Food Inc: Illegal immigrants employed in slaughterhouses

Meat-processing companies such as Smithfield’s are employing increasing numbers of immigrant workers. These workers are often illegal aliens from Mexico and other South American countries. Slaughterhouses find a subjugated workforce in these immigrants whose fear of deportation keeps from joining unions. Working in slaughterhouses has become one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. and wages are at an all time low. Furthermore, police only arrests small group of immigrants at a time so production remains unaffected at the plant.

Meat packaging companies leaders might argue that they need an immigrant workforce simply because nobody else applies for the job. Processing plants are busing in workers from up to 100 miles, sometimes across the border, just to meet domestic demands. Slaughterhouses now process up to 32 000 hogs a day, a task that requires thousands of laborers. Moreover, working at meat processing plants often gives illegal immigrants the opportunity to sustain a family either with them in the U.S. or on the other side of the border.

The fact is many immigrant workers have no other choice than to work in these meat-processing plants. Although the few corporation that own slaughterhouses abuse illegal immigrants in their private interest, workers are attracted by relatively high wages. Illegal aliens who fled their country because of personal threat or unemployment often depend on their pay to stay in the U.S. Many Mexican farmers were put out of business by the abundance of cheap American corn. Is it fair for us to stand against the employment of farmers whose competitiveness was undermined by our domestic policies?

"America's favorite crop"

One of the first things I realized when watching King Corn was how different it is from other documentaries we’ve seen this semester. All in all, Aaron Woolf’s film is a small production, starting with a total gross profit barely exceeding $100k. King Corn also displays a good amount of educated humor. The plot is based on two recent graduate’s surprising idea: to grow an acre of corn in Iowa and follow it up the food chain.

Despite their playful approach, Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis spotlight compelling facts about today’s food industry. They soon learn that “without any government payments, you’re gonna lose money”. These days, farmers theoretically grow crops at loss; they rely on federal subsidies to make their produce profitable. In fact, farmers can’t even eat their corn! Commodity corn has been so modified that it now needs to be processed before it is fit for human consumption.

 

Ellis and Cheney’s hands-on investigation also reveals key numbers that help further understand what “farming” has become in the U.S. They find out that their 10000 pounds of corn will be allocated as followed within the food industry:

-       3400 pounds will be transformed into ethanol or exported

-       490 pounds will be processed into sweeteners such as High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

-       5500 pounds will be used to feed livestock across the country

I wondered how these numbers translated at the “end of the chain.” Here is what I found:

-       Approx. 25 pounds of corn are needed to produce a gallon of ethanol

-       Approx. 35 pounds of corn are used to make a gallon (about 11 pounds) of HFCS 

-       Approx. 7 pounds of grain are fed to hogs per pound of meet packaged at the slaughterhouse 

This means that Ellis and Cheney’s acre of corn would, on average, help produce:

-       68 gallons of ethanol (in the U.S., the amount of corn exported is about the same as the amount used to make ethanol) 

-       14 gallons of HFCS

-       785 pounds of pork

Research paper: topic proposal

Claim:

Cherokee trust funds, a solution prone to debate.   

Support:

-Explain how trust funds work, what they are.

-History of Native American trust funds. What led to their creation?

-Where does the money come from?

-How are funds distributed among young Cherokee? Does everyone get assets of equal worth? Are Cherokees living outside the county entitled?

-How are investments chosen? Who, what authority manages the trust funds?

-What placements are made? Have some been controversial within the Cherokee nation?

-Pros and cons in the community

Warrant:

-Assess the supposed “reparative power” of trust funds

-Contrast with other “compensative” measures such as education grants.

                

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Obama,

I am writing you today to express my concerns over our country’s financial policies. As your first term is ending, I believe the current situation is far from satisfactory.

            It is clear that the recession we know today is a more result of the previous administration than yours. The economical crisis culminated in 2008 shortly after you were sworn into office. For 8 years, George W. Bush led policies of deregulation in Wall Street accompanied by excessive spending and tax cuts. As vice president Joe Biden reminded us in his speech at the Justice Center: “Federal debt doubled in just 8 years”. Although I do not believe in the responsibility of the government elected in 2008, I am disappointed to realize how you made some of the same mistakes as the previous administration.

