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There are many issues regarding the raising and producing of various livestock animals, and the use of pesticides on various types of crops. The movie Food.Inc does a good job explaining these issues, but in a very biased way. It makes agriculturists look like terrible people, when this is not the case. One subject that came up in this documentary was that of Broiler Chicken houses. Food.Inc made it seem as if these houses were cruel, and were bad for the chickens. The one chicken house owner they did interview, made it seem as if this job were terrible and that the regulations that they had were causing harm to the chickens. When they videoed them taking the chickens away to get processed, they made it seem as if they were abusing the chickens. …show more content…
Crops today are thriving, and farmers can owe it all to the pesticides they use. If no pesticides were used, then insects would destroy crops, feeding off of their leaves and produce until hardly anything is left. According to corncommentary.com, Without the use of pesticides and fungicides, most fruit and vegetable crops would suffer a 50-90 percent loss due to uncontrolled insects and disease organisms. Despite what most people believe, even organic growers use pesticides on their crops that have been approved for such organic growers. Even they know that the wrath of insects and other disease organisms would destroy their plants and their profit they would have made from those plants. Also, without things such as weed killers, people would have to till the soil around their crops by hand. On large scale farms, this would take a huge amount of people to complete a task like this. The weeds would have to be pulled up, by their roots to ensure they wouldn’t grow back rapidly. On top of that, the crop would have to be routinely checked for weeds, as they grow fast and of many. The amount of money it would take to pay all the workers, and how often they would need to be paid for their work, is not owned by any farmer. Pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are what help keep our crops protected and healthy. Without them, we would be in deep
The movie takes a strong stance on sustainable farming, so much that one might be able to say that is the agenda of the movie. They mostly speak of a specific farm called Polyface Farms in Virginia. What they do there is they use the same plot of land for multiple animals. Each of them use it at a different time. They have a process called the Pigerator. It is not a huge big, scary process; it is simple. Cows are in the barn during the winter, and they make waste. When they take the cows out, they mix corn into the manure to ferment it. Later, when the pigs come in, the pigs dig looking for the fermented corn, thereby mixing the manure into usable “fertilizer”.(American Meat) They also
David Suzuki, Zoologist and the writer of an essays “Food Connection” and “It always Costs”, from Essay Writing for Canadian Students with Readings, by Kay Stewart, Roger Davis, Chris Bullock & Marian Allen. 6thed Toronto: Pearson, 2008. 344-349, stated that food is what nourishes us, connects us with the Earth, and reminds us of the cycles of the seasons. Eating is an activity that we as humans do at least two times a day. We live in a world where the variety of food is immense, and we are responsible for what we eat. We decide what we are about to eat and how it will affect our bodies. In his essay “It always cost” he emphasized that technology nowadays constantly seems to seep its way into our daily routines. Everything we do is somehow connected with technology. We must understand that...
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.
As seen in the 1800s, relying on a single crop makes that crop vulnerable to disease, insects, competing plants, etc. One farmer he interviews says that “the bugs are always going to be smarter than we are,” which begs the larger question Pollan is attempting to answer: are we in control of nature or is nature in control of us (Pollan 144)? The Irish’s attempt to control the potato was met with a severe response from nature. This explains the creation and use of pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs. We try to regain control of nature through ingenuity to ensure a large and successful crop each season.
To help keep crops from being destroyed, conventional farmers use many methods such as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Nearly 1 billion pounds of these chemicals are used every year (“pesticides”). Because of this excessive use, some scientists express concern that using artificial chemicals in the farming process could produce unhealthy crops. People who ate it over a long period of time could suffer from degraded health and stunted growth (“Organic Foods”). For example, in 1989, the EPA banned the use of Alar which was a chemical used to ripen apples (“Farming, Organics”). This chemical proved to be carcinogenic after causing tumors in mice after several laboratory tests (“Organic Food”). As a result of these findings there was a dramatic increase of the sales for organic food (“Organic Food”). Another study found that Atrazine (one of the most widely used herbicides in the United States) has the potential of being carcinogenic and reducing sperm counts in males (“Organic Food”). This was further proven when evidence was found that chemicals u...
Pesticides and chemicals being used in our corn and bean fields as well as other foods being
These days and even way back when, we do not know what is in our food! I feel it is a human right to know what’s in our food especially when we are the ones paying whole price for these meals or groceries.
Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits.
The film dives in to the industrial production of meat (chicken, beef, and pork) and looks at the industrial production of grains along with vegetables calling them inhumane, economically and environmentally unsustainable.
Food Inc. is a great documentary film. It describes the grave health risk of the top food industries and plants. These food industries also practices animal cruelty. Different disease breakouts has occurred since the engineering of food production began. Many have died because of the greed of the new age food production.
As time has progressed, there has always been an overarching need for high amounts of crop production throughout the world. With the rapid rate of population growth, the need for crops and other sources of nutrients is only increasing. In order to meet these high demands and increase yields, farmers and other agriculturalists have started implementing the use of pesticides. These chemical mixtures are being used in order to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate any pests from destroying growing crops. However, using pesticides on crops can create massive amounts of pollution, negatively affect an individual’s health, and can spark biodiversity loss within an ecosystem. According to Michael C.R. Alavanja, “Over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used within the United States (US) each year and approximately 5.6 billion pounds are used worldwide”. With all this in mind, it is clear that pesticides should not be made available to farmers and agriculturalists, and should
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
A study of 362 datasets found that organic agriculture produces 80% of conventional yield with 21% standard deviation (Tomek et al. 2012). Second, organic farming requires less energy input which equates to less money spend from the farmers in addition to lowering carbon emissions. A study by the Department of Environment shows that organic agriculture uses 25 percent less than energy than their chemical counterparts, and certain crops like organic leeks and broccoli use 58 and 49 percent less, respectively (Bialis et al. 2013). Third, organic farming does not use pesticides. According to the World Health Center, 20,000 people die annually from the exposure of pesticides (Costa et al. 2014). Fourth, the methods that organic farmers use are better for the environment in the long run. And lastly, organic farming creates more jobs. A study done in United Kingdom shows 93,000 jobs could be created if Britain were to make a full scale shift to organic farming (Herro 2006). Although conventional agriculture is the primary producer for food currently, a large scale shift to organic agriculture is better suited to feed the world because organic agriculture can produce at adequate yield, requires less energy input, do not use
Instead of using pesticides in farming a better alternative would be biological control. This is when a natural predator is released into the crop growing area as a result the number of pests can be reduced.
As a result, factory farming has become an alternative that has been accepted by many people, but factory farms are controversial due to the negative effects that it has on the world’s environment, health and ethics. A solution to this problem is not simple; people have relied on factory farming as a quick and cheap food source for so long that steering away from that would be difficult, but not impossible. Organic foods are becoming more and more popular as people learn about the benefits organic growing has over processed foods, and by taking these methods as examples, producers can slowly make factories better. Taking small steps to turn around theses factories such as turning to organic pesticides, and stopping the genetic enhancement of animals, can quickly add up and slowly make the food that is consumed better for humans and better for the