Marisa Smith and Kelly Thayer

Industrial food is making us sicker, fatter, and poorer

because

“everything we’ve done in modern agriculture is to grow it faster, bigger, and cheaper.”

Advertising

• On most products, we see pictures of farmers or farms that let us invision that our food is coming from a happy and ethical place. That is not the case.

The issues

• Large corporations• Ethical issues in the treatment of animals• Fair labor practices• Food safety crises• Increasing health problems due to change in

diets towards carbohydrates influenced by the business of food

Mega Companies

• We all thought that farmers raised our chickens and cows, but we are terribly wrong.

• Corporations such as Tyson, Perdue, Smithfield, and Monsanto control everything.

• They pay farmers to take care of their animals.• The corporations make contracts with the individual farmers.• Also, the corporations refused to be interviewed in the

documentary.• One farmer said that she makes $18,000 dollars a year, but

she is $250,000 dollars in debt because she has to comply with the contracts.

Labeling

• There have been many law suits about labels and what they should say.– Where does the product comes from?– Who made the product?– Is it organic?– Are there GMOs?

Workers and Factories

• The companies place their plants in places with a great deal of poverty.

• They do this because they know they can get people to work who need money.

• A big problem nowadays is that they are hiring undocumented workers.

• Smithfield is one of the companies very guilty of this.– 15 workers get arrested everyday.

How our food is treated:Chickens aka “broilers”

• The chickens are kept in chicken houses and most of them never see daylight.

• They are forced to live in their own feces and filth.

• They are not allowed to act like birds, meaning they cannot perch, walk, forage, or even spread their wings.

How our food is treated:

• In the documentary, the treatment of the animals by the major corporations is horrible.

• They kick and throw the animals.• “stunning” of chickens

How our food is transported:

• Some shipments of animals travel over 1,500 miles (bad for environment, and the animals)

• A large number of the animals die in transport due to the deprivation of essentials.

How our food is grown:

• The chickens are also so fat that they can barely walk three feet without falling. – “They are on the verge of structural collapse.”

• The chickens have been genetically modified.-Chickens grow faster because they are injected with growth hormones.- What would normally take three months of development now only takes about 49 days.

What do they feed the livestock?

• The majority of the animals are fed corn and by products of animals.

• Cows are supposed to be herbivores, but because they want cows to be as fat as possible, they feed them corn.

Corn

• Corn is the most widely produced crop. • It is in almost everything that we eat because

these products are a “rearrangement of corn.” • In dealing with cows specifically, the ratio of

meat to corn is 1 to 2.5.

Organic Food

• Small farmers are starting to take a stand against the big companies.

• The food is grown, handled, and prepared with much more care.

• There are no chemicals or GMOs.• The cows are fed grass!• The negative aspect of organic food is that it is

very costly. That is why people turn to fast food.

Health Issues

• Because food is so expensive, Americans are drawn to cheap, unhealthy food.

• Fast food is terrible for our health, for the consumption of fast food can lead to obesity, diabetes, and other weight issues.

• With health issues comes medical bills and medication, which is very expensive as well.

Health Issues

• There have been many outbreaks of e-coli and salmonella, which has led to many recalls of products.

• This is because of how the animals are treated and fed.

• The documentary discusses a situation where a young boy died from e-coli that he got from a hamburger.