Food Inc. Reflection

Food Inc. showed me exactly what I did not want confirmed but already thought about the modern food industry. The thing that struck me the most was how machine-like and untouchable the food system seems today. Scientists are so obsessed with how much science they can do and not about what they are actually doing to the animals and people.

The specific scenes that hit me square in the heart were when we saw what one of the more ‘humane’ Tyson^® chicken coops look like, the E. Coli amount inside corn fed cows stomachs, the amount of children with type two diabetes now, and finally the promising future in organics.

I have been a member of PETA since I was in the 7^th grade, give donations to the humane society, and just love animals with every ounce of my being (I really try not to be ridiculous about it though.) Seeing any animal, from the cuddliest kitten to the gnarliest looking spider, harmed in any way, pulls heavily upon my heartstrings. Nature is one thing, but chickens caged and packed with growth hormones so strong that they can’t walk, which are then beaten and killed, tears apart my soul. I wouldn’t even wish treatment like that upon the sick, money hungry monsters that created such a system. There is no humanity at all in big meat companies today.

One of the few memories I have of my mom is when our family friends took us to Jack-In-The-Box in the mid 90s. My mom told them she doesn’t allow us to eat there because their hamburgers killed kids. Many cows grown for meat in the US today are fed genetically modified corn diets which fuel hundreds of E. Coli cells to multiply and evolve within their stomachs, pass through the system, and contaminate our bellies. Apparently feeding a cow grass, what they naturally eat, for 5 consecutive days would cut out a huge percentage of the E. Coli breading in their stomachs. However, instead of reverting to the system mother nature provided us with and proved successful for thousands of years, scientists employed by these meat industries think they can out do her, and are seeking even more inorganic methods to solve a solved problem. Way to go guys.

Diabetes is a condition when the human body cannot filter the sugar they take in into their cells for energy. Type one diabetics got this genetically; type two diabetics got this by overworking their bodies system of breaking down sugars, with bad eating practices. It used to be that only older people got type two, which makes sense, a lifetime of work could ware out many systems. Today however, many children are developing type two, because the amount of straight sugar, fat and carbohydrates in the food we eat today is unparalleled by all previous generations. Food companies are breeding a diabetic generation.

Despite all the sadness and irritation Food Inc. brought viewers, they ended with promise: the growing organic industry. Organic foods are products that are not messed with. No pesticides, growth hormones, artificial color or anything, just good old mother nature providing us with the fruits of her labor, in exchange for some of ours, which is how it should be.

Questions I still have include:

How the eyf can Monsanto sue people for their own genetic pollution even if they aren’t USING their ‘pattented gene’?!?

Why on EARTH hasn’t someone sued the CRAP out of those giant slaughter houses for the health issues they cause their employees?!?

Can I punch who ever makes up Tyson’s chicken supplier coop regulations in the face?

Can I patent my eye color because I had it first? If so can I have Monsanto’s lawyers’ phone numbers?

Does treating the animals as badly as some companies do actually make them as much money? Counting all the animals that die and all the cover-up and manipulation it takes to make it possible?

What do you do with a ‘cream cap’ in organic milk bottles?

Socratic Seminar Questions:

How was it possible for the meat system to revert after all the positive changes since The Jungle?

What would be the best course of action to take to change the systems back and make sure they can’t get this bad again?

What are some things we as seniors, voters (some), college students (some), Americans can do to make sure we don’t get diabetes, support a negative system (farmers, consumers, most company employees cons do not out weigh pros.)

I am now a devoted local and organic shopper, as well as a devoted preacher of the organics to those who I care for. I don’t want my family, friends, future children, or myself to suffer from a system that we have the power to end. I love veggie burgers, but that is just a well established fact I wanted to through in, sorry.

Abstract

Engineering the Solutions For Our Modern World

Every living thing has DNA, which depicts the way it thinks, works, acts and what it is made of. In the past few decades scientists have begun to unravel the way DNA works and how it is made, providing other scientists the information to manipulate it. Today the manipulation of an organism’s genetic material (DNA) is called genetic engineering, and the products are called genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This research paper gives examples of what common GMOs we see today as well as providing explanation for why GMOs and genetic engineering should be researched and tested to their farthest extents, as long as the proper precautions are taken. As our world develops at an exponential rate we have begun to see more a more problems arise from the progress. Today more than ever infertility, diabetes, and food shortages have plagued many developing nations. Genetic engineering has offered many promising answers to these problems, answers that could someday help people of every nation and social class achieve health and happiness.

" ...There should be no regulations upon the research and expansion of biotechnology, genetic engineering or genetically modified organisms because they have the potential to solve many modern like cancer, infertility, and crop loss, as well as developing problems like global food shortages and available farmland..." (Swingley, 5)

