...320 The documentary “The Food, INC gave me insight on food production issues that I was unaware of. The manufacturing companies have a strong hold on farmers that prevents the natural way of farming. Farmers spend thousands of dollars purchasing new equipment to make companies such as Tyson happy. These farmers end up borrowing more money than they actually make. The issues in food production include cheap labor, immigration, e-coli contamination, pesticide usage, the fast food industry, and the sanitary conditions for both animals and workers in factories. Companies such as Smithfield recruit immigrants from Mexico to work in their factories. workers are paid very low wage and endure unsafe work conditions. There is an agreement between manufacturing companies and INS so that immigrants to be deported in small numbers. This is done so that the factory’s production is not affected. I was unaware that immigrants work for these large manufacturing companies for such a low wage. These people are exploited by companies such as Smithfield. Some of these workers have been working in United States for over fifteen years. The corporations are robbing livelihood of workers and there only means of survival. We as Americans lobby against immigrant’s presence in the United States. The ham and turkey we buy that is so inexpensive for Thanksgiving dinner is made possible by immigrant workers. The fast food industry has been profitable and...
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...Food Inc. This film was definitely an eye opener, I was not fully aware of the current methods of food production. One of the main issues that shocked me the most, was the way animals were treated and fed. I felt so repulsed when I saw how the cattle was brutally slaughter. The industry has been doing this for years, and we are not doing anything about it. I never really thought about how the animals were treated. I had an idea that it was probably done in a way that was efficient for the industry to supply meat to multiple supermarket across the U.S. Another thing that I never really thought about, was how fast the meat is supplied to supermarkets. I never asked myself how it is possible for all supermarkets to always have beef, chicken and fish available. We live in a society were everything is fast-paced. It was very astonishing to see that all of the animals we eat are feed with corn to quickly speed up the process of distributing the meat. After seeing the graphic scenes captured, I told myself that I would never eat meat again. However, once I went back home I found myself craving chicken nuggets. When I got hungry, I forgot only for a split second about the movie! But when I remembered I felt so conflicted. It is difficult for me to stop eating meat, but I want to make a difference on the way our food is treated. I think this movie should be watched by everyone, so we can encourage (push) the meat industry to change the way they produce and supply our meat. While I...
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...a large impact on the way all food is processed. The top four meat packers now control over 80% of the market, compared to the past,when the top four meat packers controled 20% In America, whoever has the big bucks dictates how things are run. With money, there is no limit to what can be done. According the Youtube video, “Food Inc.” a perfect example of the desire for more is in the food industry. The narrator makes the argument that profit is put before the consumer’s well being, the legacy of the American farmer, workers safety, and our precious environment (Food Inc.) in many major corporations. I firmly believe that these corporations have put aside and have deliberately tried to hide the truth about how unhealthy the food they produce truly is for the American public. The documentary “Food Inc. produced by Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser, takes an in depth look at America’s food industry and the terrible but completely legal way our food is genetically engineered. The purpose of this video is to shock the American public with clever filmography and facts about the food Americans consume everyday. The food industry is full of misconceptions. The youtube video, “Food Inc.” declares that the food industry is using deceiving images of agrarian America to sell their product. Images such as lush green fields, picket fences, silos, and 30’s farmhouse, but as the narrator asserts, “it’s the spinning of a pastoral fantasy”. In reality the food being consumed is coming from...
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...Topic: Food Production and Consumption Choices Food Inc The documentary Food Inc was released in 2008. It targets big corporations in how they produce a product. However, the product they are producing are living beings and these big corporations are taking over the majority of the food production process in the U.S. The economic perspective on this movie with be both from the consumer and the producers/suppliers. I will tie in the motivation of food production for these multi-national corporation and also come with an idea of us, as consumers do in fact have a choice in the products we purchase. Also what are the implication are of our economic choices and what choices I have made after viewing this film. In any business, to become successful you have to be able to supply a demand. Also be able to do so cost efficiently and increase the process t ime. All of these companies that were announced in the film Food Inc, are market-oriented, they produce a product such as chickens, whose intake has been adjusted so they grow faster and larger, they know how to produce them quickly and they also in bring buyers and sellers. With this system it allows them to yield higher profits, because they spend less time in production time of growing their product. One of the companies illustrated is Tyson, they have their employees specialized in order to complete many task in a quicker time frame. Such as the one women in the film, who was stamping or “branding” these baby chickens...
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...SM 101 Environmental Science VIDEO: Food, Inc. © 2008 by Magnolia Home Entertainment Quoted from the outer case of the DVD – “Food, Inc. lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing how our nation’s food supply in now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer heath, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. Food, Inc. reveals surprising – and often shocking truths – about what we eat, how it’s produced and who we have become as a nation.” Please answer the following questions while watching Food, Inc. 1. Approximately how many products are available in the average American grocery store? 47,000 products 2. In what decade did “drive-ins,” the original fast food restaurants, appear on the American landscape? 1930’s 3. What fast food restaurant brought the factory system, or assembly line, to food preparation? McDonald Brothers (McDonalds) 4. Who is the largest purchaser of ground beef in the United States? McDonalds 5. Who is the largest purchaser of potatoes in the United States? Mcdonalds 6. The top 4-5 producers of beef controlled only __25_% of the market in the 1970s, and _80__% of the market today. 7. In the 1950s, it took 70 days to raise a chick to a chicken. Today, it takes only 48 days. How is this possible? Redesigned the chicken to be bigger, all birds coming off the line have to be about the same size. Tyson owns the chickens...
