Food Inc. More Like Horrible Inc.

Have you ever seen a chicken that couldn't walk because it's bones couldn't hold up its obese body? Have you ever seen a bulldozer pushing a cow to slaughter because it couldn't get up and walk for same reason? I'm betting most of you said no. Well if you get the chance to watch the epic documentary Food Inc. than you will see that and a lot more. It really opens your eyes to the awful thing farmers are doing to their livestock to keep up with the demand of meat.

Who doesn't love corn on the cob, or corn with Thanksgiving Dinner? As good as that sounds for us it isn't good for animals. The cows and chickens on most farms are being fed corn. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is. Cows are supposed to eat grass. Corn is bad for them and can give them e coli. Why would farmers do that to their animals??

Well the answer is that corn makes the animals grow fatter faster. The faster they grow the quicker they can slaughter them for their meat and get paid. With the chickens they keep them in dark 24/7, they are cramped together in building and feed constantly. They grow chickens from a chick to an adult in 49 days verses the normal 3 months. Because they grow that fast their bones can't keep up and they can barley walk by the time they are slaughtered.

I know when you have a plethora of cows and chickens on your farm you may not get too attached to them, but I still don't know how they could knowingly do that to their cows and chickens. I also know that is hard to be farmers in America today and that you need to make money, but it just seems so morally wrong to do that to animals. Some of them don't like doing it and wish they could do it differently, but they don't get a say. They need to make money. When they were filming the documentary they could have conversations with some of the chicken farmers, but they couldn't show them inside where the chickens were or they would get fired.

One question you may have is how is there enough corn for this? How can they have enough corn for us to eat and then corn for the animals. The big food packing companies are paying corn farmers to over produce the product. They also have clever ways to rearrange the corn. Each farmer will produce 200 bushels of corn a year.

They also discuss a child, Kevin, that died after eating a burger at a fast food restaurant because of e. coli in 2008. After dying his mother vowed to never let this happen to anyone else's child. They were trying to get Kevin's Law passed that would allow the U.S Department of Agriculture to close d
own plants that produce contaminated meat. This law never got passed. Versions of this law continue to be passed through Congress, but so far nothing has been passed.

They do say that sometimes it just takes one person to make a difference, but that doesn't seem to be case for changing the laws that allow the USDA to shut down meat plants. Granted children die everyday, but we can do something to prevent more deaths like Kevin, but apparently the big food companies have their claws in too deep with certain congressman. One would think that just hearing this story would make you want to do something. Apparently money is worth more than people today.

Another aspect they talked about in the movie was Soy Beans. I grew up in a small town in Upstate New York where there were farms, but nothing that big where the production of soy beans would have been a concern. In the Midwest this is a problem. A company called Monsanto is the leader of genetically engineered seeds. When farmers use other types of soy beans they are violating a patent that Monsanto has. Since the mid 1990's Monsanto has filed over 145 lawsuits against farmers for this violation.

If that is what this company is spending a lot of its money and time towards that is kinda sad. I mean I don't know how many farmer's would use their own seeds, but it would be better than us eating genetically engineered food. And most of us don't know we are eating it.

Overall this documentary made me want to pay more attention to the ingredients in my food and where the food and vegetables come from. The things that farmers are doing to animals and the way the government is controlling it is really disgusting. Sometimes I wish I lived in a different time when the government didn't run everything and people are more free to farm and do whatever they wanted. I really think we should look back in time and think about how our world looks today.

Yo Homes this is AWESOME x6!!!

Overall my thoughts on this class was that it was...freaking awesome!!! I have never really been into women studies, the environment, blogging, or websites so, taking this class was slightly random. I had heard really good things about the class, so I decided to take it and it changed my mind on many things.

I really loved going on field trips for class and watching amazing documentaries. I have to say my favorite class field trip was hugging trees. Not a lot of people can say they have done that for a class. I sucked at finding my tree, so I guess I didn't become "one" with the tree, but I really had fun. My favorite documentary was The Cove. It made me cry and I was horrified, but it made me aware of a awful, terrible and heartbreaking problem that most people aren't aware of. The man who was the head of the operation for the movie was a total badass and should recieve support for his cause. I made sure that I joined the cause.

