Assignment 11

Okay, I changed my mind and went with the activism route.

See the video here.

Final Food Project Part Two - mini exhibition outline

 

Overall thesis: Many of the dominant social practices in our society - practices that define a "normal" life - related to food, on further investigation turn out to involve nightmares and industrial atrocities. 

Claim #1: These industries and companies controlling our food, are only concerned with making money instead of the well beings and health of the consumers and farmers that rely on it.

• Patented laws
• "Monsanto prohibits farmers from saving seed from varieties that have been genetically engineered (GE) to kill bugs and resist ill-effects from the herbicide glyphosate (sold under the brand name Roundup)." (Leahy) [article can be found here]
• Farmers who save seeds will be arrested and sued.
• "Monsanto's business plan for GE crops depends on suing farmers," said Joe Mendelson, legal director for CFS. (Leahy) [article can be found here]
• "Kem Ralph of Covington, Tennessee is believed to be the first farmer to have gone to jail for saving and replanting Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy seed in 1998. Ralph spent four months behind bars and must also pay the company 1.8 million dollars in penalties.In total, U.S. courts have awarded Monsanto more than 15 million dollars, according to a new report by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety (CFS) called "Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers" (Leahy) [article can be found here]
• Have created an absolute monopoly on the corn growing business
• "Four companies now process 80 percent of the beef consumed in the United States; Monsanto has unprecedented control of the corn and soybean market. Their Roundup Ready corn is now planted on nearly 80 percent of the farmland acreage in the U.S., and Monsanto’s soybeans, with their Roundup Ready gene, is in 93 percent of U.S. soybean seeds." (Spence) [article can be found here]
• Kevin's Law getting turned down in court.
•  "To protect public health by clarifying the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe performance standards for the reduction of pathogens in meat, meat products, poultry, and poultry products processed by establishments receiving inspection services and to enforce the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) System requirements, sanitation requirements, and the performance standards." (Eshoo)   [article can be found here]
• Workers with a high amount of influence and power in Monsanto, a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, moving on to become politicians and gain government positions where they are put in charge of monitoring their previous employer.
• " 'Agricultural biotechnology will find a supporter occupying the White House next year, regardless of which candidate win the election in November.' " (Monsanto Inhouse Newsletter, 2000) [article can be found here]

Claim #2: These industries and companies controlling our food want to keep us ill informed, if not completely uninformed, about the corruption and danger in their industry.

• Not wanting to label if food was made from genetically altered or cloned produce
• "As the Food & Drug Administration weighed whether to allow food from cloned animals into the country's food supply, more than 30,000 public comments flooded in, with the overwhelming majority opposed to the move." (Gogoi) [article can be found here]
• High, unreported, death and injury rates in the slaughterhouses
• "At the IBP beef plant in Dakota City, Nebraska, for example, the company kept two sets of injury logs: one of them recording every injury and illness at the slaughterhouse, the other providing OSHA inspectors and researchers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During a three month period in 1985, the first log recorded 1,800 injuries and illnesses at the plant. The OSHA log recorded only 160 - a discrepancy of more than 1,000 percent." (Schlosser; "Fast Food Nation")
• Laws about someone not being allowed to raise a "panic" (read: awareness of the corruption and nonsense way
• High violence rates in the fast food industry (hold ups, murders, employees going postal etc)
•  "The same demographic groups widely employed at fast food restaurants - the young and the poor - are also responsible for much of the nation's violent crime. According to industry studies, about two-thirds of robberies at fast food restaurants involve current or former employees."(Schlosser; "Fast Food Nation")
• "He always brings an illegal handgun to work, and a couple of his employees carry handguns, too. He's not afraid of what might happen if an armed robber walks in the door one night. 'Ain't nothing that he could do to me,' Jose Said, matter-of-factly, "that I couldn't do to him." (Schlosser; "Fast Food Nation")

Citations

Eshoo, Anna. The United States of America. H.R.3160 - Kevin's Law. Open Congress, 2005. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.opencongress.org/bill/109-h3160/show>.

Gogoi, Pallavi. "States Move to Label Cloned Food." Bloomberg.com. BusinessWeek.com. , 04 MAR 2008. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2008/db2008033_119633.htm>.

Leahy, Stephen. "Monsanto ”Seed Police” Scrutinize Farmers." Common Dreams. Inter Press Service, 2004. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0115-04.htm>.