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...Food Inc Essay America’s way of eating and growing food has evolved more in the past 50 years than the previous 10,000 years. Which is shocking to me, upon learning how this happened and the consequences of this happening, needless to say I w as really upset. The whole industrial food industry started to take off right along with the fast food industry “boom” in the early 1930’s; being McDonalds their bigger customer. But with McDonalds’s continuous growing need for ground beef, potatoes and vegetables only a few companies were able to supply. Back in the early 1970’s the top four meat distributers,(Tyson,Swift,Cargill and National Beef) controlled only a 30% of the market, now with the American demand for meat and help from the government they control more than 80%, which means billions of dollars in revenue, money that is used to come up with genetically ways to grow more chicken and cattle twice as fast and to quiet the voice of anybody who has something to say about it, with a legion of lawyers. A good example is Tyson; a company that has virtually and genetically changed the chicken as we knew it. Tyson can raise, kill and process a chicken in 49 days, that’s half the time it took before and the chickens weight twice as much. Chickens in these “Chicken Houses” never see the light of day; they walk around ankle deep in feces and put on so much weight and so fast that they are not able to take more than three steps before falling down. This is not only highly unsanitary...
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...Food Inc. 4/6/13 In class last Tuesday we watched a documentary called Food Inc. This film was an eye opener for most people but being that I am a sixth generation farmer I understand how the seed, meat, and poultry corporations work. This film discussed the problems with the food industry today, and what we need to do to change the future of how our food is made and processed. In the first section of this documentary they talked about the food industry as a whole and how most of the food industry is ran by four or five big industries. This should not be how it is ran as off right now and today these companies are monopolies and run unsafe facilities not for just the people that work there but how the production process is ran. This documentary also covered the meat is being produced in unsafe and unnatural way. While feeding cattle corn is a great way to make them larger quicker, it still is not the right way to feed cattle because feeding them too much corn can cause them to die because of a disease called e-coli. When cattle get this disease it sometimes is not caught and the cow gets slaughtered and ends up on our dinner plate and then we receive the disease by eating the meat. This needs to change cows need to be fed grass and hay, and should not be on a corn only diet. This film also covered the poultry industry and how poultry is being grown at a very fast rate and how the chicken houses are not safe or very sanitary. The poultry houses are sealed with no sunlight...
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...Kali Smith 14214249 Feb. 3rd, 2016 AS 2111 Food Inc. The documentary Food Inc. has raised a lot of issues that face how our agriculture system is runs. Its purpose was to give people an insight to what is actually going on in the food industry and to show us what we are actually eating and how it is processed. The creators of Food Inc. uncovered some very disturbing information. From the documentary, I came up with many different issues that the food system has. These issues included: a few huge corporations controlling almost all of the food industry, poor treatment of the farmers, workers and animals, diseases being created from the process, the protections that these huge corporations have a the blindness that consumers face. One of the biggest issues discussed is the fact that only four companies run about 80% of the food industry. They include: Monsanto Company, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, and Perdue Farms. It all started with the fast food industry coming alive. Fast food needs the food to be prepared in massive quantities and a cheaply and quickly as possible. These companies found a way to do just that and took the industry by storm. They turned the kitchen into a factory assembly line and the workers into expendable assets. Food started to be processed differently and animals started to be seen only as their end product. They have gotten so big that it has created a monopoly around the food industry and no one seems to know how to get a leg up on them. With...
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...Notting Foods Inc.—Background Notting Foods Inc. is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It was founded in 1939 and is now the world’s largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef and pork. The company produces a wide variety of branded, processed food products and is the recognised leader in almost every retail and food service market it serves. With revenues of US$30 billion, Notting has 142 800 employees and more than 360 facilities and offices in 32 US states and 22 countries. Notting Foods’ vision is to be ‘the world’s first choice for protein based foods while maximising shareholder value’. ‘Segment, concentrate and dominate’ has long been its approach to business. The company anticipated consumer demand, segmented a market, concentrated on production and marketing so that it subsequently dominated the segment. Market domination, in conjunction with exacting cost control measures, is the company’s approach to achieving superior profits in fluctuating markets. In 2006, WEALTH magazine ranked Notting Foods Inc. as America’s most admired company in the food production industry. The survey ranked the 10 largest companies by revenues in 66 industries, including large subsidiaries of foreign firms. According to WEALTH, the survey results reflected the opinions of 10 000 executives, directors and securities analysts who rated the companies in their own industries using eight criteria, including innovation, employee talent, use of corporate assets, social responsibility...
