Food production in the U.S. articles

Reading all of three of these articles has given me a new perspective on food production in the United States. I think that the one main thing that all of these articles touch on is how separated food production has become in America. Animals used to be killed and then eaten by the same person that killed the animal. They were raised on farms where they were respected and treated humanely. However, nowadays most people will never see the animals that they are going to eat. These animals are shoved into small confined spaces that may never see the light of day. I think that this was one of the most important things that these articles touched on because it is one of the main reasons that food production is so out of the general public’s control. There is no transparency to what is involved in raising and slaughtering animals. Pollan’s essay, “An Animals Place” focused on this fact more than either of the other articles. He poses the notion that perhaps if the general public could see more of how food is produced than they would be far less likely to eat meat from animals that are raised in common slaughterhouses. This idea really got me thinking because looking back at all of the meat that I have eaten, I have no idea where any of it came from. It’s strange that in a society so bent on eating healthily, most people still do not care about how their main ingredient was raised.

                Along with this lack of transparency within food production, these articles focused on how the workers at these farms suffer the most. The “Tomatoland” article showed how many workers on tomato farms work under such poor conditions that the only people that are still willing to do the job are illegal immigrants. Many of these farms enforcing slavery so that their quotas can be met. I found this article extremely interesting because it was a topic that I had done some research on in high school. I learned a lot about how the farms that grow crops can very easily force people into working on their farms. Reading these articles was very enlightening and is causing me to reevaluate some of my own meal choices.