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Conclusion food contamination
Importance of food regulations
Impact of the food industry
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Does the food industry affect society? Evidently, it does. America’s food industry has gotten out of hand with the method it currently handles its business. According to the documentary, “Food Inc.,” food companies are brutally taking advantage of their employees and consumers. Plus, the chances of our food being contaminated food are much higher than they were in the past. Aside from these reasons, government subsidies have influenced the cycle at which the food industry works on. Clearly, the food industry has an extremely negative effect on society.
Food companies have the capability to take complete advantage of what is going into the market and what is coming out of it. While the farmers take the role of being puppets, the companies take the role of Geppetto. Companies sign off contracts with new farmers who put themselves in up to $300,000 of debt just to start up a couple chicken houses, then forces the farmers into making upgrades which keeps them in debt. Thus, allowing them to be able to take total advantage of their farmers. The companies control how much the farmers get paid, which is only up to $20,000 a year, but if they decide to release classified information or simply not follow regulations, the farmers can have their income cut short or simply be terminated. The farmers do not have a say in running their business because the companies are well aware that the farmers are similar to being their slaves. Aside from the employees, the consumers are being taken advantage as well. The fast food companies are taken over the streets of the poor. Places like Brooklyn, New York, have astonishing food deserts where the closest supermarket is in the next town over. Leaving these people, who normally work multiple jobs just t...
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... countries with cheap prices, which put many Latino famers out of a job, for they could not keep up. Once they are out of a job, the meat packing companies in America hire them illegally. As this becomes more popular with packing companies, the authorities crack down on the illegals, not the companies. This is the depressing cycle that the American government starts simply by demanding an overproduction of corn.
In the end, society has been negatively affected by the food industry in some of the most depressing ways possible. Whether it is taking advantage of workers, or pushing for a certain product, or even selling contaminated food with no remorse. Hopefully, the food industries can decide to run their businesses with less to hide, because it was unfortunate that not a single company had the courage to simply get interviewed at least once through out the movie.
Although there are many dangers in the world, the necessity of eating shouldn’t be considered something that is dangerous. Bryan Walsh talks about the dangers of eating food in his article, “America’s Food Crisis,” that proves how the food industry has changed dramatically in recent years. Factory farming has become the new way of producing food for America, one that is slowly putting millions of people’s health at risk.
These three companies have all but either acquired or eliminated their smaller competitors. The giants compete for the leading fast food chain’s contracts, in turn only benefitting the restaurants and increasing their profits (Schlosser 116). The potato industry has become an, “oligopsony- a market in which a small number of buyers exerts power over a large number of sellers,” (Schlosser 117). The potato farmers of Idaho face as Schlosser recounts, “pressure to either get bigger- or get out if the business,” (Schlosser 117). “Over the past twenty-five years, Idaho has lost about half of its potato farmers.
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Throughout the film, various companies are exposed for promoting products in a manner that depicts the products as a healthy alternative. The ultimate exposing is done on the government and the USDA. The government is exposed for making deals with food companies to not demonize companies that sell unhealthy food. Even Michelle Obama 's "Let 's Move" campaign against childhood obesity started out bringing unhealthy companies to the light but died down by emphasizing exercise and not talking about food. This is largely in part due to a deal made with major corporations who weren’t too pleased with the original approach of “Let’s Move”.
...struggling to earn any income at all and sometimes do not even get the opportunity to eat. Another issue that Raj Patel did not touch on is the lack of care consumers have for the farmers. It seems that consumers care about farmers about as much as the corporations do, which, in my opinion, is not a lot. When consumers only care about low prices and large corporations only care about making a profit, the farmers are left out to dry. Many consumers believe “food should be available at a bargain price, a belief that relies on labor exploitation and environmental exhaustion at multiple points along the commodity chain.” (Wright, 95) Corporations as well as consumers generally tend to be selfish and I think Raj Patel is afraid to mention this. If only these people cared a little bit more about each other I believe the hourglass of the food system will begin to even out.
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
As people immigrated to the United States, legally and illegally, particularly Hispanic workers, they began to look for jobs to provide for their families. They took jobs that Americans did not want: they accepted the low-paying, physically-demanding, and temporal agriculture jobs. Since many did not speak English and were uneducated, some even illiterate, they were easy targets for farm owners to exploit. Immigrant workers were often not paid, had low wages, and because of such conditions, some even died. In addition, they also lived and worked in appalling conditions, some workplaces did not even have suitab...
What does it mean to live in a well lived life? Some may define it as where one’s living necessities are met. Others may put value on relationships between other sentient beings. How does such a multitude of social injustices and poor living conditions exist within a country that claims to promote equality for all people? A common expression is that America is a melting pot. In truth, America is a melting pot of discrimination and injustice. For example, African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses. Institutional racism is a vital factor that permeates numerous injustices throughout our society. Institutional racism refers to specific policies and/or institutions which consistently result in unequal treatment for particular groups. I argue that institutional racism constitutes an injustice and through using Rawls theory, the veil of ignorance, institutional racism can be rectified.
The companies need workers for their facilities so they recruit to low income people and can hire them for next to nothing. Some of the slaughterhouses hire illegal immigrants because they work for relatively cheap. Since the workers are effectively a dime a dozen and there are always replacements for the workers that they lose, either through quitting or deportation, the companies don’t place a priority on employee satisfaction. The work has become more hazardous than it was several years ago and is now considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). 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. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...
They have been able to dominate the market through vertical integration and ties to government officials. Many of the officials who support the corporations had previously worked for those very same companies, giving them an advantage over those opposed (which often are small farmers or individuals criticizing the work of the corporation). For the small farmers, who often do not associate themselves with politics, this is a large disadvantage because the farmers have no political resources compared to that of a large corporation. For the individuals fighting against the corporations, they are often limited by the laws favoring large corporations. There have been many attempts at shutting down this corrupt system. One of these is Kevin’s Law, a law that would allow the USDA to shut down plants that produced contaminated meat. The act never passed despite being introduced in Congress for six years before it was officially dropped. As a result, large corporations save money by not having to following this law. It portrays a negative image of the corporations who will pride themselves with cheap, mass produced food and hide the ugly truth behind closed
What most Americans don’t know is that their food supply is being controlled by a select few corporations. There are four food corporations that control 80% of the market; Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield. In the film, Food Inc., Tyson was reported as being one of the largest meat packing companies in the world. As seen in the film, one of the industrial chicken farmers under contract with Perdue gave a look into what industrial chicken farming looks like. The chickens were kept in overcrowded conditions that didn’t allow them to move. Many of the chickens died as a result of their accelerated growth and cramped conditions. The chickens were also fed antibiotics that are no longer working to prevent dangerous diseases. Corporations like Tyson and Perdue are producers of a large amount of food, in a small amount of land for a cheap price. Corporations have government agencies that are supposed to protect the consumer in their pockets and these agencies are allowing unsafe food products to be sold to consumers. Also in the film was the interview of Barbara Kowalcyk whose 2 year old son Kevin died after eating a burger that was infected with ...
One example of how the food industry is ruthless is when one of the CEOs of a fast-food chain states they are part of the problem is hired immediately. Though I don’t not find this wrong because if I was a stock-holder with my life savings invested within his company I would without a doubt have him fired for placing my money at risk. That is the harsh reality of economics, you cannot place you company in shock by either a damaging statement or bad executive move. I found most disturbing about the movie was how a case was being made against McDonalds that two obese teens did not know fast-food was unhealthy (Spurlock). Regardless of how they lived word of mouth had to have taught them fast food is not healthy, and if that didn’t health education has been in place for years now teaching us