Food Injustice W6

      It was my first time watching Food Inc. and I have to say that it completely changed my perspective on the American food industry. I have known that the business is sketchy and we have had a lot of discussions in class, but to see it on screen was horrifying to me. Every time an animal was shown, I had to cover my eyes. There were a lot of points in the film that successfully persuaded me. The few that stood out most to me were the animals, how the farmers and workers are treated by the companies, and the story of the mom dealing with the death of her son.
     I am the biggest sap when it comes to the death of animals, so I basically had a frown on my face through the entire film. I'm not even a vegetarian, and sometimes I wish I was but I raised on eating meat. Anyways, I couldn't believe some of the images I saw. The two absolute worst were they showed how the chickens can't even stand up and the pigs were getting slaughtered by a "kill floor." Genetically modifying animals to fit our tastes such as making the chickens fatter than they naturally are showed a crueler side of the industry. When seeing all of those chickens starting to fall and breaking their legs, I was just thinking to myself how un natural and inhumane that was. The "kill floor" almost made me cry! I would of never thought that something like that existed. For the pigs to be slaughtered in a mass quantity, you just squash them all at once with the floor? I still can't believe it as I sit here and reflect on the sad image coming back to mind.
     Those images shown really made an impact on me because I am really sensitive to the fact of how our companies are treating the animals with so much cruelty. The film showed us the alternative to this, with a farmer who ran a small business from his farm and he definitely did not harm the animals in the way that the companies did. I just did not know the companies were that powerful and especially over the farmers and workers they control. It was so sad to see how the companies treated the farmers and the workers by making them work so hard for so little control and so little money. These companies are making a fortune, while having the farmers and workers doing all the dirty work for them. This really showed me how cruel the companies were. Not only do they treat the animals in such an inhumane way, they don't have respect for anyone such as the people working for them!
     In addition to the companies treatment of the people involved, another persuading concept that stood out was the story of the mother and son. The mother lost her son to a food illness that wasn't recalled until about twenty days after the little boy's death. This image was used to emphasize the important fact that our food contains so much bacteria and illness more than ever before. The film showed how the way the farms are feeding the animals corn now along with putting the animals in unsanitary conditions in which the disease feeds off of. So the conditions that the companies put the animals in are just harming us more, by the increase of ecoli and salmonella present. The story of the mother and son added a lot of emotion behind this fact that really made me think "why?" Why do the companies even put animals in conditions where disease is easily contracted? Why are they making food un-safe, rather than safe? It just doesn't make sense to me. I really liked how the mother continues to fight for safer food, because obviously something needs to change.
     The images of the animals, the workers and farmers, and more diseases successfully persuaded me to really hate the companies involved in this horrible business. The companies that control our food industry are suppose to make sure our food is safe, but ironically it's the complete opposite. They treat everyone around them with disrespect and I really hope we can continue to fight with these companies until there are some major changes made.