Genetic Engineering Research Paper Final Draft

Ariel Swingley
April 14th, 2010
Environmental Science

Engineering the Solutions For Our Modern World

Our world today moves a mile a minute. Everything from talking to traveling is racing towards instantaneous and the technology making it possible is evolving at an even faster pace. It makes sense that in this engineered world of ours, new problems should arise from the lives we live and the environments we live them in. It seems like in order to keep up with the next new thing, we have to keep moving forward and surpassing the our ideated limits. However, many people seem to be resisting many of the new technologies and fields of study that could solve many of the problems facing everyone in this day and age. I argue that there should be no regulations upon biotechnology, genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms or their research because they have the potential to solve many modern and developing problems in agriculture, medicine and beyond.
Lets begin with the basics, what exactly are biotechnology, genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms? Biotechnology is the use of living things and/or organic processes to make marketable products, genetic engineering is the direct manipulation of an organism’s genes, and a genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genes have been modified by genetic engineering processes. An easy way to think of these things is that biotechnology is the type of company, genetic engineering the work they do and a GMO is their product.
Some genetically engineered products are easily recognized like In vitro fertilization, recumbent human insulin and genetically modified, herbicide tolerant (GMHT) plants.
In recent years some couple’s inability to conceive children, has come to the forefront of science. In vitro, which is Latin for ‘in glass’, fertilization is the process by which female eggs are stripped of their genetic information and is replaced by the genetic information of the mother and father. This process actually happens in a glass Petri-dish giving validity to its Latin name and its product’s common reference, test tube babies. The fertilized egg (zygote) is then implanted into the mother, or a surrogate mother’s uterus. This genetic engineering technique allows people who would naturally be unable to reproduce, to be ripe with children (in vitro fertilization often leads to multiples i.e. twins, triplets, etc.)
Another easily recognized product of genetic engineering is recumbent human insulin. Human bodies break down everything they are fed into sugars, which are then put into the blood stream and transferred into our cells for energy by means of insulin. Type one diabetics did not get so lucky. Due to a certain genetic mutation, type one diabetics do not make insulin, so the sugar they break down circulates in their blood streams until fatal chemicals are released. From 1922 to 1974, insulin had to be extracted from animals (Teuscher 1974). Today, thanks to the scientific geniuses at Genentech and Eli Lilly, type one diabetics have recumbent human insulin, a mirror image of our natural insulin, made in a lab by genetic engineers. The new process of acquiring insulin is safe, provides the purest form of insulin, and harms no paws in the process.
A final example of a genetic engineering feat is genetically modified, herbicide tolerant (GMHT) plants. Farming is tough. Not only do you have to do all the manual labor of prepping soil, planting crops, watering and harvesting, you also have to deal with a percentage of your crop being ruined by pesky bugs. Monsanto Agricultural Biotechnology Company decided to take a stand, and engineered some of the first commercially grown GMHT plants. If you lay down the green for some Monsanto seeds, you are paying for the freedom to spray your plants with deadly toxins that will trample the attempts of Mother Nature to ruin your crop quota, because Monsanto GMHT crops can withstand the spray and live to see a riper day.
So if science is capable of all this what is the problem? Why on earth would anyone want to stifle our journey towards better farming, medicine and families? Well despite John Locke’s attempts at a government free of religious impediment, many people are smitten with the idea of scientists crafting their dinner salads, children, or health. In fact between 20 and 30% of the USA’s population is against any type of GMO (Kwiecinski 2009). In Europe many EU state members have outlawed the widespread use of GM plants for being potentially invasive and their enhanced ecological fitness, both of which could ruin their native plant life (Hails, 2002). However, despite many attempts at testing these theories, nothing conclusive has been proven (hails 2002), showing once again that it is hard to know what you don’t know, but that wont stop people from passing laws against it anyways.
Genetically modified (GM) plants, despite the taboo, are actually one of the leading advancement to aiding world hunger (Huang 2002), and Monsanto is the leading developer and distributor of GM seeds around the globe. In fact approximately 5.5 million farmers, just in developing countries, directly benefit from their use of Monsanto’s round up ready soy beans, Bt cotton, and Bt yellow corn (James 2001). However, the focus upon only using on GM cash crops may be weeded out in the near future.
As our science advances and our population grows, several related problems have popped up. Some examples are the daunting food shortages, food-growing space vs. living space, and cancer.
It has been projected that in 2050 our population and food demand will have doubled (Tilman 2002). That is a rather scary statistic considering that there currently is not enough produce in the United States for everyone we already have, to eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables daily. So how on earth are we supposed to keep up with those numbers when urban sprawl is already creeping into farm space? The answer is genetic engineering.
As of now the majority of the best quality farmland around the world is already in use for agriculture (Tilman 2002). This means that all the remaining land is marginal for farming, yielding far less crop, and ruining more natural animal habitats. As the population continues to grow exponentially, so must our food supply, except, thrashing more natural habitats to keep up could lead to disastrous ecosystem collapses. We are going to need the farmland already in use, to grow more nutritious food in much greater abundance, if we don’t want to reach a global carrying capacity. Right now, GM crops are the only answer. We do not have time to waste hoping plants will evolve to our every needs; we need to assist the process.
The next example is cancer. Why is it that as our technologies get more advanced, more people have these raging diseases we cannot figure out? Did people thousands of years ago get melanoma? Ovarian cancer? Or could these things be from the tanning boxes and laptops we created in the past decades? Well no one knows for sure, but there is truth in recognizing that we are doing a lot of inorganic stuff these days and somehow that has to be effecting us.
In conclusion, there should be no regulations upon the research and expansion of biotechnology, genetic engineering or genetically modified organisms because they have the potential to solve many modern like cancer, infertility, and crop loss, as well as developing problems like global food shortages and available farmland. As we move forward at a pace unforeseen by our ancestors, we have to recognize that with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and that unless we revert to all natural living, we have to keep ahead of the curve and explore every option there is to balance the scale. Biotechnology, genetic engineering and GMO’s are just our way of keeping ahead of the curve and using what nature gave us, to sustain our technological momentum.

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