FROM FARM TO FRIDGE (REVISED)

 

THIS IS WHERE YOU THINK YOUR FOOD COMES FROM

AND THIS IS WHERE IT REALLY COMES FROM

In this blog i will summarize the contents of a video called ''FARM TO FRIDGE'' by Mercy For Animals. You can watch the 4 minute video (here).Ironically the video is called ''farm to fridge’’. The ironic about the title is that you don't actually see any farms. What you see in this video is large factories concentrating and raising animals in large spaces, treating them with such cruelty and barbarity that could be shocking. The vast majority of meat, dairy, and eggs come from high-volume factory farms and slaughterhouses, to meet US demand of 9 billion land animals per year. Many of the cruelties, such as grinding up newborn male chicks at hatcheries or cramming pigs are taking place in those farm-factories.

Chickens and turkeys are confined by large numbers in small areas. This means that they do not have enough air and they are not exercising. Sometimes this unorthodox way is making animals sick. Sick animals have their neck broken or killed with a club. Because male chicks don’t lay eggs they are thrown into large grinding machines hours after their hatch. Chicken’s beaks are cut off with a hot blade so that they don’t hurt each other when being confined into small cages. Dairy cows in those factories are going through painful amputations of tails and horns without a pain-killer. Piglet tails and testicles are cut off also without pain-killers. These animals are raised into small cages sometimes smaller than their own size. Now domestic animals are referred as products, simply a number not a life form.
In the book ‘’Slaughterhouses’’, by Gail A. Eisnitz, the author interviews a worker of a slaughterhouse named Tommy Vladak. Here you can learn from first-hand how the conditions in slaughterhouses are. Vladak is giving specific facts in detail about how they work and you can see how it is connected with the video.  

From Farm To Fridge (DO NOT WATCH IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE)

The CAFO Reader - Introduction(Daniel Imhoff) (REVISED)

This post is a summary of the introduction of The CAFO Reader by Daniel Imhoff . Within the past thirty years, the number of domestic animals being slaughter has doubled reaching the outstanding number of 10 billion, only in the U.S. This is ten times more than in the number estimated in 1940 and is expected by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to doubled by the year 2050. The recent, unexpected, fast-raising pace of domestic animals like chickens, pigs, and cows is causing serious environmental changes because these animals are consuming big amounts of energy. Also, when they are eaten often, they can cause problems to human health. This problem is caused by the CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), which basically consists of many factory-like buildings who's primary objectives are to breed animals for fast growth and high output of meat, milk or eggs. The term ''factory feeding'' was first used , according to Daniel Imhoff, by an American journal and took a significant boost in the 1920s by adding vitamins into animal feed. After the World War II the CAFOs systems showed up combining the technology of the twentieth century they created large and mechanized feeding farms. The animals raised on this farm had no fresh air, no sun light and most of the times were confined into small areas barely as large as their body. Animals in the CAFOs are also being breed to meet the conditions for example the chickens beaks were seared off, the pig tails were tight together and the cattles horns were sawed off.  It is unbelievable to consider that food that is produced with these means are delivered to the National School Lunch Program. Meanwhile Daniel Imhoff writes about the wastes being produced by the CAFOs. According to him, "the lifestock sector alone accounts for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a larger share than all of the worlds transportation emission combined", (Imhoff xvii). I believe this is very important considering this is happening without the awareness off everyday normal people. Also, being that CAFOs seems a bit like a monopoly, it is difficult to have any syste look over them to induce a change. Imhoff also states that, ''The ways in which we produce our food define us as a culture and as human beings" (Imhoff vii).