seemed to mind”(5). This shows that factory farmers think that animals really don’t have feelings and really don’t care. Pollan also disagrees with industrial farming because he states that, “American industrial farms itself is redefined- as a protein production- and with it suffering” (369). He affirms this because industrial farming cages their animals. Interestingly, both authors believe that animals still die and suffer no matter what circumstances an animal is living. Pollan believes animals should be treated with respect and not be caged. On the other hand, Hurst asserts that “farmers do not cage their hogs because sadism, but because being crushed by your mother really is an awful way to go, as is being eaten by your mother”(6). So Hurst say that he cages animals to protect them. Also both authors believe that there needs to be ways to enrich the soil, so the farms can have bigger harvest, healthy plants, and keep cost down. However, Pollan believes that farmer should use compost. He states that “the finish compost will go to feed the grass;the grass, the cattle; the cattle , the chickens; and eventually all of the animals will feed us” (370). So he thinks compost is good for the farms. Hurst on the other hand, think manure and commercial fertilizer is good for the farms. Hurst spread poultry litter on pasture and this made cattle production possible in areas
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.
The campaign against Whole Foods and Chipotle for allowing factory farm to continue that killing of animals is what ‘Direct Action Everywhere’ is fighting against to inform the general population that there is an issue with “humanely” killing animals for consumption. Direct Action Everywhere’s is an organization whose “mission is to empower activists to take strong and confident action wherever animas are being denigrated, enslaved, or killed, and create a world where animals liberation is a reality.”
Animals trapped in factory farms are severely abused and tortured from birth to death. Chickens sometimes will be starved for up to 2 weeks and given no water to shock their bodies into moulting, chickens and hens will have their beaks removed to prevent fighting between other animals. Pigs will get their tails cut off to stop other pigs biting them off. These cruel procedures are done to minimise as few of animals dying as possible so more product can be created by the farmer. Within factory farms, animals are abused with overuse of antibiotics to prevent disease and maximise their body growth to create a higher yield of product. According to Animal Rights Action, 2 out of 3 farms are now factory farmed worldwide and factory farming is only increasing this is leading to more animals being raised for slaughter, abused and tortured, mentally and physically. This is not fair. How would you feel losing your child minutes after it's born? As within factory farms, female cows get their calves are taken away from them within minutes they are born never to be seen again. This leaves these poor female cows depressed which causes them to lose weight and because of this are slaughtered as farmers want to maximise their yield of
was the sheer power that big companies possess the food industry. The top 4 meat packing companies which are Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Cargill Meat solutions, and Smithfield Foods; control 90% of the meatpacking in the United States (Kenner). In addition to that, there were more than 1,000 slaughterhouses in the U.S in 1990, but in 2007 there was only 13 (Kenner). In the film Food Inc. a union organizer explained how Smithfield was taking advantage of low income workers, especially undocumented immigrants. Smithfield chooses low income, rural settings for its giant slaughterhouses, such as the hog slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, NC which is the world's largest slaughterhouse (Kenner). This way Smithfield can manipulate workers into doing about anything with the threat of losing their jobs, most often to keep quiet about what happens inside the slaughterhouse
The Meat industry treats their workers the same way they treat the animals. They treat these living beings as if they were worthless. Slaughterhouses kill thousands of hogs a day and pack thousands chickens tightly together like a jail-cell. These ani...
Like many other industries, the farming industry has evolved into big business, “Animals on factory farms are regarded as commodities to be exploited for profit.” In each industry from clothing to instruments, the bosses want to make a profit. The more they can supply with the least amount of waste, the more profit they make. The same goes for factory farming. However instead of humans being the ones directly affected by big bosses, the animals are. They don’t have a voice, and can’t stand up for what is right or wrong. These animals are manipulated in every way to make a better profit. Factory farms mass produce animals for ...
Poultry is by far the number one meat consumed in America; it is versatile, relatively inexpensive compared to other meats, and most importantly it can be found in every grocery store through out the United States. All of those factors are made possible because of factory farming. Factory farming is the reason why consumers are able to purchase low-priced poultry in their local supermarket and also the reason why chickens and other animals are being seen as profit rather than living, breathing beings. So what is exactly is factory farming? According to Ben Macintyre, a writer and columnist of The Times, a British newspaper and a former chicken farm worker, he summed up the goal of any factory farm “... to produce the maximum quantity of edible meat, as fast and as cheaply as possible, regardless of quality, cruelty or hygiene” ( Macintyre, 2009). Factory farmers do not care about the safety of the consumers nor the safety of the chicken, all the industrial farmers have in mind are how fast they can turn a baby chick into a slaughter size chicken and how to make their chicken big and plumped. Factory farming is not only a health hazard to the well-being of the animals, but the environment, and human beings ;thus free range and sustainable farming need to be put into practice.
There are many debates around the world about the topic of animal abuse. Animal abuse in the food industry has become a major problem due to the cruel treatment of animals. Most of the world's population might think that animal cruelty is only found in homes and on the street, but they forget about the other forms of animal abuse that affect the food industry. Large contributors to animal abuse are due to fishing methods, animal testing, and slaughterhouses. "Animals have always been a major part of our society in history and they have played huge roles in agriculture" (ASPCA). Factory farming is a system of confining chickens, pigs, and cattle under strictly controlled conditions. Slaughterhouses are places where animals are killed
The animals that are raised in factory farms, and the farms are ran just like any other business. According to the article Factory Framing, Misery of Animals, the factory farming industry strives to maximize output while minimizing cost, always at the animal’s expense. “The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by squeezing as many animals as possible into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals die from disease or infection” (Factory Farming). This is actually quit disgusting that we eat food that walks around in each other’s feces and can attract disease. These animals live a life of abuse, but we sit back and say it’s okay because we will eventually eat them. “Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions. Research shows that factory farms widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threatens human health” (Factory Farming). These animals aren’t treated with proper care and we act as if they are machines. Chickens for example, become so big and distorted that their legs can longer support them. Eventually they die because they can longer walk to get food or water. According to Factory Farming, most of these animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger and to produce more eggs and milk than they naturally
Factory farms have portrayed cruelty to animals in a way that is horrific; unfortunately the public often does not see what really goes on inside these “farms.” In order to understand the conditions present in these factory farms, it must first be examined what the animals in these factory farms are eating. Some of the ingredients commonly used in feeding the animals inside factory farms include the following: animal byproducts, plastic, drugs and chemicals, excessive grains, and meat from members of the same species. (Adams, 2007) These animals are tortured and used for purely slaughter in order to be fed on. Typically large numbers of animals are kept in closed and tight confinements, having only little room to move around, if even that. These confinements can lead to suffocation and death and is not rare. Evidence fr...