Speech: Ethan Petraitis

So this is what I was SUPPOSED TO say. My bad for leaving my laptop at home and forgetting to print. Darn.

Alright, so how many of you guys have read The Omnivores Dilemma?
How many of you have watched the documentary Food inc.?
Now I only see one other person in Environmental science, and I know he didn’t, but how many of you have read the book (or seen the documentary) No Impact Man?
Okay, so I’m sure you all have an idea of what my topic is based on my questions, and I can guarantee that some of you just let out a silent groan since you don’t want to hear about another environmental or food related topic, I know this, but just hear me out.

Of the 3 works Omnivores dilemma, food inc, and No impact man. I actually found the no impact man to be the most interesting and the most persuasive. The story goes that there’s this guy in New York City that tries to have a net impact of zero on the environment. He convinces his wife to come aboard and they do without electricity, buy local food, and make as little trash as possible. Great stuff, right? Well the part that I found most interesting to me was that this family only ate food that came from less than 250 miles away. This may sound like a large distance and you may think that it wouldn’t have any impact on your life at all but 250 miles cannot even get you to Detroit, st Louis, or Chicago. AND that’s only one TENTH of the distance American food usually travels from farm to plate. That’s right, the food on your plate came from 2,500 miles away.

 

Who would even want to eat THAT food anyway though? Our food system, here in America, is SO corrupt, I would buy local for sheer peace of mind, and I want to make sure I’m not eating MONSANTO’s new “Soylent Green”. We, as Americans, need to have a better idea of what we are putting into our bodies. Food inc shows us that: “In 1972 the FDA conducted approximately 50,000 food safety inspections.  In 2008, the FDA conducted only 164.” This is more than a little alarming. The agency that is supposed to regulate our food isn’t doing their job. The USDA is allowed to tell you when your milk expires and the USDA is allowed to tell you your food is organic, yet the USDA is not permitted to shut down a contaminated meat packaging plant? 

If one of those plants actually does test positive for E.Coli or other contaminants, it would be a pretty big deal since the majority of beef is produced from a mere 13 factories in the US. It’s honestly surprising that Beef isn’t recalled more frequently since cows stand knee-deep in their own manure and do not even get cleaned before being skinned, cut and ground. Rather than washing the cows before butchering them, slaughterhouses now just cleanse the contaminated ground beef with an ammonia mixture. These huge meat-factories produce so much product and minimize all of the costs possible in order to maximize profits. This creates a complete lack of quality control. Isn’t it better to know where your meat comes from? Local farms and small ranches are much more humane and sanitary than these corner-cutting global operations. Maybe as a culture we need to move away from quantity over quality and resort to paying for the actual cost of our food.

 

The Food industry, honestly the industry that should be the most transparent, is shrouded in a sheet of mystery. Buying local foods and personally seeing how your food is handled and created is the only way to make sure that you are in fact eating what you think you are.