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As a journalist, I’d been taught to remain as neutral as possible in my reporting. We’re told it’s because people will feel like lifestyle choices are being forced upon them if a reporter puts in his or her voice into a piece.
Though it’s still ingrained in me from previously working in the corporate media, I never bought into that argument in my personal interactions. I like an open dialogue and I love to argue. I traffic in information, and seek out people, whether they agree with me or not, who can carry on an intelligent conversation about today’s global and national issues.
One of my interests that I follow closely, both in the news and in the activist community, has to do with food.
Sparked by a biology class in college that showed a large-scale chicken processing facility, and continued with an American Studies course on American Foodways (studying the history of food production to its current highly industrialized state), I’ve continued my education by reading as much as I can on the conditions of both animals and workers in the food-production industry. In addition, I’ve researched the affects this mass-production has had on both the environment and on the health of the people who eat what is produced.
Given all this, I have to say that never has the adage “you are what you eat” been more true.
Millions of Americans are taking the easy, quick route with their meals, living a life on the go, and it shows. The obesity rate in men grew to 33.3 percent in 2005-2006, and reached 35.3 percent in women, reports the CDC. That’s more than one-third of the American population more closely resembling a chicken McNugget than a healthy-looking person.
The McNugget reference is apt, given the recent news report about a woman who repeatedly called in to 911 to say that McDonald’s was out of the chicken pieces she ordered, and that she wouldn’t have placed the order for them if she’d known that was a possibility.
And speaking of chicken, roughly 10 billion land animals are slaughtered for food each year just in the United States, the vast majority being chickens.
Prior to industrialization, bird flu, mad cow, hoof-and-mouth disease, and Salmonella- or E. coli-tainted foods were rare. Despite government agencies established to offer oversight of slaughterhouses and production facilities, the ratio of inspectors to business is miniscule. In addition, though the USDA oversees the treatment of animals in meat plants through meat inspectors, Arthur Hughes, vice chairman of the National Council of Food Inspection Locals, a union of 6,000 federal meat inspectors, states, “Drastic increases in production speeds, lack of support from supervisors in plants, new inspection policies which significantly reduce our enforcement authority, and little or no access to the areas of the plants where animals are killed, have significantly hampered our ability to ensure compliance with humane regulations.”
Problems in the food production industry aren’t going away. And the only way to anything about them is to tell as many people as you can, and boycott or avoid any companies or businesses that aren’t considering the health and safety of you or your food.
Thank you,
Melissa Chavez
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