Food, INC. Blog 3 Pages 183-218

The author of the "Declare Your Independence" chapter did a good job at catching my attention and making me want to read on. His idea to stop the problems in the food industry and return to more natural food selections is to completely opt out of the way we make and eat or foods. His last sentence of the first paragraph on page 184 does a good job at grabbing the reader in. He says "...it's actually the most realistic and effective approach to transforming a system that is slowly but surely killing us." (Page 184). This gives a pull at the reader's emotions and makes you think, maybe the way that I am eating and what I am buying is actually killing us. He goes on later listing an array of things that we are letting our food industries take part in. The last bullet at the bottom of page 189 is a good example of another emotional affect on the reader. It reads: "Things that end in "cide" (Latin for death)." (Page 189). We are eating foods that have been treated in pesticides and such, and we think sure its killing the dangerous pests and insects that can affect the food, but what is doing to us?

Salatin is a credible source in my mind for this reading because he is a farmer himself. He provides for more than 1,500 families, ten retail outlets, and thirty restaurants. It's a very well written chapter I believe, and that is expected I think because he also has a degree in English and has had several other articles and six books published. He also gives many different suggestions at what we can do throughout the chapter like buying local products, cooking ourselves, planting a garden, or buying what's in season. The problem is having a garden is just not a possibility at all for me, I know I do not always buy in season (which I can change), and buying non-local products are sometimes just the easier way to go for a college student. I do cook for myself, but things that I'm cooking are not exactly what this book would agree with. I'm not sure how much my eating habits will actually change, if at all, after this book.

Argument Outline and Bibliography

Poor fishery management is leading to the overuse of our oceans and will lead to the collapse of the fishing industry, seafood, and fish stocks around the world.

1. Overfishing
- Many different fish are being taken out of our oceans at too high a rate to sustain
- Currently the fishing fleet on our oceans is three times that of which it can actually provide for
- The taking out of fish that are not normally being used for food
- 90 percent of predator fish are gone
- Jellyfish populations are rising
- Bycatching is occuring- Fish that are too small to eat are being caught in the nets used for larger fish and are still taken out of the ocean and used for fertilizer, other pet food, and even to be fed to fish farmed fish

2. Pollution and Poor fishing techniques
- There is an abundance of lost fishing equipment at sea, inlcuding nets that still roam the waters and can still catch fish and kill them once they are trapped
- Ghost Fishing
- Fishing using dynamite
- Fishing using cyanide and deadly chemicals that killing ocean life and coral reefs
- Fish farms that are producing more pollution and waste products than fish
- Pirate fishing unregulated by laws

3. Depletion of fish stocks
- Bluefin tuna is depleting so much that they are worth up to $100,000 a fish
- Cod almost completly gone
- Scientists saying that complete fish stocks in the ocean will be gone by 2048

4. Fish Farming Problems
- Pollution and waste entering the ocean around the fish farm
- Chemicals used on the fish

Bibliography

"Current Problems in the Management of Marine Fisheries." Science. Beddington, J.R., Agnew D.J., Clark C.W. 22 June 2007. Web 22 Feb 2010. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5832/1713

Lynas, Mark. "Sacrificed in the Name of Sushi." Issues 41. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
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"Overfishing Basics." Overfishing: A Global Disaster. Web. 31 Jan 2010. http://overfishing.org/pages/why_is_overfishing_a_problem.php

"Overfishing/Greenpeace." Greenpeace. Web. Feb 1 2010. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/overfishing.

"Poorly Managed Fishing." WWF For a Living Planet. Web. Feb 1 2010. http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/

“The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming.” Advocacy for Animals. 4 Aug 2008. Web. 7 Feb 2010.
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“The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming.” USA Today. June 2001. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
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Food, Inc. Blog Post 2

These parts of the book were really focusing on the effects of climate change and things that we could do to change. The chapter "Why Bother?" posed a good question I thought, and it's in the title. It's not that I wouldn't want to do something to help change the climate problems, or reduce my carbon footprint, but when they talk about having an individual stop eating this is just something that I would never do. I eat every day, and I do not see myself changing that part of my diet. I do agree that there are definite problems with the meat industry in the way they treat animals, process their foods, and transfer the meat. However, this does not deter me from going out and buy meat. I do not think that most of the population would stop eating meat because of these things either. Eric Shlosser even made a comment in the movie how to this day his favorite meal is a hamburger with cheese. The question: Why bother? also comes up because it may just be too late to change anything. Climate change, as Michael Pollan points out, is upon us no matter what we do, and it is way ahead of schedule. I'm all for trying to stop climate problems, and reduce carbon footprints, but as a college student who has cheap easy access to the foods that are causing this, what else am I going to do? I can't plant a garden at my apartment here at OU and organic foods are expensive compared to cheap meats.

Position Statement

For my research exploration essay I researched the effects of fisheries on the oceans. I explored the pros and the cons fishery management and whether or not it really is taking a toll on the ocean and the fish in the ocean. My position on the topic, as I thought it would be, is that poor fishery management is causing overfishing, pollution, bycatches, and several more problems. I feel that fisheries are not taking the right stands on trying to prevent these things. Also, as someone who loves seafood, I would hate to see the oceans actually run out of fish that we eat. Many scientists are saying that this is happening and complete stocks of popular fish, such as the Bluefin tuna, could be extinct as early as 2048. I would hate to see this happen, as many others would I'm sure, but this isn't the only problem with poor fishery management. I will further explore the problems that are hurting our oceans, and will look to see if the fisheries can maybe sway me in their direction.