For our website I really enjoyed the trips we got to take. I really enjoyed going hunting with my dad. It was fun to have Sarah and Amanda tag along. I wish I had been given a reason to go hunting with my dad years ago because I just realized at 21 that I might like it. Fishing was okay. I think it would have been better if the water wasn't so choppy and if it was warmer. Overall though it was an awesome experience.

The interview allowed us to meet a kick ass women. She was a competitive archer and owns a business with her husband where they offer bow lessons. She was really nice down to earth women and didn't care what other people thought of her. She also did her own tattoos which is totally awesome. She showed me that if you have a passion for something you don't give up on it, not matter what.

Building the website itself was the most difficult part. I thought I was pretty good at navigating things on the Internet and I had built a website for my India trip on Google sites, but I found out I didn't know as much as I thought I did. Thanks to guidance of Amanda who figured the website out we were able to create and amazing website.

I also didn't know how I was going to feel about blogging and figured I would do the bare minimum for each one. That didn't happen. Instead I found out that I actually had a lot to say about the videos and activities we did. A few of the topics I went on for a while about.

Overall this class was the right choice as my last class in my undergraduate career. I have recommended it to many underclassman and hope they enjoy it as much as I did! You rock Maluso!!

Ithaca Farmer's Market

We recently traveled to the Ithaca Farmer's Market. It was not what I expected. I expected it to be less put together. Farmer's markets that I have been to have just been in a field where people have their own tents and tables set up. Instead this was under a big pavilion with premade stands. They had a lot of vender's but I expected it to be more spread out. However, I did not expect there to be so much ethnic food. They had Mexican, Chinese, and Indian food being made and sold. You smelt many wonderful aromas while walking past all the booths.

There were the booths that I expected to see there such as people selling flowers, homemade cheese, and organic vegetables. Also there was homemade jewelry, quilts, paintings and wood work. We got the opportunity to stop and talk to some of the proprieties.

Sarah stopped and bought an item from Culinary Kiosk. They are a new business in Pine City, New York. They products that they grow are all organic. They keep their products local to help others in the community. Some other eco-friendly things they do is composting and using recycled packaging material.

Most of the booths there were all very eco-friendly. You could tell based on packaging and the things they had in the back of their cars that they all worked very hard on their products. They were eager to talk about the different ways that they were using sustainability in their business. The place where the farmer's market was had signs all over the place about recycling.

I think my favorite part though was a young boy showed up and started playing his violin. He was really good and it was nice to listen to him. 

Who's Zoomin' Who?

Cool, Fast and Sexy...that's what all Americans are looking for in car. But, what about a car that didn't run on gas, didn't pollute the air and was cool, fast and sexy? Wouldn't that be a car that every American would for sure buy? Apparently not! Between the years 1996-2000 800 electric cars were made in California. Who knew? I may have not been very old, but I don't have a recollection of them. Maybe I had briefly heard about it, but never seen a commercial. The closest thing I had seen to an electric car was in the movie iRobot. Apparently there was a whole industrial, political and personal issue going on surrounding electric cars that very few people knew about.

In the film Who Killed the Electric Car they discussed the rise and fall of the EV1. The state of California made a Zero Emission Vehicle mandate to help potential fix the air quality problem. Which made GM create the electric car aka the EV1. They made the cars and leased them to some celebrities and other California citizens. GM didn't want to make the cars and started fighting the California government and eventual got the federal government involved. They got the mandate revoked and started collecting the EV1 from the people who were leasing them. They did NOT respond well. They got really attached to these cars and liked what they stood for. After a long hard fight they ended up seeing the precious cars get crushed.
Why take them back? Why not let those people who were leasing the cars buy them? GM claimed that they didn't want other consumers to see the brand mark on the car and wonder what car it was. And then people might look into it and wonder why electric cars weren't being produced anymore.

GM also wanted to be able to put their money elsewhere like buying the Hummer because they knew that it would make them money. Oil Companies had issues with it because if the electric car started being bought we would end our dependence on oil. The federal government didn't want to see how his could effect our economy. Instead they endorsed the Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Even though the people who invented it said that it would be years before this could happen. The electric car was ready now.

