Food Assignment #8

Within the past week in class we have been watching "Unser Taglich Brot" (our daily bread) and "Vroom! Farming For Kids," discussing where the food we eat comes from. Also shown in "The Meatrix" 1, 2, and 2.5 and the article "Industrial Food is Cheap," the general American way of food is uhealthy and cruel to Animals and plants.

We've seen in "Vroom!..." how farming has been industrialized. Extreme machines are used to pick crops and tend the farm where there is little work for a lot of food meaning lots of profit. Meaning replacing people with machinery used by fossil fuels polluting the air as said in the article "Industrial Food is Cheap." Also stated in this article, because farms tending animals incompetently, the manure (12 million pounds of it) is not being taken care of and is leaking into rivers causing water pollution. This article's main argument is that Industrialized food is NOT cheap because although it is cheap in money, in the long run it affects the planet and all the hormones used affects us Americans who eat the food leading to risk of diseases. And in "Unser Taglich Brot" what is done to animals for our convenience where pigs, chickens, and cows suffer from this immediately, us humans have to face health problems and pollution problems. Whereas, if we eat organic food, although it is expencive money wise, it eliminates the use of chemicals devreasing the risk of diseases which helps us in the long run.

Shown in "The Meatrix" series, the "Family farm is just a fantasy," animals are not being treated like the ideal farm, raising their animals with care. The animals in industrialized farms never see sunlight or even touch ground, they are kept in small tightly confined cages to then be killed and slaughtered, 5000 cows are slaughtered per day which makes me wonder, how much of it do we actually need? before industrialization took over the food system I would assume that people did not have access as much to eat as we have today so how much is actually necessary? Where do we cross the line of producing too much food or not enough?