Corn In Omnivore's Dilemma

Thread 1: In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan describes what the omnivore’s dilemma actually is. He begins his book as a naturalist in a supermarket trying to decide “what to eat?”. This question is harder to answer without asking where the food originates. Knowing where food comes from is very difficult, unless it is locally grown or clearly states it on the package. Processed food is more complicated to understand where it comes from.

In Jill Kaufman’s article “Meat Packing Industry,” Kaufman analyses the meat packing crisis and controversy that occurred during the Roosevelt administration in the early 1900’s. In 1906 Author Upton Sinclair released a novel title The Jungle, which sought to critic exploited meat packing workers of that time. While his novel did stir up some commotion, his ultimate goal remained unmet. Americans were appalled at the ways he described the unsanitary methods and procedures of the meat packing industry. This resulted in stricter policies and inspections being put in place; however, whether or not the industry was truly unhygienic and unsanitary remained disputed.

After reading “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, Theodore Roosevelt passed a few acts to ensure a safer and sanitary environment where livestock is slaughtered and processed. “The Jungle” shows the working class and their lack of social support, the loss of hope among the workers and unsanitary working and living conditions, for example, working environments were covered in blood, meat scraps, and dirty water. The book follows a man as he observes the meat industry as its horrific faults. He noticed the workers lost their fingers in the meat and the workers used bathrooms next to where the meat was processed occasionally doing their business on the floor. There was a chapter describing the meat being piled on the floor carrying sawdust, dead rats,

In February 1906, Upton Sinclair would write and publish his fictional novel The Jungle. This book, which was intended to focus on the exploited workers in the meat industry would depict the unsanitary conditions for a mere 10 pages. Missing the point of the novel, Americans were disgusted by the conditions of the packing plants, rather than outrage at the mistreatment of the workers at these plants (Kauffman). The Jungle spurred new legislation, but this legislation wasn’t the first that called for such standards. In 1641, the Massachusetts Colony had passed the Meat and Fish Inspection document which prohibited selling “diseased, corrupted, contagious or unwholesome provisions” (Massachusetts Act against Selling Unwholesome Provisions).

The book the jungle written by Upton Sinclair 1906 documents the meat processing industry. A quote from the book reads "there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage… The rats, [poisoned] bread and meat would go into the hoppers together" This quotation shows that there is radical change because it showed what the food industry was like before the reforms occurred and were put into place. It alerted quite a few people of the many unsanitary conditions and actions that placed consumers at risk of disease. Later that year, in 1906 the meat inspection act was passed by Congress.

The Jungle was released to expose meatpacking industries’ ways of treating workers and meat. With this release, changes occurred. President Roosevelt urged Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This act required the Department of Agriculture to inspect every hog and steer whose carcass state lines. In other words, it required companies to pay to get their facilities and practices checked by an inspector to assure everything was being done correctly.

Intro: When people eat food they do not think about what is in it, or how it is made. The only thing people care about is what the food tastes like and how much they get. During the 1900’s the meat packing industry had not regulations of any kind. All that mattered to the industry was that they made as much money as possible with as little expenditure as possible. During this times people were often made sick and died either from working conditions or poor food quality.

In the early 1900’s, the conditions in the slaughterhouses were ghastly. First of all, the basic surroundings of the workers were horrid. The floors of the killing floors were layered in blood. It smelled bad and was unsanitary. Also, there were blood-curdling screeches of dying animals constantly ringing throughout Union Stockyards ("Slaughterhouse to the World" 5).

- Types of foods contains corn are sauces, beef, pork, chicken, frozen entrees, breakfast cereals, breads, cookies, beverages and more. 3.How do Ian and Curt go about planting corn? What materials and equipment are used? What kind of assistance do they receive from local farmers? - Ian and Curt plan to grow an acre of corn on a borrowed land then try to follow step by step to grow corn in order to see where all the corn goes.

He continues the rest of the chapter talking about how most foods have traces of corn in them, by following the industrial food chain. All foods by the FDA must have their ingredients posted on the wrapper, so buyers know exactly what they are eating. Michael Pollan knows he has to look at the wrapper and see where all those ingredients are from to really see where the food he is about to came from. 2. Pollan describes American farmers today as “the

The immigrant workers could not continue to work in the meat-packing industry because of the unhealthy conditions, the consequence was that they couldn’t afford to pay their rent (“Upton Sinclair’s The

These workers would produce meat products that were contaminated, processed, and rotten. They would sell products that had chemicals on them but then label the package differently so the public would not know. Sinclair shows how the workers would still process the dead and diseased animals once the inspectors left the factories. “There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms” (161).

“What should I eat” “What am I eating and where in the world did it come from?” These are the questions we often ask every time we buy our food. What is it made of and if they are healthy or not? I am one of the “healthy crazy people” that will search for every single content of the food before I buy it. I always look for the “Nutrition Facts” - calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, and carbohydrate.

One book, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, comprehensively exposed the horrors of meat packing plants. What he wrote was so startling, it caught the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. Sinclair detailed how diseased animal carcasses were mishandled in filthy factories, and the meat was often left lying around for days in vats contaminated with rat feces and poison. When they finally got around to packing the meat, it was treated with a plethora of chemicals, canned, and often mislabeled.

The meat packing industry disregards animal’s emotions and their rights all together by the malicious treatment of animals. The way animals are being treated is highly unfair. Being slaughtered for their body parts and suffering just to be used for protein or an asset to humans is unbearable. An animal’s life is at equal values to a human and deserve the same rights as