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>.