Capitalistic Food Production

From the tomato capital of the world, to an assembly line production of giant chickens and to a reevaluation of how we view animals, I have a new view of the acknowledging where food comes from. In "Fowl Trouble" by Christopher Cook, he discusses the production of chicken through the eyes of the employees in a way that makes the process almost seen like a car production assembly. The positions in place for producing these chicken is almost horrifying. Wouldn't the biggest chicken possible be ideal? One would think this is true, however, with genetically engineered chicken today, they are so much bigger than they would normally be. This makes the idea of eating chicken, which is an exceedingly common practice for most, seem very unnatural for something that is a living animal. This brings up another point: animal cruelty. In Michael Pollen's article, "An Animal's Place," he discusses animal ethics and how we treat them as a whole, especially in food production. This is an interesting contrast with the idea of genetically engineering a 3.5 pound  chicken. Not only is this unnatural and cruel, but it is also unhealthy for society. The workers in the chicken plant suffer from diseases and long term physical health troubles such as carpal tunnel. Eating meat is almost a responsibility in Pollen's eyes and we as a society aren't respecting the process of eating meat and we are going to suffer the inevitable results soon if we don't improve our production to be more sustainable and healthy in the long run. This offers another interesting contrast to Tomatoland by Barry Eastbrook. He talks about the tomato production in the tomato capital of the world in Peru. The workers on this farm are treat poorly as a result of the the added chemicals to the tomatoes. These workers also have long term health affects from working here. The added chemicals are developing a super tomato, however, the tomatoes today have 14 times more sodium than they did in the 1960s. The health affects suffered from commercial food production are jeopardizing the health of the workers and society who eat the tomatos.

The common theme in all three of these articles is that food production today is not sustainable to the well-being of society as a result of the added chemicals to food and the way the workers are treated as a result. The contrast between all of these articles provides a very interesting link to three very large problems in which we as a society are going to have to adapt to in order to survive the capitalistic approach to food production of today.