HW 12- Final Food Project 2- Outline

Thesis- The procedures that the United States of America carries out to deal with food, illness & dying, and  birth is a nightmarish industrial atrocity that most citizens in America are not aware of, and therefore it has become the dominant social practice.

Argument 1- Food

Major Claim- The food industry in America has employed their greedy desire to be efficient in order to make more money to the point where quality and health benefits have become ignored.

Supporting claim 1- Unnatural feeding as well as mass production-style farming and processing of farm animals.

        -Cows being fed corn leads to public breakout of E-Coli (Kevin's death)
        Evidence: "In Food, Inc. we meet Barbara Kowalcyk, whose 2 year old son, Kevin, died from E.coli poisoning after eating a hamburger."

        -Genetic engineering of both crops and farm animals alike.
        Evidence: "Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer. As for environmental impacts, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture could lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of non-genetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material."

        -Processing of ground beef
        Evidence: "In 2002, Public Citizen and the Government Accountability Project discovered that even after repeatedly testing positive for salmonella contamination, several ground beef processing plants were allowed to continue to sell meat for several months before steps were taken to clean up their facilities."

Supporting claim 2- Increase in health issues among Americans of all ages.

        -Increase in heart disease
        Evidence: "If you have diabetes, you are at least twice as likely as someone who does not have diabetes to have heart disease or a stroke. People with diabetes also tend to develop heart disease or have strokes at an earlier age than other people."

        -Increase in diabetes

        Evidence: "In 2008, about 6.1% of the U.S. population reported that they had diabetes...From 1980 through 2008, the crude prevalence of diagnosed diabetes increased by 144%."
        -Increase in obesity
        Evidence: "Over two thirds of the adults in the United States twenty or older are considered to be overweight or obese: All adults total: 68 percent; Women: 64.1 percent. Men: 72.3 percent."

Works Cited:
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-issues.php
http://centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall7.cfm
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/processing/
http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/prev/national/figage.htm
http://www.nutralegacy.com/blog/general-healthcare/obesity-and-diabetes-statistics/
http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/stroke/