The guy in the white coat says "From 1950 to today all the key nutrients in our food has diminished by 40%." In this film we looked at the perspective of the farmers, how they farm, and the challenges they face in their line of work. We get to take a look at how our food is actually made and how the animals are treated. Michael Pollen tells us how mono-cultures are dangerous and how feed lots work. For instance when too many cows are in too close of quarters, that's when the risk of e coli is high. The animals that we're eating are pumped full of antibiotics to keep them from getting diseases from being in small areas with the same species and are likely ingesting feces.
Farmers face the issue, do they keep farming like people use to in the old days, the "healthier way," or do they mass produce to keep up? John Iked says people are obsessed now with producing more with no regard to the negative effects. You can produce more beef if you have a feed lot where the cows are so close together and sometimes even are fed dead cows. Or you can continue to let cows roam freely, eating grass like they always have. Russ the hog farmer gives us the best evidence of how this mass production just isn't working. He tells us that he use to push more pigs through using less labor, he then started experiencing more diseases in his pigs, that's when he started feeding them various antibiotics. Russ was struck by one of his own hog's tusks. He let it go for two weeks before his leg swelled up and was treated and hospitalized for a mutated type of strep. Russ said he just couldn't do it anymore and started over and started letting his hogs live naturally.
I wonder why farmers are still allowed to farm this way if all these processed items in our food pose health risks. People are arrested for animal cruelty, but these farmers that have feed lots, with unsanitary environments for their animals, and feed them things that really aren't good for the animals are just allowed to keep on doing it? When will the United States say enough?
I know that I can stop giving my money to farmers that do business the unsanitary way and we should buy locally to boost our local economy.
"People are arrested for animal cruelty, but these farmers that have feed lots, with unsanitary environments for their animals, and feed them things that really aren't good for the animals are just allowed to keep on doing it? When will the United States say enough?" I totally agree with this statement. It's messed up that this kind of farming and treatment of animals is legal. It seems as if the only care they have is money, rather than the health of the animals and the health of the humans that are consuming this food. I feel that American's can help make a change by stop purchasing their products, or at least making some organic substitutions.
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