and I haven’t been able to eat any meat since. I thought I knew something about factory farming and feedlots, but this showed me that I didn’t really know. There have been arguments about the information being biased, but I’m not really sure how the footage - say there was no narration - could be biased or untrue. And it made me really not want to eat meat produced that way.
I’m not totally against meat eating, but I think I’m more inclined to research suppliers now (which I haven’t had the energy to do yet), and try to find local, organic, pasture-raised or whatever term I need to use to find meat produced humanely. I think there is such a thing, I just need to make an effort to find it. So, some meat at home, otherwise pescetarian from now on, I think.
I’m not sure the movie would “convert” someone out-of-hand. I was already considering changing my diet anyway, but the footage in the movie, and the undercover video I’ve found on YouTube has put me over the line I’ve been toeing.
The agri-business side, about Monsanto and GMO produce I’m still undecided. Though I cut corn syrup out of my diet several years ago and it’s true that stuff is in way more than you would ever think. Label reading vigilantly has really opened my eyes, and changed what’s in my cabinets at home.
I thought The Omnivore’s Dilemma was better on every level (written by the narrator of Food, Inc.), but I think it’s cool that so many people are seeing this and it’s really bothering them. When I saw it I was afraid there was no possible chance for change, but since then I’ve heard enough people talk about it whom I’d never have thought would care. Where our food comes from needs to be a huge issue in this country, and right now it’s not.
What I thought was cool was how they didn’t sugar-coat the poultry slaughtering experience at the free-range poultry farm either. (Nor does Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, another good book on the subject of eating local/sustainable.)
Surprise folks, the widdle chickies are still hung up by their feet and decapitated at the free-range animal-lovin’ poultry farm, so it still sucks to be a chicken on slaughtering day, no matter how green and organic your farmer is. The point is that it happens faster and more humanely, and the chickens have a much better life beforehand.
Yes. I thought while I was watching it, “I would have no problem eating those chickens.” Which is why I’m not necessarily going completely veggie, but have to find the right meat supplier first, and will obviously only be eating meat I buy and prepare at home. I did have a problem with the Perdue supplier, and am sad that she ended up so sad about her whole chicken farming experience. I wonder what she’s doing now.
I thought it was well done and thought provoking. I won’t become a vegetarian because of it, but like you, I am looking more closely at what I buy. At a local mom and pop store here is a brand of free range/organic chicken that is so good. It has such a strong chicken flavor. It is well worth a few extra cents per pound.
I truly have never understood how or why agribusiness/factory farming started feeding herbivores bits of their own meat (so to speak)–what cow eats beef in nature? The whole thing is messed up.
I saw it back in November. I had given up eating mammals about three years ago after seeing a video of a cow being butchered while still alive (not standard slaughterhouse procedure, only when they get behind). I had been thinking about giving up poultry anyway but seeing the horrific conditions the chickens live in was enough for me to finally do it. I am unemployed, so can’t afford free-range or organic poultry. I’m lucky we have Fresh & Easy markets here where I can buy cage-free eggs for only $2.50 a dozen. I’m not a vegetarian, I still eat wild-caught (canned) fish a couple times a month. I really have no intention of giving up dairy or eggs at this point. Anyway, I think the movie was very well done and did have an impact on many people.
Oh, here we go. I can think of 3 major things wrong with this unnecessarily provocative response. Do I need to post them? Are you going to insist on turning this into that kind of thread?
anyway, fast food nation was a bigger deterrent for me than the film, but if you’re visually oriented i could see how the movie would make you think twice about eating prepackaged/processed meats. vegan restaurants also have pretty graphic literature on animal cruelty on hand to dispense, even though most of their clientele already share their sentiments (i was not one of them. i was just curious).
So because common domestic felines don’t eat beef in nature, it’s ok to feed beef to cows? Not strong on logic, are you?
You’re free to love mad cow disease. Perhaps you can show your affection for it by suffering from it. Then you can start a thread:“Ask the person who had mad cow disease.” That’s about as pertinent to the thread as your remarks to my post are.