The former leasers of the EV1s offered GM 1.9 million for the remaining 80 cars and they refused. Which was really sketchy. One of the EV1s made it into the historical car museum. And those people founded Plug in America. They are pushing to get a hybrid plug in car.

Some questions that I had throughout the movie were:
How would people fix the cars?
What the heck is Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles?
What happens if you have to park on the street? How would you charge your car?
Can you just give your car a quick charge and make it go further or once it dies it needs to be plugged in for the night?

I'm sure all these other questions could have been answered, but because the car companies didn't want to make the cars last none of them got answered. One question they did answer was that mechanics could learn to convert cars. This was an experiment that needed time to develop. Had the car companies properly marketed the vehicle and had it gotten time to take off, our world could be very different today. But because the GM wasn't making instant money off the cars they didn't want it to keep producing it. Time is money! But I don't think they were looking far into the future to see what this car could do for us. GM could have made a huge impact and made lots of money, but because they couldn't let themselves look that far into the future they lost out! Who knows maybe one day they will be blamed for it when instead they could have been getting praised.

Are You Flipping Kidding Me!?!?!?!?!?!

If you haven't gotten an opportunity to see the documentary The Cove you really need to. Not only has it won an academy award, but it is an extremely powerful film.

For those of you who haven't seen it here is a quick synapses of the documentary. The main focus is the  slaughter of dolphins in a cove in Taiji Japan. There, at this horrendous site is where dozens of dolphins are slaughtered daily from September to March. This hardcore, epic, totally awesome man has made it his mission to save these dolphins and get the word out about what is happening to these innocent dolphins in Japan. This awesome mans name is Ric O'Barry and I wish I had half the passion and courage that he does. Not only are these innocent animals being harmed, but these fisherman are harming the people of Japan. They are selling the dolphins to aquariums around the world, but for the dolphins that aren't chosen they are being slaughtered, cut up and fed to the people of Japan. This doesn't seem like a big deal because that's what every country does with any type of meat (but usually more humane) but it is! Dolphin meat is laced with mercury and by eating the meat sometimes unknowingly due to mislead labeling people are being poisoned.

The dolphins can be sold for $150,00 a piece and 23,00 dolphins are killed every year!!! That is flipping ridiculous!!

The cove where the dolphins are trapped and then sold or murdered is heavily guarded. The camera men were trying to film what was happening, but not only did the area have barbed wire and signs telling people to keep out they also had the fisherman and other people getting into people's faces with their own cameras and were blocking them and yelling really rude things. From their vantage point you couldn't see around the corner were the slaughter was actually happening instead you could just see the water go from a clear nice blue to blood red. 

Because I thought Ric O'Barry was a really awesome brave guy here are few facts about him. 

• He was the trainer for the dolphin in the TV show Flipper. After that he became and advocate for dolphins. 
• In the 1970's he founded The Dolphin Project whose main goal is to educate the public about dolphin captivity and when feasible to help them be released into the wild.  
• The government in Taiji know exactly who he is and make sure cops follow him when he enters the city. 
• He has released 25 dolphins from captivity.
• He is the director of the Save Japan Dolphins Campaign. 
• Co-author of 3 books
•  He has been arrested numerous times for his efforts.

The people involved in this movie should become Navy Seals. They did an awesome successful covert operation. Their main goals were to get cameras behind part of the rock that is cutting off part of the cove where the slaughter takes place. They also wanted to get cameras with sonar under the water to hear the dolphins. They did this mission at night hoping they wouldn't get caught. They were successful in planting all the cameras. Those people were extremely brave! They risked their lives for this mission. They could have been put in jail or even killed based on how the fisherman were reacting to them. I could have never done that.

I also found it really cool that Hayden Panettiere was involved in this mission. She paddled out on her surf board along with her mother and other surfers to hold a peaceful ceremony around the dolphins. On their second attempt out there fisherman came over and tried to hit them with the propeller of the boat and then attempted to stab them with spears. While this was happening you could see a dolphin struggling for its life bleeding into the water. It was heartbreaking to watch and I cried. Hayden is an advocate for the dolphins and for other animals. Not only does she play a hero on TV she really is one.








