Food Inc. : How Our Food Is Made

Ever since kids meals came around, children have driven
their parents crazy in order to get one from a restaurant 

When I was younger in the 4th grade, I really favored a Happy Meal from a McDonald's restaurant. I like the food it had, but the main reason why bothered my parents so much for one was because of the toys it had. Throughout my childhood years, I failed to realize the main purpose of the excitement that waited for me within the box.

In the documentary titled, Food Inc., viewers were sent on a learning field trip that shows us the truth about how our food in the happy meal is being made.

When McDonald's first started off, it was a regular restaurant. Back in the 1950s, many restaurants were. similar and they had someone's food delivered to them by someone in roller skates. One day, the owners decided to cut down on the cost of making their food and created a new process. This new process began a new idea on how restaurants are going to work in the future. In their new process, the McDonald brothers introduced the factory way of making food.

The factory way had less workers with lower pay. This helped the McDonald brothers make help money by making food at a lower cost. Coming with this change, McDonald's became a very rich company that it is today because of these changes.

Ever since restaurants started, they have bought their meats from four major companies. These companies are Tyson, Swift, National Beef, and Cargill.  With that, the American Beef Supply is majorly controlled by these companies. In 1980, these companies only owned 20% of the supply. Now, these companies now own 80% of the beef supply.

Now that the four companies own the American Beef Supply, they have lying to people about how there animals are treated and made. They would say the animals are raised on a farm, but, they are really raised in a factory. Also, the animals are not being treated right. For example, chickens that are raised in factories are being mutated to grow faster and the owners of the factories make their muscles grow bigger than usual.

Chickens are forced to live in tight spaces in factories 

Since corn is very cheap, these major factories buy corn in order to feed their cattle or chicken. It only costs about 50 cents in order to make it. Since corn costs less, it is used as main ingredient that is used for their products. Not only is it used for the companies products, it is used to make many things we eat and drink. Products like, juice, Kool Aid, Ketchup etc..., are made with a certain type of corn.

Even though the cattle is fed corn, these animals were meant to eat grass. The only reason why they were corn was because it made the cattle bigger and fatter. Since these animals were meant to eat grass, them eating corn would result to having bacteria and microorganisms in their stomachs. All the bacterias that ended up in the cattle would result in them having E. coil in their stomachs.

In 2001, a little boy named Kevin Kowalcyk died of hemolytic-uremic syndrome. His death was caused by eating ground beef that had E. Coli O157:H7. After twelve days of having it, he passed down away at the age of two years old. Since E. Coli was becoming to be a problem, the beef companies started soaking their meats in ammonia.

Now that the companies are controlling the E. Coli in their meats, they are selling their meats at a cheaper price. Foods that are heavily subsidized are one of the cheapest foods that are bought. Obesity, diabetes, and poverty are linked to all of this because these foods are high in calorie, and the cost of the food is very low so this is causing people to be overweight.

Out in the country, there is a man name Joel Salatin that owns his own farm and animals and he sells his own products. But, according to the USDA, this man's farm is considered "unsanitary." They considered this because his farm is open air and they do not use ammonia.

Inform: Chickens

http://goo.gl/Bb0MKB
Chickens in farms only get about 2/3 of a sq. ft. of space

Perdue is a major chicken processing company in Salisbury, Maryland. Their annual sales in chicken are in excess of $6 billion. Perdue Processing Company was founded in 1920 by Athur Perdue and his wife Pearl Perdue. They began by just selling chicken eggs but in 1925, they began to sell raised chickens. In 1939, their son, Frank Perdue, dropped out of college to join the family business.

In the opinionated article titled, Abusing Chickens We Eat, by Nicholas Kristof, informs many others how several people were concerned about the animal welfare and food safety. Although people were concerned, the company manipulated the public. Nicholas Kristof argued that it was very inhumane to how the chickens were being raised.

http://goo.gl/W3FLgW
Difference between chickens from 1950 and 2008.
Chickens now are mutated to increase muscle growth.

