Food Paper draft 2

We have been eating food ever since we are born and before that...but now that in America, everybody has been using machines (since back then as well) and rely on machines to make our food. However, the machines only produce efficiency, which leads to having the process of making our food to be fast, and profitable. The animals that were sacrifice for us to eat have and are still being treated horribly and abused by the machines and especially, us. As well as the plants that are constantly being spray by pesticides, and in return, the pesticides cause the workers to get illnesses. That is why I think we should grow the plants more naturally rather than growing the plants industrially and more chemically and to treat the animals more humane before killing them.

In the “Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Michael Pollan, in the beginning and in chapter 7 talks about eating food from fast food industries and how we are all eating from the same plant, corn. In chapter 7, Pollan and his family bought McDonald but when Pollan asks his son how the chicken nuggets taste like, the son replied that it taste like chicken, "duh". This can imply that we do not know much of where our food comes from and what actual ingredients were made to use it and not from the looks of it. Actually, most of the food especially meat, the main ingredient in there beside the animal itself is corn because all the animals eat corn and the farmers feed them corn since corn is grown very fast. If everybody is eating corn from all these foods, how are there so many corn seeds and how can they grow so fast? So let’s ask this question: How are our food processed…industrially?

I had a general idea of how the animals are being processed to become our food but I never had the idea that they would treat the animals horribly. When I think about where the animals are located like the cows, and chickens, they would be at a farm. And at a farm, the illusion that many of the people have, as shown in the Meatrix videos too, it has a pretty lady, smiling and milking the cows with her own hands. But the reality is that (when the Meatrix animals put on their black glasses), everything is not as it seems. The cows conditions are bad, smelly, skinny, unhealthy-looking and it is not the humans that are milking the cows, but the machines. The really disgusting part when they show about the farm was when the machines were feeding the baby cows; they were feeding (cow?) blood. On the last video of the Meatrix, it also shown how the meat were cut up and how the workers have to cut the meat in pieces. The worst part was when the meat that was hanging on the air to be cut up was dripping brown/black liquid onto the meat the workers were cutting. Then because the boss wanted to have more profit than the safety of the workers, he switches the machines to become faster, leading the workers to work fast, causing them injuries such as cutting their hands. If the processing of the animals goes more slowly, allowing the workers to work more sanitary and safer, then the percentage of the workers’ safety would be lower and the meat’s quality would be better.

In the video, "Cows with Guns", it was interesting how the cows were fighting back to stop the slaughtering of their kind. Even though they had that smart cow, the cows did not contribute much in the beginning and then they did after the factory was in fire and that smart cow had guns on him. In a way, I thought of it like how humans are fighting for what they want. It is like all or nothing because it keeps singing, "We will fight for bovine freedom. And hold our large heads high. We will run free with the Buffalo. Or die". It sounds very serious for the cows since if they do not win, they have to be killed horribly like a death sentence. I feel like it shows how the animals wants to fight back from getting killed by the machines but because the humans have the machines that the animals cannot fight back so they have to die for us and let us eat them.

In the movie, “Our Daily Bread”, a lot of the scenes was rather hard to watch because of the killing of the pig in close up and that the chickens and chicks are being thrown around. Let’s talk about the chickens and chicks first since it was less horrible when watching the pigs. The chickens were stuck in the big place without any sunlight and the place was quite dark. The place looked like a prison for the chickens and they were all unhealthy looking too, especially when they were in the rows/racks where there was a middle lane where the people walked through to check for dead chickens. As well as the chicks (I feel sorry for them since they were cute creatures) that they were thrown very fast by the machines and then a trip to here and there like the suitcases that are in the airport being transferred. Then they have to have shots, which look like it hurts, and if one of them is missing a body part, they get thrown away. Now that is unfair because they are missing a body part is because of the machines that were going fast and nonstop and the people were dumping them on the boxes. I wonder how the people feel when working with the machines in killing the animals. However since I am the one that is not doing that kind of a job, I would have these disgusting, and horrible feelings towards what they are doing. I do not blame the people that are working there because they are working there to support themselves and maybe that job is the only job they can get. (a person working in the meat factor, filmed in Europe, "Our Daily Bread")
Between watching how the animals were killed and processed, it was a lot different than how I see the meat in the supermarket. And then when my mom cooks it, they all looked fine but it was sad knowing the history behind all the meat that was being killed, cut, (horribly) and then packaged like a present. As for the pigs...

What if we have treated the animals better and giving them an actually good environment, and feeding them a lot more food than what the people are doing now? I think it would be better because if you think about it, we, the people want to eat healthy meat but if seeing that those unhealthy animals are turned into meat, I would not be able to eat it. If we want healthy meat, shouldn’t we treat the animals better so when they died, the animals might feel better (and think they had a good life) and then when we eat it, it tastes more healthy than meat that has so much chemicals in them to make them healthy-looking. I think we would feel better eating the meat because oh, we know they are being treated fine and good before they were sacrifice for us to eat. We wouldn’t feel that guilty and disgusted after that…what you think?

I think we should both treat the plants and animals the same way. Industrial farming for the plants are also fast and using a lot of machinery to get more products out and profits in. The soil that is being used to grow the plants are getting less and less nutrient and part for the fertilizer because we are using the soil over and over again while the mother nature can not keep up with the machines. In the video, “VROOM –Farming for Kids”, when they show the big farming tractor, the tractor had a lot of functions that can make the planting more efficient. However, I just thinking the mass of the tractor that is crushing the soil is making the soil worse and making the part of the soil where the tractor rode on it less good. The constant use of machinery causes the nature to not be able to keep up with our need of mass production and the whole issue of “industrial farming”.

Since the soil is getting less healthy and nourishing for the seedlings to grow, the farmers would have to use more fertilizer to keep the plant growing. However, everyone wants healthy plants, especially the insects so the farmers have to buy another chemical, pesticides. Ta da, a dangerous chemical. In the movie, “Our Daily Bread”, there was a scene of a field of beautiful yellow flowers, but then a helicopter flew towards the camera and then out it came was a flood of pesticides spraying on the flowers. I think it kind of destroys the image of “nature”. Besides that, when the workers were picking the vegetables/fruits off the stems, there was a huge net surrounding the field shows how the plants and the workers are stuck in a container. And then I feel like I was in a container too because I am eating the vegetables and fruits that came from a field surrounded by a net, feels stuck and the plants are being mechanically grown, and not naturally grown. There was also a scene in the movie that when there was huge white plastic sheets flung over the rows of plants and the spaying of water or pesticides while not all the workers have left yet. It sort of shows how the treatment towards the plants is like the treatment towards the workers. Both the plants and workers get fill with pesticides and both is using machines to help them do the work since the plant’s work is to grow and the workers or farmers using machines to help them plant the seeds.

The plants, it’s obvious or instinct that insects are going to come to eat the plants that we’ve grown but should we allow it or not…that I’m not sure. But I think we should still let nature take its course rather than using so much tractors and pesticides to get the fast results we want. A lot of the plants that we are going are widely popular but there are other plants too besides those that we can eat from. It is just that we need to know and if everybody knows about it, we can use those plants for our food. Then the soil can make more nutrients on the field of soil that has been used over and over again. And it’s not like trying new plants is bad, letting the other plants grow more natural instead of using chemicals; and the animals should be treated nicely without the work of machines in exchange for letting us eat them.