Reflection Essay

     Looking back at this short but interesting semester, I learned a few things about food and I also found out some of my strength and weakness during the semester. When I first write something, it was when I in 6th grade. My English teacher demand us to write a diary, that is the first time I wrote something long, well to me at that age it is long.
     I use to think whenever I write a essay, all I need is to give a general idea of evidence to back the paper up, as I went through grade school till college now, I had aware I need to use as many detail as I needed to backup my paper. As a research writer I often don't have the patient of finding enough source for my research paper, I often get distracted easily while trying to find some good details.
     Food is the topic of this semester, thus I learnt something about food. In the book Fast Food Nation, I learnt fast foods are not as healthy as they advertise, more and more children are having healthy concerns which should not have happened at their age. According to Meatrix.com the supplier of meat to fast food companies is also a big concern, because it does not only provide meat for fast foods but it also sell meat to us. Their animal meat is filled with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Consume of their meat over a period of time could become ill.
     I learnt new stuff in the class, Dr.Smith brought us to the side of factory farm that is not widely known and gave us a tour of how the workers handle and treat the farm animals. It was cruel that the animals get abused like removing the beak of chicks, removing the tails of baby pigs. Animals have been treated with no right at the farm.
     I feel confident at moving to another research class, not very confident but still confident. But I do need to improve my knowledge on vocabularies and grammar issues. I don't think writing will play a role in the future to me. I'm not a big fan of writing.
     In the class I found out more of my strength and my weakness. I found out I'm lacking the patient of find resource or write a good paper, I also found out I still have much to improve on my grammar and make my paper sound interesting. I also learnt much about food and how they are produced. Within the semester, I also have a feel of how college English are like, it is more challenging to me but at the same time it is more interesting then high school English.

Citations

1. http://www.factory-farming.com/factory_farming.html

2. http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/farm/hsus-factory-farming-in-america-the-true-cost-of-animal-agribusiness.pdf

3. http://www.lcanimal.org/index.php/campaigns/other-issues/factory-farming

4. http://www.halton.ca/cms/One.aspx?pageId=15092

5. https://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-factory-farms-and-environment

Pictures

1.http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/01/27/weekinreview/20080127_BITTMAN2_GRAPHIC.html

2.http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b71f69e2017d428bf33d970c-400wi

3.http://www.farmsanctuary.org/wpcontent/gallery/chickens_1/chicken2_300_1.jpg

4. http://www.mfablog.org/pig-farm.jpg

5. http://thesurvivalistsenclave.com/files/2012/09/400341-Water-Contamination.jpg

6. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWGsg3eITORzYV98UO4bTludVkDYU095tMWKZWb-xueojwAIk1F5Fp2FcT7rJsiFq1xL9TiTW5oN781WL-DhBOepw3JSC6IfnywoMJjnq8FJJQnbzQRMNMKYyYObqRjFYZWzKQCVeeNiY/s320/contaminated+water.jpg

7.http://i.ssimg.cn/guancha/News/2013/12/10/635222592165365785%E4%B8%8A%E6%B5%B7%E9%9B%BE%E9%9C%BE.jpg

8. http://www.earthtimes.org/newsimage/melting-icebergs-linked-carbon-dioxide-absorption_273.jpg

Entry#11 Final Essay Draft

Yunhan Li

Dr. C. Jason Smith

English 101

May 20, 2014

The Dark Side of Factory Farming

     The new way of farming, factory farming was first appeared in 1926 at Delmarva Peninsula. It was by accident, with the delivery of 450 chickens to the small farm, instead of overage, the farm owner decide to keep the chickens indoor through the cold winter. The first factory farm was not made by design. But the rest was specially made in a way where they are able to reduce the work force needed at the farm and compact everything into a tight space, while at the same the profit will be multiplied. During the 1950's, because of the raise of large factory farms, many traditional family farms has been forced to closure. Factory Farming packs hundreds and thousands of farm animals in one confined space, often a very tight space, those animals often are fed with growth hormones to accelerate the speed of their growth and also to grow more meat. And workers at the farm tend to abuse the animals once when the animals move to slow, or the animals that is just borne. The waste produced by the factory farm each year is also toxicity, it will pollute the community and break the ecosystem around that area.

     Bird Animals was the first animals been farmed in factory farming, chickens are used in factory farms to get mass productions of eggs. Bird animals are also get abused in factory farm the most. Chickens get nervous when they are placed in a confined and tight space, thus there are often cock-fights, many times result in chicken are badly injured. But injured chicken are not good for the business. To prevent any cock fight from happening, the workers in the farm removed all of the chicken's beakers while they are still chicks. With the opening of new fast food restaurants, the demand of chicken has increased dramatically. The traditional method of raising chickens is no longer satisfy of the demand of chickens. Therefore, a new way of "raising" chickens is invented. By inject growth hormones into the chickens, this new way can make the chickens grow insanely fast, and also make the chicken grow more meat. Chickens raised by this method often suffered from weight from their body that exceed the limit of their bone structure's strength, and it will lead to bone fracture. One way of identify chickens raised by injection of hormones is the often have lots of missing feathers. Weak chicks at factory farms often are throw into metal dividers and later drown to death. But chickens are not the only bird animals that get abused in the factory farm. Goose is another animal which get farmed and abused in factory farm. In order to meet the requirement of the consumers of fatty liver, factory workers have force the geese to eat food by put the metal pipe in their throats. With this behavior of producing fatty liver, after knowing how it was produced, many restaurants now have removed foie gras from their menu.

