Entry#7: Fresh!

          Hey everyone, the other day I saw a video about where our food comes form.  This video was more like a movie and it was called Fresh.  It did a comparson between small farms and huge factories that produce the majority of America's food products.   Within the movie there is one famer in particular, Joel Salatin who grows his crops without using harmful pesticides, to grow a better quality and fresher crop.  Unlike these huge factories Joel lets his life stalk roam around his farm while they graze and fertilize the farm.  Joel, does not use store bought fertilizers because he believes in the natural way of growing and porducing crops and letting his cows, pigs, and chickens roam around letting nature take its course.  By closely observing nature, Joel created a rotational grazing system that not only allows the land to heal but also allows the animals to behave the way they were meant to- as in expressing their "chickin- ness" or "pig- ness" ass Joel would say.
         Another farmer that has a similar way of producing his life products would be Will Allen who is a son of southern sharecroppers, he has a 3- acre lot in the middle of urban Milwaukee and he grows natural crops and some fish.  He uses the fishes waist as a fertilezer for some of his crops that he grows.  The other part of his natural fertilizer would be his worms he uses as compost.  He sure loves his worms!  This man and his organization go beyond growing food.  They provide a platform fr people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develope alternatives to the industrial food system.
          With these huge factories producing the majority of America's food products, there is no longer within their policy to just product food and lots of food.  By that, these factories treat these animals way differently than the farmers mentioned above.  These animals are confined and are injected with these growth hormones and other types of steroids to prevent illness among the life stalk.  These animals are not at all healthy and are causing major issues to the economy with their waiste and other chemicals that are used within the factories.   With the crops, they are sprayed with different types of pesticides and yet is dangerously effecting the health of the crops and the enviornment around them.

          What I personally think about this issue would be that it needs to stop and we need to find some way of producing food in a more clean and safer enviornment not just for the workers but for the animals and crops also.  I do not like how the government has just sat back and watch this happen to the animals and the way thet are treated.  The last I checked, that was called animal cruelty.  By that, even if they are our food source and that they are going to die anyway does that mean that these factories can just treat these aminals like that.  By confining them to absolutely no room to move, and to just feed them what they just do not eat like they would feed dead cows to cows, to me thats just wrong.  With these animals in such close proximity its just asking for trouble, aminals will get sick, injured, and thus, cause these animals to be no good but to feed other animals their ground up carcasses.  That alone could cause the other animals to get sick.  By this, people could get sick from any lingering bacteria within our food.  I believe that this is all "engineered" food processing and that should not be called that it should be called "farming!"  I think that there should be more people like Joel and Will to help us learn more about the natual ways of producing healthier and better quilty food.

          Now, I did some research to get the recent numbers of todays slaughter houses and what stood out to me was the number of life stalk there could be in a factory alone and what the conditinons are for the animals and the wrokers that handle the animals.  The United States raises and slaughters almost 10 times more birds than any other type of animal.  Approximately 8.5 billion chickens are killed for their meat every year, while another 300 million chickens are used in egg production.  The U.S. raises some 100 million pigs for food each year, the cast majority of them on industrial- scale farms known for their crowded, inhumane conditions.  Ammonia fumes rise to dangerous, uncomfortable levels due to the pig's wast.  Cattle are raised and processed across several distinct industries, a lot which, in the U.S., rely heavily on inhumane factory farming.  Lastly, approximately 238 million  turkeys are raised for meat in the U.S. annually.  Like chickens, most turkeys are housed in groups on the floors of long sheds where they are denied fresh air, sunshine,  and pasture.  THey are forced to breathe dangerously high levels of ammonia emanating from their own waste.  That information is just sad because of the way these animals are treated and i just hate thinking about the way these animals are forced to live, start ot finish.
         

          Heres a picture of a factory which is a Pink Floyd album called Animals.  I thought that this image was revelant to what I posted today.  Let me know your thoughts about what you thought about this post! Hope you enjoyed!