Eating "safely"

Director Robert Kenner’s Food Inc. exposes several serious issues about food that people need to be aware of. These problems shocked me because I did not know that I was so negligent about how the food we eat was cropped and made. The issue that I thought was most shocking was the danger of food poisoning and the story of its victim named Kevin. Now that our technology has advanced rapidly, I always thought that the possibility of food poisoning or getting a disease from food would have declined. Yet, the amount of contaminated food has increased. In the United States, there have been numerous amounts of meat recalled due to contamination in the 21^st century. This is because the number of slaughterhouses and factories today are very small. Therefore, if one food is contaminated it is very likely that all the other food in the same place would also become contaminated. What makes the problem worse is that the FDA has been conducting less safety inspections on the products that in the past! One victim of this flawed system was a young boy named Kevin, who died from e coli bacteria in only 12 days. Kevin was food poisoned from eating hamburgers. Soon, he was having blood in his diarrhea and his kidneys were starting to fail. He was not even allowed to eat water but only through a wet sponge; the story that Kevin begged his mother for water was unbearable to hear. The unconcerned reaction of the FDA and other government organizations was very alarming to me. Although Kevin’s Law was passed in response to this tragedy, I believe that the government should regulate the food we eat more strictly. It should consider the safety of the consumers over the profits of the business firms and the industry, and so should the firms themselves. As a consumer of the food made in the United States, the danger of the e coli and food poisoning seems like a very significant issue. This problem should never be overlooked, since anyone who eats from these products are vulnerable to disease that took Kevin’s life in 12 days.

Source: Kenner, Robert Food Inc. 2008.