     Bird animals were not the only animal that get abused in the farm. Pigs got abused the most. All
unhealthy baby pigs had their head slammed onto the floor by factory workers, the pigs felt so much pain, all they can do and able to do is moan on the floor and move their legs around and wait to die. When they are thrown to the big plastic bucket, some of the pigs are still breathing painfully. Because no one would purchase pig tails, the workers have cut off all the tails of baby pigs. Pregnant pigs are abused the most, since they are too heavy to walk on their own, workers at the factory farm often use kicking to move the pregnant pig and punch them in their stomachs. Worst of all, in order to avoid more pig getting pregnant, all the male baby pigs have their scrotum removed from them.

Cattle are locked up in individual but tight cages, and that often make them become sick, and somehow they hardly eat the food given to them by the workers, most likely the cows had their head pushed in their food bucket to eat the foods provided to them. In the winter times when cows are loaded onto trucks and been taken to meat factories to get slaughtered. They often suffer from freezing winds while been transferred to the meat factories. After they arrived, they often are too cold to walk, thus the workers will try to kick the cows to make them move. While they been slaughtered, they were shot by captive bolt pistols, which when used properly will induce unconsciousness. But more than often, the workers don’t know how to use the pistol properly, thus the cow have full consciousness when they getting dissected by the chainsaw, a very painful and brutal scene for the slaughtered cows.

Beyond the animal abuse in factory farms, animal’s wastes are also a big problem that society concerned about. Factory farm is a big donor to air pollution. Animal waste can produce odors, odor are produced by the breakdown of organic carbon and nitrogen compound found in manure. While in the process of decomposition, the noxious levels of gases are emitted, result in workers and nearby residents are at the risk of developing numbers of acute and chronic illnesses. As in the picture shown below, the farm animals make around 900 million tons of waste annually. One cow is able to produce around 14.6 tons of waste per year.

       Animal wastes are great way to fertilize the farm soil . Fertilizer could make the vegetables grow bigger, stronger and tastier as they absorb the energy from the animal manures. But animals in factory farms are often lived in a compacted place, it would be hard to clear the animal waste. And mostly it would be expensive to transport the fertilizer to farms to fertilize the soil. More then often, workers just store the animal waste near the factor farm. It did not only pollute the air, but it can also pollute the water. Animal manures can pollute both the surface water and the ground water, because there is excessive amount of manure in an limited land, and manure can pollute by water storage tanks if the pipe of the tank is leaking. Animal wastes in excessive amounts can have a dangerous level of phosphorus and nitrogen, within the excessive amount of nitrogen in water, it will take the oxygen out of water and result in destroying the aquatic life. Drinking contaminated water can lead to many health concerns, such as nausea, vomiting, cramps and diarrhea. Contaminated waters are often polluted by chemical wastes produced in factories, but factory farms have also paid their fair shares to to pollute the water.

                                                           

     According to the sources from https://www.dosomething.org, factory farms are account for 37 percent of methane emissions, methane have 20 times the potential of CO2. That means CO2 produced by cars and factories is no longer the biggest threat to global warming. Recently in China, with so much chemical wastes produced by the factories, there is a strange climate in the cities of China. It is like a haze, where there is dust, smoke and other things that form something looked like a giant fog surround the city, the fog is harmful too, breathing in the haze will cause some illness eventually. With factories and factory farms producing

Blog Entry 9

     In the research paper, I will focus on animal abuse and animal welfare. On how animals were forced to feed more then they can eat, forced to be inject growth hormones, and animals live in a very tight space together, and farm animals got beaten badly or beat to death.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty_to_animals

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/

http://www.mercyforanimals.org/investigations.aspx

http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/belly-beast-meat-factory-farms-animal-activists

Blog Entry 6

     This item might be small an, it might not be expensive to obtain and it is very easily ignored by us until we need it. You will use this item after you had a great meal, or use it when you have a cold. Kleenex, a brand that makes facial tissues, they are one of the well-known brand for tissues. This is one of the items that my family buy and use over and over again.
                     
                                                                     
     It was a cold day, with snow fallen outside, and chill wind blow onto people's face. Sadly I caught a cold at that cold day, all I got that accompanies me is my computer and kleenex. That is when I first notice kleenex facial tissue. The tissue was bought for my sister's elementary school, but there was some extras, thus she thought it would be better she take it back and use it herself. Unlike other cheaper brand, which their tissue is so thin and so dry, if you continuously use that kind of tissue to blow your nose over time, it will make your nose red and dry and mostly it feel like burn on your nose. But Kleenex is different, their tissue is more thick, and more mositured, it is soft to use. You won't feel any discomfort after using the tissue over and over.
     With the soft feel of the tissue, and how useful it is, my family use it warp our chains after each meal, also use it to clean our hand and nose, it is so useful we even have them in the cars.

