Cheap Food, Hidden Costs

Before I watched Food, Inc. last week, all I kept hearing from my friends was that I would become a vegetarian afterwards (at least for a few days). I didn't become a vegetarian. I did make a commitment to only eat meat that I knew was ethically and sustainably farmed. But it wasn't the animal treatment that scarred me most, it was the labor operations behind corporate meat production. I was particularly intrigued by the vast change in what it meant to be a meat packer today verses one half a century ago.

According to the documentary, in the 1950s, being employed as a meat packer was a much more common, well-perceived, and solid paying job than it is today. Working with meat in a contemporary corporate factory is entirely different. It is probably one of the most undesirable professions because of its danger and unpleasantness. It’s one of those jobs that people respond to with, “Well, someone’s gotta do it.” Yes, someone has to do it, given that American food is dominated by a few, large corporations.

For instance, Smithfield Foods, Inc. was able to grow to own the largest slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants in the world because of its cheap labor and products. The company exploits impoverished people to help slaughter over hundreds of thousands of hogs per day. According to Food, Inc., Smithfield capitalized on hiring the Mexican farmers that were driven out of business by the massive corn industry in the US. Smithfield recruited illegal immigrants to do their nasty work. Since the sheer number of pork that is produced and processed is so large, the company necessitates an assembly line process where each worker performs thousands of repetitive motions each shift. These tasks lead to lacerations and strain injuries. In 2005, the Human Rights Watch reported that the disassembly line was so quick that there was no time to sharpen knives, requiring harder cuts and resulting in more injuries (http://www.hrw.org/node/11869/section/5).

Not only is it a dangerous job, but it is also transient for many. The US government cracks down on the immigrant workers, but not the companies that hired them. Food, Inc., reported that Smithfield workers are arrested so often, but does nothing to the larger corporation that is “making billions of dollars off holiday ham.” These corporations are then able threaten to exploit immigrant statuses to prevent them from making complaints or forming unions.

…So America is making cheap food, but it comes at a price. The price of social injustice, health risk, and low integrity. When you go to the supermarket do you want to support this behavior just for chicken that's a few bucks cheaper?