The Industrial Food System Paper

Descriptive
The industrial food system is millions of de-beaked hens that live their lives in cages without an inch to move and without ever seeing the world they live in. The industrial food system is growth of genetically altered corn that is broken down, separated and redistributed like automobile parts to become different parts of what we eat. The industrial food system is the rearing of hundreds of cattle in undersized pens that are showered with food in order to get fat, murdered, violently dissected at expeditious speeds and shoved out the doors of slaughterhouses and into our supermarkets. The industrial food system is the greasy, unhealthy Big Macs and French fries we eat for lunch. The industrial food system is the method in which America gets its food and its nutrients and rarely bothers to think or worry about.
The industrial food system is a compilation of different modernized farms and processing plants designed to produce mass quantities of food that is then distributed to fast food restaurants, restaurants and super markets. The industrial food system works through the many different farms that grow plants and raise animals that are then separated and broken down only to be latter processed and put back together in the form of “whole foods.”
Most of the industrial food system is based off of F-2 corn, which is fed to animals in order to make them grow faster and also broken down and processed into different ingredients that play a major role in adding flavor and texture to the “whole foods” that are made from the compilation of other processed foods. As well, the industrial food system run on fossil fuels, which are used in growing the plants we eat, transporting the food and processing the food.
Those involved in the industrial food system are the farmers of the corn, the people working in the elevators that collect the entirety of F-2 corn in a certain area who then distribute it to the animal farms and the processing plants. From the animal farms, the meat is sent to slaughter house where people kill and dismantle the different parts of the animal, which is driven in freezer trucks to places like McDonalds and Walmart Super Centers. From the processing plants (owned mostly by Cargill and ADM) the corn is sent to science labs and turned into different ingredients that then end up being made into chicken McNuggets and other packaged foods. And finally, at the very end of the chain of industrial food, lies the consumer, us, the people who eat the food.
Around the age of one, when I was still breast feeding, I was also introduce to mashed up apples, sweet potatoes and many of the other fruits and vegetables I now eat today. My experiences with industrial food began when I started eating jars of baby food and will continue until I take my last bite of food. I eat industrial food everyday, from the packages cereals I eat for breakfast to the salad I eat for lunch to the burrito I eat for dinner. Like my friends, neighbors and the rest of the world, I have often ate my meals without thinking about where they came from or the process it took to get them into my stomach. Fresh and healthy or fried and unhealthy, home cooked or restaurant ordered, most of the food I consume comes from the long chain of industrial food. It is not until recently that I became aware of what it means to be apart of the industrial food system, and it was when I realized that every piece of food I was eating had a much longer history than I imagined. And that was when I became more conscious of where my food comes from and that I really didn’t want to eat some of the things I had been eating my whole life.