Food, Inc. Movie and Book Blog 1

In the movie Food, Inc. the part that stood out most to me was the segment on corn. It stuck out the most to me because of how many different things contain corn. This did not only include food either. That was the most shocking. You don't really think of diapers and such to contain corn but apparently they do. I liked how the movie presented to the information on corn and what all contains corn as well. It kept popping up images of different familiar products, first showing ones which it was easy to see how corn was in them , but once more and more products kept popping up, the movie showed more and more products that you would never associate with corn. The flim was also hard hitting when it talked about how corn farmers are being put out of business and getting in trouble when they save their seeds now because of Monsanto's restrictions on corn farming.

The book supplemented the movie very well. In the chaper about organic foods, more was talked about on how the world is becoming more and more dependent on foods that are enhanced by chemicals. One quote said this well: "All of humanity ate organic food until the early part of the twentieth century, yet we've been on a chemical binge diet for about eighty years." (Page 48). This really makes you think about how much the food we eat has changed because of chemical enhancement. The book also mentions how much Stoneyfield has done to break organic foods onto more of a mainstream scale. Plus, it gives the mission statements of Stoneyfield and what their goals are. Monsanto is discussed further in the book, outside of the corn topic on how they sell their bovine growth hormones to be put in milk cattle.

"A Forest Returns"

After watching this video I was glad to see that it is possible for a forest to regrow in an area that it was destroyed. I had no idea that Wayne National Forest was not there at one point. I just assumed it had always been that big and full of tree growth and what not. This is a perfect of example of what should be happening to the forests in the mining communities after all the devastation takes place from the mining. It is terrible thing to see a forest get destroyed because of all the life and homes for different species that it brings. So to watch this video and see that it is possible to grow a forest again once where there was so much destruction and a barren landscape. It obviously would be better if that never had to occur in the first place, but at least the forest grew again. The old man who told the story seemed so happy that the forest was there again, and it was incredible to hear his story about how the forest was not there at one point. It was great to hear the story from someone who had a great knowledge of the area and went through it from no forest at all, till what is now Wayne National Forest.

Research Prospectus Introduction and Bibliography

The ocean provides the earth with one of the most diverse and interesting ecosystems today. This is the marine ecosystem, which stretches from the tiny plankton to the huge whales in the ocean. Seafood then of course is included, and this is providing a problem with the marine ecosystem. Overfishing of the oceans is a big issue today, even though it goes unnoticed to most people. Overfishing occurs when there are more fish being taken out of the oceans, than the system can support. This is an unsustainable problem in today's oceans. In fact, huge numbers of fish are being taken out of the ocean at such a high rate, scientists believe that soon enough it will change the oceans forever, not to mention our dinner plates. Of the oceans population, 52% of fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are moderately exploited, 17% overexploited, 7% are depleted, and one percent is recovering from depletetion. The world is at risk of losing a major food source and a vast and diverse ecosystem. Some say that many important fish stocks, one like tuna and cod which many people rely on as food sources, could be completely gone in as a little as 25 years.

There are several different causes of overfishing. One of the biggest causes is the fact that today's fishing fleets are almost three times larger than needed to catch the amount of fish actually needed. This means that more and more fish are being taken out than we as people can even consume or need. Another cause of overfishing the many technological advances that makes fishing easier such as stronger nets and better boats. There are also Pirate Fishers who do not follow and rules or regulations regarding fishing and they are continually pulling fish out illegaly in large numbers. Many fishing fleets produce a massive bycatch as well when the fish for their main target. This means that they are accidentally pulling in smaller fish that are not used for human consumption, but they are being taken out anyway. Finally another cause and problem of overfishing is the destructive techniques used by some to get the fish out of the ocean. This includes dynamite (ever heard the expression it's like fishing with dynamite?), using cyanide for fishing, and ghost fishing. Ghost Fishing is when equipment used to fish gets lost at sea. For example, nets can be released from a ship and get lost at sea, and they can still catch things.

In fact, since the large scale industrial fishing began in the 50's, ninety percent of the predator fish, which we love to eat like tuna, marlin, and cod to name a few amoung many, have been fished out. When this number continues to decrease and decrease then the number of smaller fish like plankton will increase because they no longer have to worry on predators. Some scientists say this will even increase the number of jellyfish in oceans. This opens up the effect of overfishing on other wildlife, not just the human race. For example the puffin, which is a seabird, relies on sandeel, which is a fish that has been declining in numbers with the overfishing problems. This then has cause a drop in the number of seabirds that nest every year and the number that breeds every year. Also, since the numbers of larger fish that can be caught is getting smaller and smaller, the size of the mesh in the nets that fisherman use are getting smaller. This causes smaller fish to be caught that people will not eat. When this happens the fishermen do not throw these fish backin the ocean, they will grind them up and then the remains are used as animal food or fertilizer. Another staggering fact is that 20,000 porpoises die each year in the nets of salmon fishermen and thousands of dolphins are killed each year by tuna fishermen.

Bibliography:

"Marine Ecosystems." U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 28 Dec 2009. Web. 31 Jan 2010. http://www.epa.gov/bioiweb1/aquatic/marine.html

"Overfishing Basics." Overfishing: A Global Disaster. Web. 31 Jan 2010.
http://overfishing.org/pages/why_is_overfishing_a_problem.php

"Overfishing/Greenpeace." Greenpeace. Web. 1 Feb 2010. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/overfishing

"Overfishing." Peoples Trust for the Environment. Web. 1 Feb 2010.
http://www.ypte.org.uk/environmental/over-fishing/29

"Poorly Managed Fishing." WWF for a Living Planet. Web. 1 Feb 2010.
http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/