I finally watched this film after months of trying to get it at Mudd and just putting it off. There are just so many things running through my head. I’ve been bombarded with literature and pictures telling me why I should be a vegetarian, but the first 5 minutes of this film nearly had me in tears I was so horrified, and it made me think, maybe I really need to give up meat. But in reality, that isn’t going to solve the problem. Meat itself isn’t the enemy, nor is it in reality bad for you…but the manner in which animals are cultivated, killed, processed, and packaged is THE WORST!!
So what am I going to do? I love a bargain on food as much as the next person, and I already spend forever in the supermarket looking at labels to try and get out as much high fructose corn syrup and preservatives (because luckily i’ve had enough chemistry to read EDTA or some other compound word and know exactly what it is) but I’m still being thrown off. Ascorbic acid, which is the technical word for Vitamin C, never seemed to pose a problem. But then when they break it down to say that the ascorbic acid additive isn’t the naturally occurring vitamin C that our body processes but genetically modified from corn…I just cant take it. Same with maltodextrin, xantham gum, and many other complicated looking words that if taken in their normal forms, wouldn’t be a problem, yet that’s not how it is.
I literally had to take a piece of paper out and write down all this stuff (I’m taking notes during a movie, BAH!) because I was so blown. How about the Veggie-Libel-Law. WTF?! You can be sued and put in jail for openly criticizing the safety of food. *blank look* So they can force feed cows with corn, have them wade in their own crap, be coated in their crap, be taken to slaughter, have manure contaminating the food, have the beef ground up by industrialized machines, be sent all over the country (since there are only a few slaughterhouses supplying the majority of the meat), have E.Coli, make people sick, kill a few people, and then when all is said in done in this monopoly of the 4-5 businesses that own the entire meat market, they can turn around and make MORE money off of you by suing you because you tell them it’s because of unsafe practices that a life was lost???…………..speechless.
Speechless is right. Because the same folks on the one hand who go to blows about having freedom of speech (and usually it’s those folks who want to be free to engage in hate speech towards women, other nationalities, races, etc.) want to restrict it over the food industry which affects EVERYBODY!! Then to add insult to injury, the people who sit on the policy boards for the FDA, EPA, hell the Supreme Court, all have vested interest in these food companies as board members, chair people, lawyers, and other important seats that earn them money. So we really don’t have objective regulations because they’re too wrapped up in it.
I just can’t…I can’t…because then you get into the whole immigration issue as well. These companies put agricultural industries in Mexico out of business because of all the corn subsidies, and then actively recruit Mexicans to come work in our plants. They bus them across the border to use hoards of cheap, undocumented labor, and THEN make deals with the immigration officers to come raid their living quarters to take handfuls at a time (so as not to put the corporation out of business) and then treat the worker like a common day criminal while not holding the corporation at all accountable.
I mean what do you even do, because the whole organic movement is also more capitalist crazy where, yes, you may have more natural ingredients but they’re shipped half way around the world, and most of the huge conglomerates own those labels as well.
For now, I’m going to have to be as responsible as possible and go to the farmer’s markets and try and go local (since they do accept food stamps, hallelujah). I’m going to have to try and eat in season, even though a good 95% of Americans don’t even know what that means with all the foods we get out of season, picked green, and sprayed with ethylene gas.
But really, I just need to buy a small plot of land, learn about agriculture and animal raising and feed my damn self! ….crazy people messing up my food….
like black butterflies 