The Power of Big Companies

Stephanie Rivera

J. Baumgartner

ENC101.0715

December 2, 2012

Essay 3

                                        The Power of Big Companies

        People and animals have all been victims by the companies who are currently arising with more power. These companies have arisen ever since the 1980's, slowly controlling the immigrants who work for them, mistreating the animals in slaughterhouses and keeping the consumers blind, distracted from the truth. Animals are treated as if they were useless, fed wrong, beaten up to make them move quicker after all the GMO's fed into them, immigrants dangerously risking their lives working in the meatpacking plants and farmers getting arrested for cleaning their own grown soybean all part of the big companies process. Consumers don't realize the actual process made to sell food we eat. People need to realize all big companies are in so much control that they are misleading to consumers.

        There are many unsanitary ways that our meat is grown because of the demand of big companies. In the film, Food Inc. the author of the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser asks dozens of farmers if they'll allow him to film inside their chicken houses in order to show the fellow American people how their chickens are being grown each reject the idea except for one named Carole Morrison, a chicken grower for the big company Perdue. She starts off frustrated by saying, “I understand why farmers can't talk, the government can do anything to them as far as how pay goes they are in control of everything it just got to the point that is not right whats really going on and it doesn't matter to the point where someone has to say what's going on,” (Food, Inc.). She guides Schlosser inside one of the chicken houses and states, “it is really nasty in here, dust flying everywhere, feces this isn't farming this is mass production assembled all as a factory...the chicken's bones and internal organs can't keep up with the rapid growth of course the resistance builds up and isn't working anymore, the other chickens get contaminated, it doesn't matter if their sick or not they all go to the companies factory,” (Food, Inc.). Our meat is being processed in unsanitary ways because animals like chickens, are allowed to be grown in such unhealthy and careless manner. Chickens that end up dying from their diets growth,

internal organs and bones ends up contaminating others because the few of those dead chickens are stuck in their dark houses waiting to be pulled out. After showing the real process of chickens growth, Morrison was terminated as the chicken grower/farmer for Perdue. She was already frustrated and tired of the process she had to go through everyday. The deliberate process of reaching certain sales and upgrades Morrison had to elaborate was what the big company Perdue was demanding. Morrison was fed up of hiding the careless truth the company was ownership of.         

          Many who are in charge of ensuring and securing our foods safeness are controlled by the same big companies. In a recent case, in the book Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser proves how insecure the safety of our meat is. The case of Lee mysterious symptoms that he had experienced due to the dangerous bacteria E-coli 0157:H7 is running around the intestines of animals like the cow, who are fed and later slaughtered by the same companies. A healthy man who attended the gym all the time, Lee was experiencing really painful cramps, bad diarrhea and then bloody diarrhea and continued until he went into the hospital where he was tested positive of E-coli 0157:H7 food-poisoning. Schlosser notes that morning that, “it was a number of people suffering from E-coli 0157:H7 infections...cases between Pueblo, Brighton, Loveland, Grand Junction, and Colorado Springs [all linked],” (194). He states that Harding had provided the doctors with the food he had eaten, which were frozen hamburgers in a box from the market. The patties were lab tested by the USDA lab and confirmed that, “harding's hamburger was contaminated with the strain E-coli 0157:H7,” (Schlosser, 194). All cows are fed with the same cheap corn the big companies order, note that cows are designed to eat grass. In Food, Inc. Schlosser explains, “E-coli 0157:H7 evolves [because] cows stand ankle deep in their manure all day long so if one gets it the other will too...400 cows are slaughtered in one hour [manure] is still on them.” The contaminated manure is thrown anywhere as they are cut off; this is how it can stay on our meat. However, the former chief beef industry lobbyist is now the head staff of the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture/Association) and the former Vice President executive of the food processors association is now the head chief of the FDA. The top food executives are a part of approving the way the companies are processing our food today. Now currently in charge of choosing our foods health.