Right now I'm watching "Food Inc."

acoustic guyacoustic guy Posts: 3,770
edited August 2010 in A Moving Train
Oh........My..........God.
No words.
Shocking.........totally shocking.
I actually believe that their is many forms of life in space and think they look at us as fucking cockroaches.
What the fuck is wrong with this world.
We are fucking slaves.
This doc just changed my life forever.
Get em a Body Bag Yeeeeeaaaaa!
Sweep the Leg Johnny.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • dcfaithfuldcfaithful Posts: 13,076
    I too feel the same way. It's unreal what we do to our food in order to just pump out enough to feed our over-populated planet.

    At a rate like that, it's difficult to even consider maintaining quality. What upsets me is that we've allowed the standards of our food in the U.S. to reach an embarassing low.
    7/2/06 - Denver, CO
    6/12/08 - Tampa, FL
    8/23/09 - Chicago, IL
    9/28/09 - Salt Lake City, UT (11 years too long!!!)
    9/03/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 1
    9/04/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 2
  • Down with Monsanto!!!
    As I write highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. - George Orwell
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    you should watch "the future of food", as well, that goes a lot more into the science of gmo foods.

    also, something to keep in mind is among other bad actions obama's supreme court nominee pick, elena kagan, wrote a paper defending monsanto while solicitor general
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    people who are looking at "oil" companies a bit different now because of the gulf spill should look at industrialized farming the same way ...
  • acoustic guyacoustic guy Posts: 3,770
    polaris_x wrote:
    people who are looking at "oil" companies a bit different now because of the gulf spill should look at industrialized farming the same way ...
    Totally agree! 100%
    Get em a Body Bag Yeeeeeaaaaa!
    Sweep the Leg Johnny.
  • dcfaithfuldcfaithful Posts: 13,076
    polaris_x wrote:
    people who are looking at "oil" companies a bit different now because of the gulf spill should look at industrialized farming the same way ...
    Totally agree! 100%

    As do I...

    Support your local farming community!
    7/2/06 - Denver, CO
    6/12/08 - Tampa, FL
    8/23/09 - Chicago, IL
    9/28/09 - Salt Lake City, UT (11 years too long!!!)
    9/03/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 1
    9/04/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 2
  • __ Posts: 6,651
    I just found out that there will be a farmer's market at my work every week throughout the summer.
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    other things people could do are look into CSA's in your area ... helps actually bring down the cost of food ... farmers market as SCB wrote ... i bought some bison rib eyes, fresh kale, strawberries and garlic scapes this weekend at mine ...
  • cincybearcatcincybearcat Posts: 16,497
    polaris_x wrote:
    other things people could do are look into CSA's in your area ... helps actually bring down the cost of food ... farmers market as SCB wrote ... i bought some bison rib eyes, fresh kale, strawberries and garlic scapes this weekend at mine ...

    One nice thing about living in Iowa...you can find a farmer's market just about everyday of the week that isn't too far.
    hippiemom = goodness
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    polaris_x wrote:
    other things people could do are look into CSA's in your area ... helps actually bring down the cost of food ... farmers market as SCB wrote ... i bought some bison rib eyes, fresh kale, strawberries and garlic scapes this weekend at mine ...

    One nice thing about living in Iowa...you can find a farmer's market just about everyday of the week that isn't too far.

    ya ... we are lucky here in ontario too with some great growing conditions and variety ...

    i believe urban farming will be the next big thing in terms of the locavore agricultural movement ...
  • __ Posts: 6,651
    polaris_x wrote:
    other things people could do are look into CSA's in your area ... helps actually bring down the cost of food ... farmers market as SCB wrote ... i bought some bison rib eyes, fresh kale, strawberries and garlic scapes this weekend at mine ...

    What does CSA stand for? And do you live in a big city? I don't think I've ever seen meat sold at a farmer's market in my town. I was really surprised to see it when I went to DC a couple of years ago. I thought maybe it was because it was a bigger city.

    EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw that you live in Ontario.
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    scb wrote:
    What does CSA stand for? And do you live in a big city? I don't think I've ever seen meat sold at a farmer's market in my town. I was really surprised to see it when I went to DC a couple of years ago. I thought maybe it was because it was a bigger city.

    EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw that you live in Ontario.

    Community Supported Agriculture ... basically, you get together with your surrounding neighbourhoods and all decide to purchase produce from a farmer in your area ... the farmer comes down once a week with a box of produce depending on what is in season ... i'm not sure where you live - but in the northern part of the states and into ontario - we're getting mostly leafy greens now ... asparagus is just about up ... you have to pay the farmer up front ... but usually a "share" of the food for say a summer (15 weeks or so) is like $250 ...

    like i said to cincy - we are lucky here in ontario as there are a lot of farmers raising livestock naturally and organic ... so, we get a lot of good meats as well at our farmers markets ...
  • cincybearcatcincybearcat Posts: 16,497
    scb wrote:
    polaris_x wrote:
    other things people could do are look into CSA's in your area ... helps actually bring down the cost of food ... farmers market as SCB wrote ... i bought some bison rib eyes, fresh kale, strawberries and garlic scapes this weekend at mine ...

    What does CSA stand for? And do you live in a big city? I don't think I've ever seen meat sold at a farmer's market in my town. I was really surprised to see it when I went to DC a couple of years ago. I thought maybe it was because it was a bigger city.

    EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw that you live in Ontario.


    Wow, no meat at the farmer's market? Here you can get everything from beef, to buffalo, to Elk.
    hippiemom = goodness
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    this is the kind of revolution that needs to happen ...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/dinin ... ndex.jsonp
  • Jason PJason P Posts: 19,158
    polaris_x wrote:
    this is the kind of revolution that needs to happen ...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/dinin ... ndex.jsonp
    I've read that Detroit is looking to convert abandoned lots into farmland. It makes sense and it could be the only real way to clean that city up. As a hard-core Red Wings fan, I will admit that 90% of downtown Detroit resembles a war zone.
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • Jason PJason P Posts: 19,158
    I just realized I have this movie in my Netflix instant-watch queue. I will try to watch it soon.

    I'm sure this movie brings up some shocking points, but do they touch on the veal industry? I typically cut livestock production huge slack since I grew up around farms, but the way they raise veal is just plain mean and cruel.
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    Jason P wrote:
    I've read that Detroit is looking to convert abandoned lots into farmland. It makes sense and it could be the only real way to clean that city up. As a hard-core Red Wings fan, I will admit that 90% of downtown Detroit resembles a war zone.

    ya ... i drive thru the states a lot ... and i find it incredible how desolate some neighbourhoods are in many spots ...

    it's definitely a good idea ... there is a food revolution underway ... and more importantly - this revolution is for everyone ... not just the well off ... people of all classes should have affordable access to fresh and good food ...
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    i guess i'm lucky, i have like 2 dozen farmer's markets in my area and some community gardens and other projects

    http://mountainx.com/events/search/bysection/11
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • FrannyFranny Posts: 2,054
    There are quite a few community gardens popping up around here. Even more so amongst the primary schools. Landcare and Stephanie Alexander & the Australian Govt actually have grants for schools who want to start thier own school vegie gardens. I think it's an awesome thing they doing, just have to get my backside to a P&C meeting to try and get them interested in it. :)
  • __ Posts: 6,651
    There are people around here who are trying to push for the public school systems to contract with local farmers for much of the food they serve in the cafeterias. I think there was even a bill about it before the state legislature this year, but I don't think it went anywhere. Maybe next year.
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    There are quite a few community gardens popping up around here. Even more so amongst the primary schools. Landcare and Stephanie Alexander & the Australian Govt actually have grants for schools who want to start thier own school vegie gardens. I think it's an awesome thing they doing, just have to get my backside to a P&C meeting to try and get them interested in it. :)

    yeah ... these programs are popping up everywhere ... it's fantastic ... :mrgreen:
  • polaris_xpolaris_x Posts: 13,559
    more on factory farming

    http://www.grist.org/article/food-acid- ... -than-ever

    Acid rain is back, and thanks to farming, worse than ever 2
    by Tom Laskawy

    24 Jun 2010 6:00 AM

    Read More About
    acid rain, agriculture, CAFO, Environmental Health, Food, nitrogen, pollution Share8Print

    When you gargoyle with acid rain, you\'ll get that grin wiped right off your face.
    (Nino Barbieri via Wikimedia)Policy makers, environmentalists -- even Republicans -- like to congratulate themselves on the "victory" over acid rain. As this American success story is usually told, acid rain's effects were addressed by a 1990 update to the Clean Air Act that created a cap-and-trade system focused on sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Since the system was implemented, sulfur dioxide emissions dropped 70 percent, and threatened forests and wildlife were saved. Hurrah!

