Homework #12: Final Food Project 2 - Outline

Introduction

Thesis: The dominant social practices in the current American society - which are to be believed a part of life’s normal routine - are in reality nightmarish industrial atrocities.

Body Paragraphs

Argument One

Major Claim: Our routine industrial food system, as normal as it seems, is damaging to both human and animal health through its opposition to the rules of evolution.

Supporting Claim One: Confined Animal Feeding Operations are unhealthy for the animals that live in them.

Evidence One: Animal byproducts in feed cause mad-cow disease. ¹

Evidence Two: Cows who eat grain can develop liver abscesses and sudden death syndrome. ¹

Evidence Three: Feeding corn to the animals goes against their nature, causing the over diagnosis of antibiotics.⁴

Evidence Four: The chemicals from the plants cause severe sickness in the animals.³

Evidence Five: The animals suffer mentally because they can’t react on their instincts.⁶

Supporting Claim Two:  Humans suffer through the chemicals in the animals, from the environment that CAFOs create, and through the subsidizing of corn.

Evidence One: Corn fed to animals is dosed in pesticides, which are transferred to the human. ¹

Evidence Two: Corn-fed beef is far less nutritional to the human.¹

Evidence Three:  The operations create air pollution, damaging our health.²

Evidence Four: Chemical runoff pollutes the water surrounding the CAFOs.⁵

Evidence Five: Subsidizing corn makes it cheaper, but makes unhealthier foods more available to low income families; giving them no choice.^8,9

Evidence Six: Obesity rates are higher than ever before.⁷

Works Cited

¹ http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/feed/

² http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ra05/mlc3_05.html

³ http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/ehsrc/cafostudy/cafo_6-2.pdf

⁴ “One of the most troubling things about factory farms is how cavalierly they flout these evolutionary rules, forcing animals to overcome deeply ingrained aversions. We make them trade their instincts for antibiotics,” (p. 76, The Omnivore’s Dilemma).

⁵ http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=7

⁶ “The proper measure of their suffering, in other words, is not their prior experiences but the unremitting daily frustration of their instincts,” (p. 310, The Omnivore’s Dilemma).

⁷ http://st4tic.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/corn-subsidies-how-congress-is-shortchanging-our-health-and-sweetening-things-for-the-food-industry/

⁸ “But as productive and protean as the corn plant is, finally it is a set of human choices that have made these molecules quite as cheap they have become...” (p. 108, The Omnivore’s Dilemma).
9 "When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat,” (p. 102, The Omnivore’s Dilemma).