P7

In Christopher Cook’s “Foul Trouble,” the production of chicken meat is traced by accounting what the employees have seen and experienced. The different jobs needed to transport the chickens from their pen to the supermarket in a timely manner so they can be bought are discussed, which have the titles like deboner, offal room attendant, evisc, or workers who are in charge of taking all the innards out of the body, catchers, and hangers. Every worker, no matter what their job title, has a dangerous job when it comes to the way chickens are processed and prepped to go to the supermarket. Cook writes about how sometimes when getting rid of the tendons, taking the bones out, and making sure the chicken meat looks good enough to send off, they often times get cut by themselves or other workers who have lost control of their utensil from the slimy skin (Cook, 79). Because the entire process of catching the chickens and getting them consumer ready must be done quickly, many of the workers suffer from long-term issues like the inability to use their hands.

In “Tomatoland,” Barry Eastbrook goes into more detail about the health effects employees and workers have when exposed to carcinogens and terrible living conditions. He discusses how, in some cases, the workers are slaves to tomato fields, held against their will and are forced to work or they will be beaten. The introduction also discusses how little nutritional value the tomatoes have because of commercial farming. He notes that a fresh tomato today has 30 percent less vitamin C and Thiamin, 19 percent less Niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than 50 years ago in the 60s, however it does have fourteen times as much sodium as it did in the 60s (Eastbrook, X). This article relates to Cook’s in that they both discuss the conditions under which the employees have to work so the consumers can have their chicken, or their tomatoes when it’s not tomato season.

Similar to both the other pieces, “An Animal’s Place,” by Michael Pollan discusses the ethics of eating animals, and the condition of the ways in which our meat is raised in the United States. He talks about how pigs are taken away from their mothers so much earlier than in the wild, the state in which cows and hens live and ultimately asks that if we know that animals can feel pain, why are we treating them the way we are?

All three of these pieces seemed to come to a general conclusion about the food industry in the United States. Animals are not being treated like they should, and workers in such places are exposed to so many health risks it’s insane. Reading all of these brought back memories of Food, Inc., and I probably won’t be eating chicken for a few days.