Whole Food System

Companies, especially large multinational companies control the whole food system, from seed to the supermarket. The industrial food system is always looking for greater efficiency, but each step in taking greater efficiency leads to a problem. As seen on the movie, factories are increasing and companies tend to mass produce. But most of the companies in modern industrial food system are just thinking of getting faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper products. No one is thinking about the harmful effects that it brings. That is why when you go to the supermarkets, you can also observe that not all food being sold have labels wherein nutritional facts and other information about the processing can be located. This is because if the companies write

In the film, most of the farmers that are working on a big company refused to be interviewed or to give specific information. Companies control the farmers in such a way that they cannot divulge anything about the processes in the system, as long as they pay them. So if the company is not having a good practice, like on the production process, when their products are being traded internationally, say imported in the Philippines, then it will just pass the health and safety regulations even if it is not actually safe. The trade will not be restricted because it is done ‘formally’ or in other words, it will not be considered as red-tape barrier. While these big companies are earning millions and billions of dollars, they imposed strategies that are not that of advantage for the workers. In the case of fast food industry, they train each worker to do one specific work again and again. With this work specialization, workers are compensated with low wage and it is easy for the companies to fire them and hire other workers to replace them, which is also another issue. With regards to the laborers, labor unions can make workers’ life better since they can have better wage and better regulations. But when the companies get bigger, like the meat packing company for example, they supplied most of their produce to fast food industries and later on borrowed or adopted fast food’s work strategies in which they cut cost by cutting wages, speed the production and let workers do the same specialized work again and again every day in order to make sure that there will be no more labor unions. Workers are paid less and their working, living and health conditions are not good enough. Aside from the laborers, some companies also do not treat animals humanely. Since companies mass produce, they have numerous farm animals. In this case, not all animals are being treated well since they are too many. Also, in