Food Inc.

For as long as I can remember, fruits and veggies were as important as any protein that I would consume. Before I was served dinner I would have a cup full of raw vegetables and my dessert would include some fruit. The main course would typically include a steak, chicken, or fish and sometimes both. But I growing up I never thought or questioned where my food came from.

It wasn't until I started cooking for myself in high school that I had to encounter cleaning a chicken or de-veining a shrimp. This got me thinking about why I had to do this and what would happen if I didn't clean it properly. With this I started to look into where my food came from and how it was produced. What I found, at this time, astonished me but I couldn't do anything about it. While I lived at my parents house I was not allowed to become a vegetarian, vegan, or pescatarain because they did not want to support this lifestyle nor pay for it. What I was served I had to eat, as it had been my whole life.

So, once I got to college I started eating less meat and fish because frankly I didn't like any of the food on campus and didn't trust most of the processed foods. So I resorted back to my parents style of cooking and consumed large amounts of vegetables and raw foods. But as you can image this is expensive and hard to do with a college lifestyle. 

Once I moved into my first apartment sophomore year I was able to cook for myself and shop for foods that better suited my lifestyle and eating habits. It was around this time that I first saw Food Inc and other similar documentaries. What they showed disgusted me and turned me off to the meat market and production. I couldn't imagine eating an animal that suffered and was put under such conditions just for me to enjoy a little protein. I think the whole process is very cruel and unjust. However, there isn't much that we can do about it because of all the food subsidies and the amount of mass production that we have in this country. Just today I drove through Delaware and Virginia and passed countless chicken farms and supply stores. I can not describe the horrible stench that followed these chicken coops, even with my car windows up. The processing farms, owned by Tyson and Purdue, were also massive and left horrible feelings and smells.

Don't get me wrong, a good juicy steak is my favorite meal and will always be. But now I can at least monitor where my meat comes from and how much I eat of it. I have tried to become more educated on what it is that I am in taking and where my food comes from because this directly effects my health and the environment. All of these poultry farms are hurting the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding areas with their run off and pollutants. This is something that I do not support and I try to not support them through not purchasing their products when I can. I just hope that others will also become aware of this problem and its impacts to our health and environment. 

Green Politics

What surprised you about the process of Environmental
Policy? Do you think that the U.S. Senate should have ratified the Kyoto Protocol?
Why or why not. Why do you think creating and implementing environmental policy
is so difficult locally, nationally, and internationally? Should communities and
local government do more on a local level to create environmental policy? What
environmental issues would you like to see addressed by policy makers?

Personally, I think that the United States is ridiculous for not moving forward with energy and environmental policies. We had the opportunity to join the Kyoto Protocol when it was first organized and the United States backed out and did not approve it. I think that this decision caused the overall Protocol to not be as successful as it could have been. Our decision negatively impacted the rest of the countries involved because we are one of the largest contributors to emissions. If we can't move forward and recognize our impacts on global warming and rising green house gas emissions, why should other countries work hard to make changes. 

This is a hard topic and often debated because there is little understanding over environmental issues and support in our government. Many policy makers are not educated on the these issues or are too stubborn to want to believe them. When combining these problems with the economic factors of environmental policy, policy makers are scared away. Committing and admitting to environmental policies and laws are touchy subjects because of their unknown potential and impacts. 

Therefore, it is important to educate our policy makers on issues relating to environmental policy and support. If they do not know that these are issues that citizens feel are important, they may not put as much attention or concern for them. I am concerned with our energy policies and the security of our natural resources. Of course, also the construction of the XL Pipeline, in which the US will not benefit from but instead support the increased emissions and transport of cheap quality oil. 

Green Democracy

Would you join the Green Party or not?  What aspects of green values do you believe should be ideally incorporated into a "green" party?  Do these align, do you think, with the Green Party? Also, are the Earth First! activists justified in their actions?  

The Green Party is a group of "greens" that are comitted to the environment with non-voilence, social justice, and grassroots methods. With that being said, I would support their values and motives because I think that they are important. Their structure is based off of the green values that we have studied in class. The ones that I feel are most important to emphasize are Green Democracy, Social Justice and Equal Opportunity, Non-volience, and Future Focus. The others may seem too radical for those that are not interested or educated in this party and their ideals. I can not say wether I would be interested in joining the Green Party but it is something that I would definitily look into when looking at whos running during an election. I think that the more support and Green Democracts in office, the better because they may be able to help influcence policy making. 


The Earth First! group's actions and ideas are good in some ways. Based on what I know and have read, they take a very forward approach to saving the environment and getting the message out there. Their methods of "monkey-wrenching" are detailed and thought out, which is a good thing when you are targeting and forcing an action to be stopped. However, I think that it is a little extreme. I wouldn't even think to vandalize a piece of machinery so that their actions don't harm the environment. Personally I dont think that this is fair or just because it may not be workers fault that they are instructed to bulldoze a peice of land and I don't think they should be punished. I would take a larger approach of going directly to the company or contractor and try to work something out more maturely.