The Perdue Chicken Company would manipulate the public by advertising on their products that birds on the farms were cage-free. But, many consumers have figured out that each bird within the farms only obtained 2/3 of a square foot of space. Also, these chicken's farms were never cleaned so all of the chickens would walk all over the remains of the birds and resulted to chickens being featherless on the bottom of their body.

Another false advertisement within the he text is when the company's chairman, Jim Perdue, says "Doing the right thing is things like treating your chickens humanely." Although the chairman may have said this, the company does not follow what he has said.

In my own opinion, I strongly believe that the company is treating their animals very inhumanely and do not keep them in sanitary conditions. I also believe if the company continues to do as such, they may lose multiple consumers.

In 1906, living and working conditions were said to be "disgusting." Many people would throw their trash away on the streets and would technically use the streets as a bathroom. Within meat factories, many of the meats were processed in very unsanitary conditions. The meats were not refrigerated and during closing hours, rodents would eat, walk over the meats, and leave their remains on the meats. The factories would take the pork that had poisons within them would be made into sausages. They also gather rejected meats from other countries and would process and can them.

That same year, President Theadore Roosevelt passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act. This law prevented factories from adulterating and misbranding their meats. This meaning that the different types of meats cannot be combined. This ensured that meats and products were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions.

Education and Inequality

http://goo.gl/AQudsI
Chart in regards of education and life expectancy between
rich and poor people in the United Stats of America.

Public Schools were created in the United States because they wanted to train people for jobs and help foreign people receive citizenship. Also, many Americans believed that the greatness of the country depended on scientific and technological knowledge.

In the beginning stages of starting public schools, there were many problems that came along with it. There were many strict rules and physical punishment implemented on the students that made them very miserable. The requirement for students was to attend school for four months a year. Teachers of these public schools would punish the students for the simplest reasons, like, making their chair squeak or not stand up right away.

http://goo.gl/4LBiqa
Kindergartens offered employed mothers to take care of children.

Schools helped families by creating kindergartens that offered employed mothers to take care of their children while they were working. It also taught them how to read, write, and learned math.

Schools perpetuated inequality because the opportunities differed from white and black people. 62% of whites attended and 34% of blacks attended. From 1890-1910, 1% of black people attended high school and over 67% of those students attended private schools.

What Happen To The 43?

http://goo.gl/zXU7mN
Many Mexican citizens rally for the missing 43 students.

The Ayotzinapa School is a teacher preparation school located in the state of Guerreo, Mexico. Many students of this school were children of farmers or poor people. The main teaching goal within this school is to show others to stand up for themselves and provide the right information when confronted.

On a night of September 2014, many students of this school commandeered three buses and headed toward Iguala, Guerreo. While passing through a street in this city, the local police discriminatly opened fire upon the weapon less students. On this night, six students were killed and fourty-three students went missing. People of the community believed that Jose Luis Abarca, Mayor of Iguala, and Maria De Los Angeles Pineda, wife of Jose Abarca, were connected with the drug gang called "Los Gerreros Unidos." With this, many believe that These two people ordered the ambush on the students so they would intervene with the events Maria Pineda organized.

Many families of these missing students and locals of the community joined to help search for the students. Also, they hired a forensic team from Agentina to help search for them since the Mexican Government did not help in the search. With several parents upset, they marched to Mexico City, Mexico. Multiple parents rallied to meet with the Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, to under
-stand why the government has not been helped in regards of the missing fourth-three students. After a long meeting with the parents of Peña Nieto, He finally signed a contract saying he would agree to help search for the missing students and bring them back alive. But, after a while of searching, the parents of the missing fourth-three received very tragic news that there children were murdered. Although the parents found this news, they still believe they are alive and continue to search for their children.

http://goo.gl/A4y5pM
Parents meeting with Peña Nieto