Food Inc.

Watching the film Food Inc has made me think a lot about the industrial food process. Their are so many thing wrong with the way that our food is produced. From GM crops to the continual turning down of Kevin's Law we have a lot to improve on. My favorite part of the movie was getting to see the visuals of Pollyface Farm witch I really enjoyed reading about in The Omnivores Dilemma. 


Kevin's Law
The storie of Kevin's Law is a sad one but it is something that must be told. In 2001 two year old Kevin Kowalcyk was killed by E. coli O157:H7 that he got from eating an infected hamburger. Kevin's parents talks about how they lost her baby boy: "On Tuesday, July 31, 2001, our two-and-a-half year old son, Kevin awoke with diarrhea and a mild fever. By Thursday morning, he was much sicker and was hospitalized for dehydration and bloody stools. Later that afternoon, we were given the diagnosis: E. coli O157:H7. The following day Kevin’s kidneys started failing. He had developed the dreaded Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS). We spent the next 8 days living in the hospital watching our beautiful son slip away from us. By Tuesday, Kevin was on a ventilator and continuous dialysis. By the end of the week, he was receiving numerous medications to stabilize his blood pressure and heart rate. On August 11th at 8:20 P.M., after being resuscitated twice, our beloved Kevin died. We did not know the risks we were taking by feeding our child a hamburger." No parent should have to go through this so after Kevin's death his mother went on a mission to make sure it never happened again. If made a bill Kevin's Law would give the FDA the power to shut down plants that produced contaminated meat. The Law has been seen by congress multiple times but has yet to be put in place. I think that it is ridicules that the FDA dose not have the power to shut down plants. This law could possibly save lives but because of money the big companies wont let it pass witch is to bad. 


Genetically Modified Crops

According to The Center for Food Safety it is estimated:"that upwards of 60 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves--from soda to soup, crackers to condiments--contain genetically engineered ingredients." One of the bigest manufactures of prosed soy is Monsanto a huge company with lots of controle. Monsanto has a patent on there seeds and any one who is found growing the seeds illegally is vulnerable to copyright infringement. This is even true for farmers who get the GM seeds blown into their crops. While GM crops have a higher yield and come round up ready they are not as ethically sound and most of the money that comes from growing the produce goes strait to the seed companies.  


Polyface Farm 
My favorite part of the movie Food Inc. was getting to see footage of Polyface farm witch is owned and operated  by the Salatin family in Virginia. The produce beyond organic meat and produce witch is then sold locally. While the way that they farm is much hard to do and takes a lot more work the end product is much healthier and more rewarding








Food Inc. was a hard movie to watch but it is an important one. The cruelty that the animals receive is no fun to see but since watching the movie I feel much more informed. I had no idea how much of our food is modified or exactly how terrible animals in feed lots are treated. We have talked about these things in class and most of the big idea are brought up in The Omnivores Dillema but seeing the visuals made it seam so much more real. One sean that was particularly terrible to watch was when the farmer was walking through her chicken houses picking up all the dead chicken.  By far the worst part to watch was when a cow who was to weak to carry his own body weight was being pushed around by a fork life. These images will stay with me and have made me much more informed about what I am eating.