    There's only one problem with that version of history: It's not true. As Scientific American reports, acid rain is a continuing and growing problem; forests and animals all over the world (including the U.S. East Coast) are indeed facing catastrophe. But the No. 1 source of today's acid rain pollution is no longer sulfur dioxide, as it was 20 years ago. It's nitrogen oxide emissions from factory farms.

    Some of the following will be familiar to those diligent readers of Grist's Nitrogen series:

    Part of the problem dates back to WWI, when two German scientists invented the Haber–Bosch process, which took nonreactive nitrogen from the air (N2) and converted it into reactive, usable ammonia (NH3). Most of the nitrogen harvested via this process has been used in fertilizers, and the runoff from farms has created dead zones in Chesapeake Bay and at the mouths of the Columbia and Mississippi rivers. Some efforts have been made to regulate the agricultural nitrogen runoff, but atmospheric emissions of agricultural ammonia remain virtually unrestricted.Agri-ammonia vapors also derive from concentrated animal feeding operations in the U.S. South. The gas rises into the air and is deposited dry or in rainfall where in the ground bacteria breaks it into nitrogen and nitric acid, which can kill fish and plants. "Agriculture is increasingly functioning as an intensively managed industrial operation, and that is creating serious water, soil, and air problems," says Viney Aneja, a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.It's an agricultural double-whammy: emissions produced as a consequence of fertilizer runoff AND livestock emissions both caused by our chemically intensive and highly industrialized food production system. And all the more difficult to control since agricultural sources are the largest, but by no means the only, contributor: power plants and automobiles also emit nitrogen oxides.

    It’s perhaps even a triple threat since, as Scientific American explains, the nitric-acid rain that results from all these sources damages the soil on which it falls by leaching out important nutrients. Research has also found that nitrogen deposited through acid rain has the effect of promoting growth of some species while suppressing others, thus reducing biodiversity in the wild. Finally, the nitric acid ultimately "liberates" toxic minerals from the ground, which then in turn poison wildlife. In short, the real story of acid rain is an American tragedy.

    As we documented in February, the dangers we face from the indiscriminate use of nitrogen fertilizer, along with our unwillingness to properly regulate livestock factory farmers, are both numerous and grave. While the Europe Union (again!) has enacted laws that have successfully reduced nitrogen emissions by a third since 1999, U.S nitrogen emissions have stayed flat, while ammonia emissions have increased by over 25 percent.

    The only answer is to approach nitrogen pollution, in all its forms and from all its sources, as seriously and as intensively as we did sulfur dioxide pollution back in the 1990s. Indeed, perhaps acid rain will be the thing that brings nitrogen pollution to the front environmental policy burner. After all (and in strange opposition to climate change), it appears to have an outsized effect on the Eastern seaboard, i.e. in the back yard of our media and government.
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    People are being fed shit - literally with regards the food we eat, as much of it is actually contaminated with shit.

    And we are also being fed shit on the information level.

    So both our minds and our bodies are being fed shit. And all with the aim of making a quick $$$.


    In this movie the farmer in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia hit the nail on the head when he said "I'm always struck by how succesful we've become at hitting the bulls-eye on the wrong target...We've become a culture of technicians. We're all into the 'how' of it, but nobody's stepping back and asking 'But Why?' A culture that just views a pig as a pile of protoplasmic inanimate structure to be manipulated by whatever creative design a human can foist on that critter will probably view individuals within it's community and other cultures in the community of nations with the same type of disdain and direspect and controlling type mentality."
  • in eds treein eds tree Denver Posts: 539
    so i finally got around to watching this movie, it took me a while because i knew it would be difficult and stomach turning. but it was definitely worth it. obviously it is very upsetting.

    i just went to the grocery store and bought a shitload of food, too. goddammit!
    keep on rockin' in the free world.
Sign In or Register to comment.