Analytical
The cause for the industrial food system and the reason it is the primary source of nutrition for America is because of America’s size and lifestyle and desire to get everything for as cheep as possible. With a population of nearly 300 million, it requires a mass production of food to feed all those people. But the real dictator of industrial food is the lifestyle; if we were to feed everyone locally it would require that many more people assume the profession of a farmer. With advances in science and society there are many different jobs for people take, if everyone had to grow, raise and hunt their own food there would be no time for building rockets, defending people in court rooms and writing books. In order to feed all 300 million people that are working in our developed society, there is no choice but to industrialize and mass-produce food. Plus, Americans like to consume more food than they need to. If you go to a diner, a typical representation of American food, and order a club sandwich it is enormous, stacked high with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and comes with a whopping side of friend fries soaked in oil and coleslaw. If you eat all that food you stretch out your stomach and that just means you are going to want more the next time. This gigantic appetite America has is causing a greater market for food. And most of the time Americans are unwilling or unable to pay for expensive food, and therefore the food industry strives to make everything as cheap as possible.
As a result, the treatment of the workers is poor and the quality of the food is even worse. One example of the many different industries within the entire food industry is the tomato industry, where farmworkers are treated poorly.
Today, food harvesting in the United States is anything but fair: Tomato pickers in Immokalee mist pick two tons of tomatoes one by one – literally 4,000 pounds – just to make $50, and they regularly work 10- to 12- hour days with no overtime pay, no right to organize, no sick days and no benefits whatsoever (Buckley).
The workers at fast food restaurants, who were once teenagers who could afford to make less money (since they didn’t need to fully support themselves), are now mostly elderly, handicapped or immigrants (Schlosser 70). Workers at slaughter houses, who work dangerous jobs at the assembly lines, cutting up meat and fish as the line moves faster than they can safely work, are mostly immigrants and an estimated 1/4 of them are illegal. This is so because they come from places where they would be making much less money and are willing to work for less than most Americans, they are also less likely to join unions (Schlosser 160-62). Aside from the issues of financial exploitation, workers are also sexually exploited by their supervisors and co-workers as well as targets of drug dealers in their community.
The slaughterhouse and meat packing companies, who play a large role in the American industrial food system are the cause of not only the health problems in this country but also of the other issues society faces, specifically the drug and sexual abuse problem. Workers are forced into positions where they are powerless and often find themselves have sex with supervisors in order to gain better jobs, a secure place in America, a green card or a husband (Schlosser 176). Drugs enter the lives of the poor slaughterhouse workers when
The unrelenting pressure of trying to keep up with the line has encouraged widespread methamphetamine use among the meatpackers. Workers taking “crank” feel charged and self-confident, ready for anything. Supervisors have been known to sell crank to their workers or to supply it free in return for certain favors, such as working a second shift (Schlosser 174).
Mixing sex and meat packing is a dangerous thing to be doing. A woman working in the disassembly line that is being felt up by a supervisor or coworker cannot possible be safe trying to cut up meat with a sharp knife. Nor is a person much safer working with large machinery if they are on drugs, even if they feel more pumped to being doing that work. The industrial food system is responsible for mixing meat, sex and drugs; they are also responsible for the poor health of this country.
The meat is unsafe to eat. “A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken from processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, and 53.3 percent were contaminated with Clsotrudium perfringens. All of these pathogens can make people sick; food poisoning caused buy Listeria generally requires hospitalization and proves fatal in about one out of every five cases. In the USDA study 78.6 percent of ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material” (Schlosser 197). It is the fast moving lines that is not only the cause of a dangerous work environment but also the feces in the meat. While removing the guts of the expeditious moving animals, the guts are often broken and the contents contaminate the meat. The meat is clearly unhealthy and sickening, but it isn’t even those contaminations that are causing the many other more predominant issues associated with the food most people eat today. Diseases like obesity and diabetes plays a major role in causing poor quality life and death in this country. And while there is some attention paid to obesity and diabetes this country still doesn’t think enough about what they are eating, what microbes are contaminating their food and what their food is going to result in (poor health and disease).
The core of the industrial food system is really just death production that reduces the process of eating to survive and to enjoy the pleasure of food into a final product that will cost little and lack quality. In the process, and in essence, the industrial food system is not only killing the food we eat but also disregarding the harm it is doing to the environment and the health and well being of the people it is working for.
Martin Heideggar says, “Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in it’s essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as the blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.” Which is to say that in providing meat to the people they are simply working to herd millions of animals to their death, but is not only specific to the animals that are being killed. In addition to being a production of animal death, the industrial food system is also responsible for the death, suffering and injury of the workers that work in the dangerous mechanical plants and the people eating the meat who are often sickened and killed by the food they eat.

Evaluation
The industrial food system plays an essential and influential role in the lives of nearly every person in America, but does not pass through the minds of the majority of the population. And while it isn’t something many people put much thought into it is extremely import because food is the essence of life; we are what we eat. When consuming a BigMac, that person becomes the poor quality beef made of chemically injected and corn and antibiotic fed cow, the bun made from cornstarch and the tomatoes picked by immigrant workers paid near to nothing. As a part of the industrial food system we are not only the animals we think we are eating but also the process in which they are produced. Which means we are responsible for consuming the fossil fuel that goes into production of the meat, that antibiotics and other steroids and drugs that are fed to the animals we eat, the diseases the animals contract in the unnatural living environments they are raise in and the gut contents (shit) that gets all over our meet.
As a part of a system that is feeding animals chemicals to make them grow faster and spraying plants with pesticides there is a lot to be said about who we are, the culture we live in and the situation we are faced with (not to mention the situation we are going to face when this industrial food systems falls). We are a part of a complex industrial system but are unaware and completely disassociated with what we eat are what we are made of. We simply just don’t think about what we are eating. And as a society, we are just a group of people who don’t think about we are eating. We are also a group being manipulated by not only the people who make the decision about what we are eating but also by our lack of values, that have allowed us to become people that care so much about the price of things that we disregard all the morals we claim to have while we disassociate with the process of living.