Food Inc. Video

          The video that we watched in class was very near and dear to my heart. Unfortunately I couldn't help but step out of the room 20 minutes before class was over. I tried to bare through watching the slaughter of cows and chickens, but once the documentary took us to the largest slaughter house in the country, I had to step out. I work on a dairy farm, working with cows from as early as 4 in the morning until 9 o'clock at night. Being that it's a dairy farm, we don't raise our cows for meat or sell them to be slaughtered. We individually name each cow and each one has a unique personality. We let them play in the pasture and try our best to keep them happy and healthy. So you can imagine why I couldn't bare to watch the slaughter of animals.

          I'm not trying to preach my love for animals or deny people from eating hamburgers or chicken nuggets by any means... I just feel so appalled by the inhumane way some of those farmers treated their animals: keeping them in a small dark barn with no sunlight, piling many of them into one small area, putting them on moving belts that drop them into metal bins. Working on a farm, I do have to witness heart-wrenching things. Hearing a mother cow call out to her still-born baby waiting for a response in the middle of the night was so difficult. If we're ever left with a cattle that doesn't make it through childbirth, or perhaps a cow that has grown too old, we find a burial and bury them individually. It makes sense for farmers who raise their cattle for meat not to develop any emotional feelings towards them, and I don't blame them for that. I just wish that these animals were treated not as products for human gain, but as something we can cherish and be thankful for, being that these animals provide us with nutrients we need to survive.

          The best solution I can think of is to have stricter government regulations on the way these animals are treated. Like one of the farmers said, if the these slaughter houses had glass windows around it, people would drastically change the way they eat and the way they look at the food industry overall.