I have changed my diet as a result, but it was already in the midst of change for other reasons. I no longer eat pork as a rule. Sadly, I love love love bacon, so I’ll have a treat now and then (Christmas day was my last). I also don’t very much beef anymore. I haven’t eaten a hamburger in probably close to a year.
I don’t really intend to go vegetarian, so I still fret about all the chicken and turkey we eat and I can’t really afford to buy fresh chicken from some organic farm. I do try to eat as many vegetarian meals as I can because the one message that really stuck out for me is that current state of agriculture is due to excessive demand. If we only reduced our demand for meat (which we really don’t need to eat for every meal), we could more easily change agricultural practices and our food supply could be produced in a sustainable, ecologically, and healthy manner.
I am also a label hawk. I read everything and avoid overly processed items. I research chemicals I don’t recognize. I tend to buy significantly more whole foods than ever before and prepare far more meals. Our fridge is more colorful, our diet is healthier, and even our trash/recycling bins are less full. The next step for me is to reduce consumption of non-local produce (I still buy apples from New Zealand!) and try to eat more seasonally.
For those interested in eating more locally, I’ve found Eat Well Guide to be a good resource for finding local producers. I’ve also read the reports and articles at Cornucopia Institute, which has ratings for organic producers. There is a wealth of information out there, fortunately.
I watched Food, Inc. recently, too, and it definitely had an impact on me, even though I was already pretty conscious of a lot of the stuff they showed. I tried being vegan a few years ago, stuck it out for about eight months, regressed to vegetarian, and slowly started eating fish, shellfish, and free-range, organic chicken. I love bacon, too, but I haven’t had it in five years.
When they were showing the chickens being slaughtered at that wonderful farm, I realized how truly uncomfortable I am with the idea of another living being needing to die for me to eat, especially when there are plenty of other options out there for me survive and thrive on. So, no more chicken for me. I’m still eating shrimp, mainly because I think of them as almost an insect, but when I really think about it I know I shouldn’t be eating them, either.
The movie also made me realize the human/worker impact of these big food corporations. Like that slaughterhouse having a deal with INS (or whatever agency it was) that they can arrest fifteen or so undocumented workers a day - not a big enough number to make their business suffer. And especially what Monsanto is doing to farmers. I consume a fair amount of soy, and I’m absolutely switching to non-GMO only.
I was a bit disappointed that the movie didn’t get into the egg business, which I find to be especially horrifying. But overall, I’m very glad the movie was made and that it’s making people more aware of where their food comes from.
Programming note from your friendly neighborhood public television professional —
The PBS series P.O.V. is airing Food Inc. nationally April 21 at 9 pm (check local listings of course). We also have it on the schedule in May as well, so others may be re-airing it too.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a bit from the informational materials I have about it:
I don’t think you should fret about it if that’s how your options are, but buying sustainably raised poultry doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing, either. Even buying some more expensive fresh chicken just once every two or three months helps support your local sustainable agriculture, even though you buy industrial-ag poultry the rest of the time due to the cost constraints.
While I definitely don’t think there’s anything wrong with being vegetarian or vegan, especially since it helps balance out our general overconsumption of meat, I have to note that lots of living (animal) beings need to die in order for you to eat plant foods, too. Non-livestock agriculture kills a lot of critters due to habitat destruction and other impacts.
There’s no question that reducing our overall meat consumption as a society at the present moment would have a net effect of saving a lot of animal lives. However, it’s not clear to me that an individual who’s already eating comparatively little meat from non-industrial-agriculture sources would actually be saving animal lives by giving up meat altogether. Since animal meat is very high-quality protein and since many food animals, like chickens, can be sustainably raised with fairly low environmental impacts, I’m not sure that your ratio of nutrients consumed to animal deaths caused would in fact be significantly increased by completely abstaining from all animal-eating.
I know it seems paradoxical, and if you want I can try to dig up some actual numbers on the subject, but it may actually be true in some cases that eating no animals translates into killing more animals.
The information in Food, Inc. was one of many things that led to me becoming vegetarian this year. I don’t care at all about killing animals (within reason, of course). I love meat. It’s the government/business/environmental side of it that bothers me.