GM FOOD

Advantages and disadvantages of eating GM food

Some of the questions i want to answer are:
what are the processes of doing GM food?
Is it more or less expensive to eat GM food?
GM food policies
GM food advertising
Health benefits
Environmental impact

Here is a link explaining pros and cons of GM food

Here is a video explaining the difference between conventional and GM food

This is another video about GM food.

This is a link about GM food policies

And this is a link about the economic and environmental impact of GM food.

Cost of immigrant farm workers

There are millions of illegal immigrants in this country. Most of the immigrants come to live the American dream, that chance to live a better life, be successful and ultimately to be happy. Throughout the years this concept has been a hope to everyone who wants to find better opportunities, but this is not as easy as it sounds. Most of illegal workers don’t have any type of health care or appropriate rights, in a way is a type of slavery and there’s a reason why immigrants continue to come to this country to look for more jobs.

Farm is one of the most dangerous labors in America, due to exposure of chemicals, such as pesticides and fertilizers that could cause from nausea or burns to cancer and other fatal diseases. These illnesses are originated because of the lack of proper sanitation in farms, making them very vulnerable to get any type of infection. Since they are illegal, they don’t have health care and don’t have enough money to buy medicines when they get sick and what is worst is that when this happens a lot of times the result is death from something that could have been prevented by spending a little more money and offer proper protection to the farmers.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only problem that farmers have to face everyday, farm workers are exploited, they work from 12 to 14 hours a day, carrying heavy crops in hot, sunny days for long distances and they still have the lowest of all wages in USA. Therefore if they can’t really afford enough amounts of food for themselves it is almost impossible for them to supply education, housing or health care to their families causing them to even suffer from starvation.

Now, you may wonder why the number of immigrants keep growing each year in the farming industry if the farmers are being abused. Well NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has a lot to do with it. For generations, Mexicans have practiced subsistence agriculture that sustained agriculture in the countryside, but after NAFTA Mexican agriculture can’t compete with the large agricultural business of USA. Hence, a lot people lost their jobs and decided to migrate to this country. This is also the reason why farmers don’t complain about their abominable working conditions, since in their country they don’t have a lot of opportunities, they rather stay here because at least they have a job. I think that farms take advantage of the fact that they are illegal, they know that they don’t want to be fired or deported so they won’t complain to anyone.

This is the price they pay for us to have cheaper food in our tables and it’s ironic how the workers that provide us with food everyday don’t have the financial means to buy food for themselves. The only ones that can make a difference are the consumers, maybe not a lot of people are aware of what these people are going through, that’s why we don’t say anything about it. Sadly, in order to make a change we must take one step at a time, because even though the farms are violating human rights, most of their workers aren’t legal and would be deported if its known that they are working in this country illegally and that’s not what they want.

Food inc

The movie really surprised me because I had no idea that the food business works in that way. It is true that somehow we have benefited from this, since food it is made in large amounts, food it is cheaper, but not cheap enough. People turn to fast food because they don’t have time to cook and feed their families and also because it is cheaper than any other kind of food, but no one really knows where this food comes from. That’s what this movie’s intention is about, to let everybody know where and how the food we eat is made. It is obvious why the factories don’t want us to know this, because if we knew the truth we would probably stop buying these companies products.

Most of my life I’ve lived in my native country, Ecuador, which it’s a third world country so I really don’t know if food it’s made in the same way as it is in this country, maybe the factories are not as big and powerful as they are here, but I do think that there a few that works similarly. What shocked me the most it’s how animals are treated, I’m really against animal abuse and to see how they are treated shows how cruel people can be in order to make money and to be more powerful. People are also creating animals that are bigger than they have ever been in a smaller amount of time, who knows what they are giving to them in order to achieve this. Not only animals are being abused, but people are also suffering from this, by paying low wages and most people are immigrants so they can’t really complain about it or they will be deported. People need to be aware of what it is going. We are the only ones that can make a difference. Something has to be done in order to create better and healthful methods to make food as soon as possible.