Earlier this week, we watched a movie called Food, Inc. This movie is a documentary about where your food really comes from. One of the problems it addresses is animal abuse. Before I saw this movie I had no idea that people are feeding cows corn instead of grass. Nor did I know that it was bad for them, but it turns out incorrect feeding is one of the causes of more than 73,000 cases of e. coli deaths per year. These mass farming facilities changed the way cows are fed just so that the cow gets fatter quicker and the company saves a few bucks. Another problem involving animal abuse is what the companies are doing to the chickens. Because companies like Tyson want their chickens to grow faster, they genetically modify the chickens. This action causes many of the chickens to grow so fast that their bones cannot keep up and many of them can't even walk. The chickens also suffer organ failure from this rapid growth. To add on to their sad life, the chickens are being grown in chicken houses so crammed with chickens there has to be an elevated board in the middle to get around.
However, you may be thinking why are the farmers treating them this way. When a chicken farmer is employed, they raise the chickens the way the company wants them to and they have to submit to their demands or have their contract terminated. This means that this company can say that in order to work for me, you have to have this certain piece of equipment. This might not seem like a problem, but the company does not pay for the special equipment forcing the farmer to go to the bank, get a loan, and then buy the equipment out of the farmer's own account. So chicken farmers are just modified versions of slaves. Another problem with our food system is crop farmers being sued for reusing seeds which have a patent on them, such as Monsanto's genetically modified, pesticide-resistant seeds. Sometimes these seeds spread unknowingly, but Monsanto has seed police looking for them.
Some things I learned from the website www.foodincmovie.com to help change these problems include: buying organic or sustainable foods with little or no pesticides, buying from your local farmers market, reading labels to find out where your food comes from, supporting the passage of laws requiring chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus and menu boards, and demanding job protections for farm workers and food processors ensuring fair wages and other protections.
