BLOG 11

PART I

The Meatrix

In the video Leo has a conversation with Moopheus. He describes the living conditions of pigs to Leo. He offered him a pill and Leo chose red. He was zapped to an overcrowded factory where pigs are kept. This shows that many people think that pigs are freely walking around on a farm meanwhile, they are kept in cages with no air or light.

The Meatrix: Revolting

This video showed Leo how cows are treated. Since they have bad living conditions and get sick the cows get an overdose on antibiotics. They get RBGH, which is an artificial growth hormone. The babies are separated from their mothers and are fed through a machine. Instead of milk they get cow's blood from dead cows, which can cause mad cow disease.           

The Meatrix II1/2

This video took place in a slaughterhouse. It showed how meat is processed and from the intestines juices drop to the meat. The companies don't care about safety only the profit. Since they have bad conditions it cause the people that buy the product to get a disease. Also the people that work there are responsible to what happens to the meat during the packaging and the people when they eat the product.

            The main message of these video clips is that anyone can change the way animals are treated and what we eat depends only on us. 

PART II

After watching The Meatrix movie I started to think about what kind of food I am buying, but most people don’t know where they food comes from and don’t know if the food is good for their health. I think that their minds are filled with pictures where animals are living in good conditions, and their fruits and vegetables grow without human interference. Maybe a few years ago we didn’t have to think about all those things, but times have changed and so has our food.

When I was a young my grandmother and neighbors grew their own vegetables and animals. They were able to live on a big farm with grass surrounding them, unlike being kept in a small overcrowded one getting hormones injected in them. In past generations, people didn’t know the term organic but, the way they handled their livestock was all natural. 

I am a person who reads labels, ingredients before I buy something but I tend to get lost with all the information displayed. Last week, my teacher showed me different milk labels: one contained only milk and the other one had milk, vitamins a and d, and the cows ate plants and not animal based ones. I always knew I should look at labels, but more into the ingredients. Also the company where the milk comes from will never tell you how the milk was actually produced since they want to sell their product. Many people can relate to me. They don’t really know what they are buying unless someone else points out the negatives in the product.

Nowadays, a lot of people that want to be healthier depend on organic labels. Organic farmers need to let their animals roam around freely. There can’t be any hormones or antibiotics added into their bodies unlike in sustainable methods. The only way a company can get a label that uses the word “organic” is if it is USDA approved and they have a certificate. If someone violates these regulations that are specified by the USDA they will be fined great amounts. So, either farmers stick with their sustainable methods or try to decrease the obesity rates by producing organic foods.