Our food is being produced in ways that benefit the industry not humans, animals or plants. After reading Pollan, Estabrook and Cook, I am truly disgusted by how our food is produced and how the people in charge can let this happen. Pollan and Cook discuss the ethics and cruelty behind the animals we eat on a daily basis. Our disconnect from both the animals lives and those that work with them is so large that most consumers do not even think twice before eating meat. It is not that humans are inherently cruel to animals, in fact according to Pollan there has been a large increase in animal cruelty laws passed recently though “Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig -- an animal easily as intelligent as a dog -- that becomes the Christmas ham.” (1-2)
The slaughter house is something consumers are more aware of yet still reading Cook’s infographic, I was shocked to hear about the abuse that workers go through as well as the animals. In some places people needing welfare are forced to work in slaughter houses and are subject to a multitude of potential injuries. Safety is not taken into account by the inspectors or USDA. Things do not seem much better for workers on the fields. When Estabrook asked Molloy “if it was safe to assume that a consumer who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store, fast food restuarant of service food company in the winter has eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a slave, he corrected my choice of words. “It is not an assumption. It is a fact””. (xvi)
On a whole the USDA does not appear to take into account anything but the money they are making. Fields in Florida are not even the correct climate to grow good tomatoes yet they continue to do so in order to make the greenest hardest ones that will last the longest. Safety of workers, cruelty to animals, or taste and healthiness of food do not seem to matter in our current food industry.
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