In 2008, you campaigned under the slogan of “Change”. Your promises to reform Wall Street and Washington appealed to me, my family as well as many around us. We are part of the middle class you sought to reach. After you won the presidential elections in November, voters impatiently waited for the new administration to take action. However, little change has been made among the people responsible for the United States’ financial policies. For example, I wonder why you chose Timothy Geithner as Secretary of Treasury. Geithner had been president of the New York Federal Reserve for 5 years in 2008. Nevertheless, when he testified to be confirmed Secretary of Treasury, Geithner claimed: “I have never been a regulator”. Geithner’s failure to understand the task previously assigned to him, as President of the New York Fed, should have been seen as proof of his incompetence. The new head of the New York Federal Reserve is the former chief economist of Goldman Sachs, William C. Dudley.

I know a republican House of Representatives can be held responsible for the undermining of certain reforms under your first term. This said, if reelected, I urge your administration to pursue the promises you made in 2008. As an integral part of your campaign for financial reform, you should promote the creation of independent regulatory agencies. In Washington, laws should prohibit any form of financial lobbying. Corporate fortunes should not be allowed to govern the country by corrupting representatives and congressmen. Banks’ control over Washington led us to the economical crisis in 2008. This is why I believe that today, the separation between banks and state has become as important as the separation between church and state.

Manufactured Landscapes

The first 5 minutes of Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes truly amazed me. As through out the film, I believe the director succeeded both in delivering a meaningful work of art and keeping her audience captivated.

Manufactured Landscapes begins with a long travel showing rows of workers in a Chinese factory. No music is added; only the sounds made by laborers and their machines can be heard. This immerses the spectator into the factory’s activity. I almost felt like I was there, among the assembly lines. 

The first shots also served an informative purpose. I found it interesting to be simply shown what goes on in a Chinese factory. The absence of comments allows the viewer to reach his own reflections. Jennifer Baichwal doesn’t show the assembly lines under a particular light, her opinions and biases are left aside. 

I think the choice of a relatively distant camera also succeeds in capturing the workers’ emotions. The camera doesn’t interfere with their work; only occasionally do laborers even notice its presence.  

Images of the factory and the unnatural sounds made by machinery introduce the focus of the documentary: humanity’s transformation of its environment. The viewer wonders whether the western world’s material comfort is worth such sacrifices in developing countries. How has our society created the need for mass production? Is this Chinese factory a sign of progress or unreasonable consumerism? 

Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi left me both confused and intrigued. I quickly wondered how Godfrey Reggio had come up with the idea of filming the Qatsi trilogy. Was the director just talented at hiding his agenda? Or did he have the ideal of creating art for art’s sake in mind? These questions led me to look up interviews of Reggio in an attempt to understand his motivations.

I found an interview of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass on the making of the Qatsi films. The director provides an insight into the purpose he tried to give to his trilogy.

Right away, Godfrey Reggio states: “These films are meant to provoke, they are meant to offer an experience rather than an idea or information or a story about knowable or fictional subject.” The director explains that the viewer has to extract his or her own meaning from the film. The Qatsi documentaries seek not to spark off a particular emotion but rather to allow the spectator to make sense of the images for herself.

Reggio also explains his will to go “beyond words” by his years of meditation in a religious community. He attempted to create an experience that would make the spectator see through the “surface of things”. Godfrey Reggio explains that today, people who live in this world do not see the main event that it hides. He believes the most important event of human history is currently unfolding: the passage from life among nature to life in a “technological milieu”. The director says that we no longer live with technology but are now living in technology. He seeks to make his viewer question his current lifestyle in order to assert this claim. In Koyaanisqatsi, a city is compared to a computer chip; traffic is filmed and accelerated.

When I first viewed Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, I was frustrated in my attempt to understand what Godfrey Reggio sought to show his viewers. This video about the making of the trilogy has answered my question. I found it almost more interesting than the documentaries themselves, perhaps because Reggio’s claims are explicitly expressed. I strongly recommend watching the whole interview if you were confused by the Qatsi films.