So, what is going on currently in Taiji?

After the documentary was shown the fisherman of Taiji covered the cove with an elaborate tent structure made out of wires, cables and plastic tarps. It almost completely covered.

Just a few weeks ago scientists and veterinarians analyzed the tape and say that their "humane" way of killing the dolphins is anything but humane. How they are killing the dolphins now is still horrible! It's about to get graphic. You may want to get a barf bag or a tissue. What they are doing to the dolphins is dragging them under the tarp by their tails, shoved into position while they are struggling and then a sharp spike is stabbed into their neck behind the blowhole. Does that sound humane to you? Is that even remotely close to what happens in normal slaughterhouses? NO! It isn't!! And not only do they die their family members get to watch them be slaughtered. Image this happening to you? Dying that way. Having to watch your family members slowly die that way. It's horrendous.

After watching the video biologists and veterinarians determined that they way they slaughter these dolphins would not be tolerated or permitted in any regulated slaughterhouse. Even after this evidence the Japanese government still claims what they are doing is no different than what we do to the animals here in America and everywhere else around the world. Have they ever visited a slaughterhouse in other countries? Because if they have there is no way in hell they could make that comparison.

Current statistics show that the amount of dolphins killed this year increased. Last year 2011-2012 around 800-840 dolphins were killed. This year it was slightly below 900. So not a huge increase, but still it should be going down not up regardless of how much the increase was. 247 dolphins were captured for captivity, which was an all time high seeings that last year only 50 were caught for this purpose. The only bright side of this is that more Japanese activitsts have become involved in the fight to stop the slaughter at the cove.

Hopefully with continual showing of this film to people and getting the word out this horrible, disgusting, inhumane slaughter of these poor, innocent, intelligent creatures can end. Not only should we be trying to stop the slaughter, but we should be trying to stop the captivity and no longer go and see dolphin shows or go swim with dolphins. A smile may be worth a thousand words, but what is really going on behind that smile is so much sadder and worth so many more words.

Help save the dolphins and stop this! Go to takepart.com/thecover for more info and finding out what you can do to help. You can also follow this blog http://savejapandolphins.org/.

Blue Girl Power!!

The record breaking film Avatar by James Cameron is not only a phenomenal film, but it is one of a few movies that show ecofeminism. For those of you who don't know what ecofeminism is here's a basic definition: ecofeminism is a feminist approach to enviormentalism. They use a framework that confronts issues of race, gender, class and nature.  Some ways that this film shows ecofeminism is with one of the main characters Neytiri, the Na'vi people, and the head scientist Grace.

Neytri is the chief and shamans daughter and is in line to become  the next shaman after her mother dies. A man, Jake Sully, who is in an avatar ends up getting lost in the forest and taken to the Omaticaya tribe. The tribe leader decides to let him into the tribe and for his daughter Neytri to teach him the ways of The People. While Neytri is teaching Jake the ways of the forest we see how much of an ecofeminist she is. Her and her people believe that everything is connected. The people, the animals, the plants, anything that is alive in the forest. All of it is controlled by their Deity Eyaw, which is a tree. They believe that you should not harm animals for any reason other than to eat them. They also they believe that all energy comes back around from the small animals, to the trees, the plants and The People. 

Based on the fact that Neytri teaches Jake all about the forest and how to not harm it, to take only what you are going to use makes her an ecofeminist. The only conflict that doesn't really apply to ecofeminism is that the women of the tribe weren't really suppressed, at least from what we could tell from the film. They could become warriors and hunt along side men, we really didn't see other women, but Neytri had a say in the way things went in the tribe. The only time she wasn't allowed to make a decision was when her father told her she had to teach Jake. Ecofeminists would classify the way the Na'vi people behaved under the race category and how that race was very respectful of the environment and women in the tribe. 

