Industrial Food System

 

     In this blog I will present my concluding perspective of industrial food system. Industrial food system, a system of agricultural industrialization, is operating in an assembly industrial model with high speed and high output. In this system, productivity is over everything.  Its high output is based on the donation of animal welfare, working security, food safety, government power and environmental protection and so on.  It’s a food system really need improving.


      Before I learned about the industrial food system, I just thought it is a system that can produce quantities of food efficiently. At the beginning of this semester, by reading Imhoff’ s book, The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories， I got to know its cruelty to  animals and its damage to the nature and the society gradually behind its productivity. Animals are confined without freedom to behave naturally. The ecological balance is broken. The whole society also suffers a lot because of food contamination and environmental pollution. How can it go ahead with its huge damage of animals, nature and the whole society? I started to think about this question. Then, I was surprised at finding the great support of government to this system from The CAFO Reader and another book, Slaughterhouse. The government gives subsidy to the food industries and relaxes  regulations for them.  Amazingly, the United State Agriculture Department even helps them cheating the whole society so that they can get away from producing unhealthy food, taking inhumane actions and polluting environment. Without reading these books, I should seldom know that the food industries are powerful enough to control the government in some way. The strong power of the industrial food system makes me start to doubt the food safety of America.  At present, I pay more attention to what I eat. For instance, I used to eat McDonald’s fried chicken, but I don’t want to eat them anymore right now.  

The 11th hour

    

In this blog I will discuss a movie: The 11^th Hour.  In this movie, many experts from different fields tell us that we are destroying our only home—the earth, through describing the great damage of global warming bringing to the earth. Global warming is resulted from the green house gases, especially the carbon dioxide. The majority of carbon dioxide comes from the use of fossil fuel. As the product of science, fossil fuel is widely used for the development of our economy, but also does great harm to our environment. For instance, drought, floods, fire and tornados are the impact of global warming.  It’s indicated that all the situations will be worse if we don’t take action to lessen the global warming as well as other environmental pollutions. Although it’s important to develop the economy, we cannot neglect the importance of protecting the nature.  According to a speaker in the movie, we can’t be separated from nature because environment is the basis of our economy. That is to say, the environmental protection is essential to the development of our economy.  Because all the resources we use to develop our economy are from the nature, the development of economy is limited by the nature.  If our nature is destroyed, how can we promote our economy? 

The movie also reminds me of the development of meat industry in the United States. Many animal factories of meat industry that raise and kill animals in the assembly industrial model are built up in some rural communities.  In order to promote the development of the local economy, the governments relax the regulations for the corporations even though these animal factories pollute the environment seriously. Instead of obtaining the rapid development of its economy, the severe pollutions of the local environment make the rural communities lose other opportunities to develop its economy in the long term. Undoubtedly, developing our economy based on the damage of environment is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

 Generally speaking, this movie sounds the alarm that we should take measure to protect our environment.  For example, we can reduce the use of fossil fuels and promote the recycle of industrial materials and so on. It’s time for us to save the earth.

The End of Overeating

In this blog I will discuss the connection between overeating and CAFO system. The end of overeating, written by David A. Kessler, explains why people are addicted to food with sugar, fat and salt in term of biology. According to David, most people eat more than they need because they are addicted to food biologically. The reward system of our brain, which is attracted by food with high-sugar, high-fat or high-salt easily, will desire more food with pleasure response. Although the homeostatic system tries to help us maintain the energy balance, the reward system usually defeats it and makes us overeat. What’s worse, the quantity, the concentration of ingredients in food and some cubes like location can strengthen our demand of food from reward system. Consequently, it is hard for us to resist the temptation of food.

Undoubtedly, the overeating can provide a broad market for CAFO system.  Once CAFO can satisfy consumers’ addiction to food, CAFO will never lose its business. Products from CAFO system are made to achieve the standards, such as high-sugar, high-salt and high-fat, to attract consumers. For instance, cows are fed with corns, the high-calorie diet, which can cause cows disgust difficultly but become fatter.  This kind of products makes consumers feel good. As is mentioned before, the quantity is a fact that affects consumers’ need for food. CAFO has a high output, which is over the normal amount of consumption. Based on the theory that people will desire more if they are given more, it can be implied that CAFO has been encouraging overeating and has been making a great profit from it. Besides, another factor, location is the biggest advantage of CAFO. The broad distribution of CAFO and its products makes consumers get their food easily, which is an important reason of its huge consumption. Generally speaking, CAFO system exceeds the consumers’ biological addiction of food and promotes it.  But on the other hand, People’s addiction to food is the motivator of CAFO system.

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From Farm to Fridge

         In this blog I will discuss something about the video From Farm to Fridge. The video shows us what the animals suffer from before they become the meat in our fridge. In the video, “slaves” and “machines” are the best words to describe these poor animals. As is presented, animals are confined in the crowded factory farms, losing the freedom to do and meet their basic natural behaviors and need. Worst, animals are hurt and killed cruelly as to adjust them to the unnatural condition and improve their productivity.

         Animals are treated violently and get no freedom just like the slaves. They are confined in the tiny cages so that they cannot behave naturally. To adapt themselves to the over-crowded space, they are also removed part of their bodies without any tools reducing their pain.  For instance, the tailors of cows and swine are cut off. We cannot imagine how painful the animas are. Humans beings take it for granted that they are the most advanced animals and they have the rights to govern all of the other animals. Consequently, they treat the animals as slaves and force the animals to do everything in order to meet with their own need.

         In terms of the businesspeople, animals are producing machines rather than the life. In order to improve the productivity, they neglect the welfare of the animals. If the animals don’t have or lose the ability to produce, they will be thought killed without hesitation. As we can see in the video, a great amount of male chickens are killed not long before hatching because they cannot lay eggs or grow up rapidly as female chickens. Once animals cannot contribute to the productivity, they are thought useless and are abandoned as a broken machine.

      

The instroduction of The CAFO Reader

In this blog I'm going to talk something about   The CAFO Reader. 

The CAFO Reader  about  the tragedy of industrial animal factories, is edited by Daniel Imhoff.  "CAFOs" means concentrated animal feeding operations. Imhoff writes "factory farming". Businesspeople domesticate animals in a industrialized farm, or  exactally, it is a factory rather than a farm(Imhoff  xiv).  Inside CAFO, a huge quantitative animals are domesticated under unnatural conditions  and slaughtered cruelly in the factory farming. The environmental  pollutions are caused by great amounts of manure produced by the factory farming. Besides, the abuse of antibiostics in animal food production is likely to  lead to ineffective results of human medicine. The government policies of U.S., encouraging the development of CAFO and restricting our comments about it , damages our basic constitutional freedom.  What's worse, the factory farming persues the high quantities of output blindly, which results cyclical flooding of animal food and throws a great thread to ecosystems.  Undoubtedly, our food system really needs improving.lagccfood2012.blogspot.com