Blog Entry 7: The Meatrix Issues

     Climate change is one of the many issues posted on the Meatrix website. It in fact is a big issue, that not only concern about us but also affect the environment and the ecosystem balance around the globe.
     The issue of climate change concerns about human and every other living organisms on planet Earth. It would be insane to continue polluting the Earth like the way the meat-packing industries does. But it is not entirely possible to stop them, and to achieve success, it might take generations of us to bring the plan to action. As some people did this days, after learning how disgusting and brutal the meat-packing industries is, we can stop purchase food from the large factory farms and start buying food from local farmers. That way not only we know what we eating and is it healthy or not, but we can also help to boost up the community economy. As the old saying "What goes around, comes around."
     Due to the increase in air pollution lately. Ice bergs at the North and South poles has already decreased their sizes, and all the disappeared ice bergs has turned into water, thus made the ocean's water increase. And scientist pointed out that if this continues to happen, there might be another ice age in the near future. Not only concern us, we still have to think about the future generations. And with that said we should do whatever we can in our power to stop the insane pollute of air start with small things but yet can make a big changes to the world, stop buying foods from factory farms. That would not only make us eat healthy and it would also make the Earth more healthy.

Blog Entry 5: Summary and Response Essay

     In chapter 1-3, the book talked about how the "Founding Fathers" built their fast food chain restaurants from little to what we all see today. All have their restaurants all over the world. It also talked about the up and downs of the stories when the fast food restaurants was still expanding to today's world wide restaurant and most of them are symbol that represent of American culture.The most interesting issue is how restaurants like McDonald, Burger King and others suddenly turn from a normal restaurant to a children-based restaurant.
     At the beginning of the book Fast Food Nation, it told us that the fast food restaurants was first a normal burger joint but with the new feature of drive-by. With the amount of cars in the late 1900's people often drive a car instead of walking, and most driver like to stay in the driver's seat, so how can restaurants serve customers like them? Simple, the owners figure a way called drive-by, which allowed driver to drive through a line and order their food, pay the money then wait at the end of the line for their food to be packed and handed to them. Those kind of restaurant often seen at the sides of highways, due to the amount of cars passing by the highway each days, which made the idea of drive-by order a successful idea toward attracting more customers.
     Suddenly at the 1970's, starting with McDonald's then the rest of other big fast food chain restaurants start to targeting at children of age under 7. They start to make a whole new meal for kid, the Happy Meal, which include a little toy that most children recognize and want to have. And shooting children commercial that would attract more children to pay a visit to their restaurants. One of the executive said this:" Children's commercial brings in children, which brings in parents, which brings in money." All of the sudden change on the fast food restaurants is because the opening of Disney Land in California, and all the children movies that attracted lots of young children which made the owners of McDonald, Burger King and others to recognize that children do and in fact bring in a ever greater potential of selling their products. In fact, McDonald copys the Disney Land and built little play grounded within the McDonald called McDonald Land, which allow kids to have fun before or after eating and the parents don't have to worry about the children playing at the play ground while they eat their hamburgers, it also make them feel like they are a great parents just by bring their child to eat and play at McDonald. When you walk into a McDonald today, you can see the tile is all in the 3 colors, white, red and yellow. Which looks like a children based restaurant.
     Due to the change of McDonald and other fast food restaurants, the major customer is no longer adult as it use to be back in the 1960's, now it's major customer have been replaced by children.

Blog Entry 3: "The Founding Fathers" Summary

     Many owners of large fast food corporation has put in a lot of hard work into what they have owned today. Founders of McDonald, KFC and other fast food chain restaurants has all started with little or nothing to today's fast food giants. They start with small hot dog stands, small restaurants and put into their own effort. Their ideas that turned their small restaurant to a suddenly well-known fast food chain restaurant is all done with their patient, and hard-work. Especially the founder of KFC Colonel Sanders while at his 60's he travel across states just to find people who would like to buy his chicken. And slowly one step at a time, he founded KFC.

Blog Entry 2: The Meaning of Food in my Life

    Food is essential to our daily life, we must absorb energies from the food we consume to keep our daily body functions. Many people claim they only eat to survive, but others claim they not only eat to survive but they also enjoy the food itself. Food is become a important key of some people's daily life.
    In the ancient times, people who live in China, the poor people's goal is just to stay alive and continue the family line. But food is not as easy to get as now. Back then there is natural disasters, brutal emperors, all this aspect contribute to the lower class of people doesn't have enough to eat or feed their family. Thus, generations after generations, they did not only find ways to feed their families but also they tried to make the food become tasty. And since on, food have become a important part of the Chinese culture.
   Now days there is many diversities in the Chinese cuisine, total of 8 categories of food come from different regions of China. There is spicy food from Szechawn, food with light taste from Jiangsu and more. Eating have become a pleasure for certain people now. That is why there is lots of shows about cooking on TV.