Grace was the women who was really oppressed in the movie. She was surrounded by marines and two of the main guys thought that she had to follow direct orders from them no matter what. They were really big jerks. Some of it had to do with the fact that she was a scientist and wasn't going into the forest and immediately telling the people to leave their Home Tree, so the Americans could get the natural resources that were under the tree. They were only in it for making money. They wanted results and Grace wasn't getting them fast enough. She wanted to learn about how the forest worked, how the trees were all connected to each other similar to the synapses in the human brain. She was constantly arguing with them to make peace with the people to learn the forest and see what other awesome things the planet had to offer, but they wouldn't listen. Had this information been coming from a man they may have listened, but we won't know. Grace did stand up for what she believed in and fought to the very end to try and preserve the forest and The People. Unfortunately one of the jerk wads shot her and she died.

I had never heard of ecofeminism before this assignment. It is something that people, male and female, should look into and support! If directors keeping make more movies similar to Avatar more people can learn about what ecofeminism is without even know it!  GIRL POWER!!!

Photos courtesy of creativecommons.com. All other information copyright of Logan Tallmadge'13. 

Where Them Squirrels At?!?

On Tuesday we went on a nice adventure to Tanglewood Nature Center. We had to go on a scavenger hunt around the trails. This was to be a contest and while we weren't told the prize I wanted GLORY!! In the infamous words of Ricky Bobby, if you ain't first you're last! And I wanted to be first!!

I had never been there before, but I have always heard good things, so I was interested to check it out for myself. We all got into groups and got our list of what we needed to find and take pictures or videos of. Then we were off!! The trails were very beautiful and well maintained and not difficult to navigate. We did have to go off the trails a few times to avoid the mud.

We did not have an extremely hard time finding most of the items on our list. We were really surprised that we got to see a few deer because one of the items on the list was an animals... and an animal in motion and because of the deer we got those checked off. We also realized that ants are REALLY fast!!! Trying to get those suckers in a shot was extremely difficult. Sarah got frustrated and just started snapping pictures where the ants were in hopes of capturing one... luckily we did get one :) We really tried to be creative with some of the tasks. For example we needed
to take a picture of something red. We did take a picture of a red sign, but we came across a red wood tree, so we took a picture of it and decided to use that as our something red. For our something blue, Sarah took a picture of me sitting on a fallen tree and used a certain filter that enhanced the blue in my jeans, so that was an option for our something blue. Even though my jeans weren't exactly a part of nature, we were being one with nature, so it was an interesting twist.

 A squirrel and a chipmunk were both on the list and we were having a really hard time finding ANY. There are always an abundance of squirrels on campus, but not a one was insight. So, I decided to use one of my many special talents to help us out. I have the lovely gift of being able to call squirrels and chipmunks without an actually call (I won a raffle one time because of this awesome skill). I started doing the call through out our walk, but apparently there weren't any nuts in these woods worth finding. We saw only TWO chipmunks the entire time and NO squirrels. We got a shot of one of the chipmunk, but we were squirreless.

I am REALLY competitive and wanted to win!! We couldn't find a few items on the list, so we decided to get creative. Sarah made sure that all our pictures had an artistic edge to them, so even if we couldn't find some items we would have an edge as to the quality of the pictures. One of my brilliant ideas had to do with a very odd item on the list. We needed to find a baby...that's all it said. We had no clue how to find a baby in the woods. At first we were thinking of a small child in the woods. I continued to ponder how on earth we were going to find this item. So, I thought why not take a picture of a small plant or tree that was growing. Technically that is a baby. For the other items we couldn't find we headed to the main building. Inside in the gift shop and in their animal exhibit we found our missing items and crossed off everything on the list!!! I could almost taste the victory.

We didn't have a chance to find out if we won because we didn't have class today :( While I love a good day off and sleeping in
I wanted that victory. I guess we will never find out who the championship group was or what the prize was, but in my heart our group was definitely the winner!!

If you are interested in going to Tanglewood some basic information about the facility can be found on their website, but here are some quick facts. It has been in operation for 40 years. It is free to walk the trails and to go into the museum and gift store. You can become a member of Tanglewood. Along with the hiking trails there is a pond, a pavilion, a nice garden and the building inside has lots of taxidermy and live animals for everyone to check out and learn more about nature!


Photos courtesy of Sarah Hammer'13 and creativecommons.com. All other information copywrite of Logan Tallmadge'13