Spence, Cooper. "Justice to Probe Monsanto Monopoly." Friends Eat. WP Greet Box WordPress, 17 MAR 2010. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://blog.friendseat.com/monsanto-seed-monopoly/>. 


Unknown, . "Monsanto's Government Ties." Red Ice Radio. Red Ice Creations, 2000. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/monsanto.html>.

Final Food Project Part One

 Academic (research a particular aspect of what we've learned, double check key claims from Pollan & Schlosser, research related material)


The big companies in the food industry only care about making money - not about the consumers or farmers.

• Patent Laws
• Not wanting to label if food was made from genetically altered or cloned produce
• High violence rates in the fast food industry (hold ups, murders, employees going postal etc)
• High, unreported, death and injury rates in the slaughterhouses
• Suing/arresting farmers who clean and save seeds
• Laws about someone not being allowed to raise a "panic" (read: awareness of the corruption and nonsense way
• Kevin's law getting turned down

Then write about what you did and learned in 4-5 paragraphs. Explore especially what you did, how it is connected to what we've been working on, what you learned from doing it (including what would help you do it more effectively next time), and why it matters (to you and/or others).

Due Sunday, Oct. 31 at noon.

Food Inc

Summary:

·         Everything you buy at the supermarket is one vote for that company and it’s values/traditions. Organic vs not. Locally grown vs imported.

·         The farmers are forced to kneel to the companies that do genetic engineering to seeds because of patent laws.

·         These huge companies like Monsanto have the government officials who are supposed to be regulating them in their pocket because the officials used to be on their payroll.

·         Consumers do have the power to change the system. The industry needs profit – it will change or be forced to change to meet demands.

·         These companies don’t genuinely care about the consumer or the consumer’s well beings – they just want their profit and will go to any extreme to get it.

·         The system will collapse. The industry is too reliant on petroleum, a constantly depleting resource, to perform its functions.

Movie offered that the book didn’t

·         FFN offered more what happened behind the closed doors of the slaughterhouses and shows the corruption of the companies at a different kind of surface value. Food Inc showed that there is also corruption weighing heavily in the farms. Though the farmers don’t want to use patent seeds, the best advice one farmer could offer another was to just, “Roll over. Don’t fight them, just do what they say.”

·         FFN also showed that not every person in the fast food industry was a bad guy. (Little Cesears) Food Inc didn’t quite give that portrayal at all.

HW# 10

I was interviewing at a college yesterday and was sent home early by the nurse today. As of now, if I can't get my hands on the movie, I'll ask my classmates and friends about it to get a sense of the movie and then formulate my own ideas to discuss here.

Revisit on HW #8: Growing Food

In class, we were told to bring in an empty (and clean) jar. When we did, we were given seeds for bean sprouts and told that we were going to be growing our own food. Every day at the start of class, we left to water the seeds and then slowly drain the water from them. The seeds were given no dirt to grow in so if someone forgot to change the water daily, the already bad smell that the seeds gained as they grew increased. Though I did change the water daily, my seeds were slow to show any signs of growth and did kept a funky smell about them. When it came time for the class to actually eat their sprouts, I did not.

It wasn't because of the nauseating smell from them or because there was white fuzz growing on them that resembled mold - too much water, perhaps? - but I was advised not to by the school nurse and my family considering my several health issues. From what I gathered from my classmates, the sprouts didn't taste particularly good.

As for actually growing my own food to eat, it didn't feel sacred at all. I didn't mind doing the project so I can't say that I felt forced to do it. I've just never been really into gardening of any kind. Maybe without the projected being prompted by my teacher, I might have felt some sort of accomplishment in successfully having grown my own food. Additionally, if I had grown more sprouts or a wider variety of plants, I'm sure I also might have actually felt something other than indifference towards growing food.

HW #9: Freakonomics

As per the email that was sent out the week prior to the field trip to see the movie, I was touring a college on Tuesday and was unable to see the movie. I'm going to ask Copeland if I can borrow his copy of the book next week, after my interview at Hampshire.

Revisit on HW #3: Fast Food vs Green Market

I wasn't in class on the day that the grade went out to walk around the marketplace near school and then visit McDonald's to make comparisons. I had left school earlier that day because I got an eye migraine and was having a hard time seeing. As I am pre-disposed to diabetes, I'm supposed to come home whenever I get one since the eye doctor lives just upstairs.