The Impact of Food Inc

My senior year of high school in my Contemporary Issues class, we watched the movie Food Inc. directed by Robert Kenner. This movie was made in 2008 is basically about how much the food industry has changed since the 1950's. Food Inc. goes into detail about food products themselves, the animals that produce the food, and the assembly line of how the food is processed and distributed, and then explains how the safety and health of all of these things are over looked by the companies and by the government. Theses companies and the government just want to provide food at the lowest cost possible and do not pay attention to these bad consequences. Watching this documentary actually made me sick to my stomach. It made me realize how naïve I am when it comes to buying food and how much I don't pay attention to what I am actually consuming. The part of the movie that I remember the most and will unfortunately never be able to forget is that a woman named Barbara Kowalcyk had a 2 and a half year old son who ate a hamburger and died 12 days later because it was infected with E. coli. When I was a kid, and even to this day, I always loved to eat raw cookie dough and my mother would always tell me that I would get sick if I did that, and I never believed her. But after I heard the story about Barbara Kowacyk's son, I never ate it again. Granted he was 2 and a half and I'm 18 and probably have a much stronger immune system then he does, that still doesn't make it safe. Anybody can get sick from the food we eat and I never really noticed how important this way until I saw this documentary. This documentary also showed how these animals are raised. I remember seeing chickens that were too fat from being injected with drugs that they couldn't even move. They just sat their wholes lives until they were slaughtered shortly after. I also remember seeing pigs being dragged by machines to be slaughtered. That is no natural, healthy, normal way to die and it is certainly not right.