Food, Inc.

One day during class we watched a documentary called Food, Inc.

I never thought about food. Never really looked into where it came from. I remember I used to make fun of my mom for refusing to get any other eggs besides Egg Lands Best. I never understood why. I just knew they were a slightly more expensive brand of eggs.

Now however, after watching this film, I understand. In 1970, the top five beef packagers controlled 25% of the market. Today, the top four beef packagers own 80% of the market!
The film states that we have never had food packing this big in our history. Of all the food packaging, TYSON is the biggest. Most people enjoy white meat over dark meat. Something that I am now aware is that chicken farmers are redesigning their chickens., Not only do they never see the light of day (for most of them) but farmers are now "growing" chickens! The chickens are now so large that some of them cannot even walk. It was described in the film as an "assembly line".

It costs $280,000- $300,000 to build 1 poultry house. It costs that much money to build one, but the farmers only make $18,000 a year after borrowing about $500,000 for two chicken houses.

Corn is the main food fed to these animals. It is cheap and easily accessible. An example of this is my roommate owns and slaughters his pigs. HE brought one to the house yesterday to skin it and cut the fat off. (IT WAS REALLY REALLY GROSS). But his parents commented on how his dad is feeding the pigs too much corn because there was so much fat covering the meat.

Besides chickens, Food, Inc. talks about many other topics. One of these is E.Coli. Cattle is herbivores. They eat grass, not corn. But slaughter houses feed there cattle corn and keep them standing in their stalls where the manure is piling up around their legs. E.Coli evolves in the manure and the manure at times during the slaughter will touch the meat. The E.Coli then ends up in the food system.

Kevin's Law came about from this exact reason. Kevin was a little boy who got E.Coli while on vacation. He ended up dying. His parents wanted to make it aware of what was happening in the slaughter houses. Kevin's Law gave the power back to the USDA to shut down plants infected with salmonella, E.Coli, ect.

I now understand why my mom gets EB eggs. She isn't just being "girly". They are from chickens that aren't "grown" or redesigned.  After viewing this film I want to get all organic food. After seeing all the preservatives and things that goes into meat and eggs, it turned my stomach.