When I was younger, my favorite food of all time was a McDonalds Happy Meal. I tore through the bright red box with the huge, yellow smiley face. Did I care about the milk, apples, cheese burger, or fries? Heck no! There was more important things that I had to worry about which was the little package wrapped in plastic: the toy. But that was years ago. Now I am sixteen years old and I've taken a deeper look at the food that you believe is made in farms.
In the documentary Food Inc., the truth is told about how McDonald's meat and vegetables is made and brought to our table.
During the 1950's, McDonalds and many other resturaunts were very similar. But one day, the owners of McDonalds wanted to cut down prices. They chose to create food by making it in the factories, which was a cheaper than making it in the farm. They had less workers now and they only gave them a little bit of money. This made McDonalds a very rich company. The suppliers of McDonalds meat changed as well. 8 of 10 hamburgers in America are owned by four companies that make their meat at factories.
If your mom or dad goes to by a pack of meat at the store, you will find a label on that package. You will see pictures of farms and a lot of grass. But these pictures are fake because these animals are not raised on farms but in factories. You can find these labels on dairy products as well. For example, chicken in 2014 look totally different from chickens in 1950. The chickens now are bigger and grow very fast. This couldn't be done on a farm. You are probably wondering why these companies don't just tell us the truth. When the movie makers of Food Inc. tried to interview Vince Edwards, a chicken grower from Tyson (a chicken company), he was not allowed to. Tyson does not want us to see the truth because they don't want us to stop buying their meat.
Did you know that 3 out of 10 grass areas in the United States is used to make corn? Corn is such a major crop in our country. I bet that you didn't know what syrup, coke and every batteries have corn inside of it. Our government wants to makes corn the most sold crop in the country. This is because they pay corn growers only if they can make more corn than other corn growers. This means that corn becomes very cheap, which is why they feed it to the animals we eat. This is why fast food is so cheap. Companies that sell a lot of meat want to be able to feed their animals cheap food. Cows are supposed to be eating grass, but because cow growers are so cheap, they feed them corn. This makes cows infected with E. Coli. If you eat a burger with E. Coli, you will become ill and it can kill you. In fact, a boy named Kevin Kowalcyk died from eating meat that had E. coli. The people in charge of our country, also known as the government, knew that E. coli was in the meat. They did not stop selling it for 27 days!
People that don't have a lot of money are living in proverty. Since these people don't have a lot of money, they eat at places that make unhealthy, fast food, such as McDonalds. They become sick or overweight but they cannot buy the medicine to make them better since they do not have the money.
Joel Salatin is a farmer that raises meat in a very clean way. He even feeds the meat grass. The government believes that his farm is dirty because he cuts the meat outside and it makes the air nasty. Large factories get most of their workers from Mexico and pay them very little money. Joel Salatin pays his workers fairly. Some people don't think its fair that fast food isn't honest about what's in our food. If you try to critize what these factories are doing on TV, you can go to jail.
The people who created Food Inc wants all of us to understand what goes on in these factories. Since big companies don't want to tell us the truth because they don't want to lose money, Food Inc decided to create a documentary about it.