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...Food Inc. is a very eye opening documentary to the American way of eating and even the American way of life. The investigative journalist Robert Kenner really digs deep behind the reasons why Americans have become so distanced from the source of their food. It is interesting to see to what extent large corporations control the American economy to the point of deciding what lands on the dinner plate of the lower class families. The interests of the people have become the veil of the interest of the large food pharmaceutical and oil corporations. The documentary shows quite interestingly how the large corporation’s lobbyists want to “protect” the people by furthering the people from the food and by making it tougher for the small family farms...
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...Semester Paper: Food, Inc. “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years, than in the previous 10,000.” - Michael Pollan, Food inc. This single statement paints a vivid picture in ones mind. Not only is the way we grow our food changing, but we are also changing our bodies. According to the documentary “Food, Inc” , in the 1950’s, it would take farmers about 68 days to fully grow a chicken. Now? It takes about 47 days to fully grow a chicken, and it is twice as big due to the fact that these chickens are injected with hormones. While this literally brings more food to the table, it might not be worth it in the long run. There are many advantages as well as disadvantages that come with the industrialization of food. Using the chicken as an example. In the documentary, they explained that everyone loves white meat, therefor they make the chicken breast incredibly large to produce more meat from one animal. This is good in a sense that more food is being produced, but the truth is, it is changing, physiologically. According to an article written on mericola.com, girls as early of the age of seven are beginning go through puberty changes, something that was not happening until the ages of 12-13. Another disadvantage about the industrialization of food is the stuff we use to grow our food. Example? Most of our fruits and vegetables are grown using pesticides, which are to keep insects off of them. You may say “yeah keeping bugs off is good, i don't want a worm in my apple”...
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...Whole Foods is a large international organization with thousands of employees. In the case study, the co-CEO John Mackey explained that the purpose of the organization was a heroic one. He explained that its highest purpose was “try and change and improve the world.” In order to accomplish that goal, he and the team members need to work in coordination to accomplish that goal. So McGregor's Theory Y in Organizational Behavior is prevalent in the way they do business. Management at whole foods is really just the mechanism to help find and bring people into the organization that assist the organization in achieving this goal. He recognizes that employees that are engaged, have the ability to make decisions and are able to do so effectively, and ultimately translates into conscientious customer service are ultimately more happy. When the staff is happy, their level of service is better, and then customers are happy, which equates to more revenue, and more profits (presumably) and in turn results in happy shareholders. It is a perpetuating evolution in business. True efficacy of this theory would dictate that the management team has the versatility to hire in the way they want, and to leverage resources that give them the greatest opportunity to achieve the goal of finding the right people but that subject was not broached in the case study. Whole Foods recognizes that the success of their organization and its ability to achieve profitability and shareholder value is...
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...When discussing food consumption, transparency is an issue that is not addressed as openly as it should be within the food industry. The conditions in which food is produced should be a cause of concern not only for me, but for everyone as well. Unfortunately, the food industry operates within a productivist, capitalistic system (Lappé, 2011). This means that increased production is the focus, and the interests of powerful stakeholders within the industry are protected more than the people. In the film Food Inc. (2008) – where the following information in this paragraph were obtained - filmmaker Robert Kenner exposes the food agribusiness as an industry teeming with corporations that prioritize profits over the health of the consumers, the...
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...“Food, Inc.” is a documentary that has brought light to several issues concerning the public in the U.S. related to the food industry. Issues such as infectious disease, nutrition, and occupational health and safety are addressed. I will discuss the issue of nutrition in relation to public health in this paper addressed in this film with regards to meat farming, fast food, and genetic modification and antibiotic use in the food industry. Infectious pathogens such as E. coli have also been quieted by large meat companies and are brought to light in this film and I have addressed this issue below. It is imperative that the way America handles food changes or there will be major implications for the health of our population. “Food, Inc.” provides...
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...Food Inc. documentary – notes Supermarkets and corn: • Grocery store tomatoes are picked green and then ripened with ethylene gas • Most people have no idea where their food comes from – food industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you are eating because if you did you might not eat it • The average grocery store has 47,000 products which makes it look like there is a large variety of choice – but it is an illusion – there are only a few major companies and a few major crops involved • Much of the processed food is just clever rearrangements of corn (eg. of the additives that are derived from corn: cellulose, saccharin, polydextrose, xanthan gum, maltodextrin, and high fructose corn syrup) • 30% of our land base in the US is used to grow corn because thanks to government policy farmers are paid to overproduce this easy-to-store crop • Farmers are producing so much corn that food scientists had to come up with uses for it – just like some of the additives listed above • Food scientist have also spent a lot of time reengineering our foods – so they last longer on grocery store shelves • 90% of the processed food products in the grocery store contain either a corn or soybean ingredient and most of the time they contain both (so you may be eating less variety than you think) • Animals, like cows and fish are fed with corn – because it is so cheap • Candy, chips and soda are cheaper at the supermarkets because the...
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