Things that taste good affecting the world

I have created this blog as a project for a writing seminar that i am currently enrolled in at Cornell University. The writing seminar is called Having a Lot on Our Plates: an introduction to the Sociology of Food and Nutrition, and this blog will therefore be updates with posts that summarize and reflect on readings that we will be doing for the class. Each post will somehow connect food and nutrition to the world on either a political, social, financial, or even physcological aspect. By reading through the blog you will learn about why different cultures eat the way they do. Hopefully the things that are addressed on this site concoct a delicious meal for your mind. Comment on anything and everything. I am by no means a master on this topic and any thoughts are appreciated and actually beneficial to the blog...so here it is...some food for thought....

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Down With the Sickness

Christopher Olsen and Mike Davis's articles, "The Triangle of Doom" and "the swine flu crisis lays bare the meat industry's monstrous power" respectively, reflect on the causes of disease among animals, such as H1N1. These diseases among animals, in turn, affect the health of the human beings who eat their meat. The issue is that the state in which the animals are kept before they are slaughtered provides a very disease friendly environment. Pigs and chickens are packed together in tigh spaces, so once one becomes ill, the rest become ill, creating a "continual cycle of viruses". So one may ask, why are the animals living in these conditions? lets take it easy here and give them so space. Down With the Sickness!!..right??...Well no. The meat industry can't "take it easy" because the demand for meat and animal products is driving the sytem of mass production in the system today, which in turn requires living environments that promote the growth of sickness. It is a terrible situation to say the least, and somehow we must find a way to solve this dilemma. Would it not make sense that the government makes regulations requiring meat industries to allow a certain amount of space per animal in their industrialized farms? this would only affect large corporations i think because small farmers dont seem to have the issue of the mass spread of disease.

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