Pollan, Estabrook, Cook- P7

In the pieces by Pollan, Cook, and Estabrook, all three authors dig into where our food actually comes from and what it goes through before we see it in the supermarkets.  Each piece looks into the horrible sacrifices and "short-cuts" made in order to keep the foods America loves in high stock.  From Estabrook's piece on tomatoes, to the animal-rights piece by Pollan, the same message is conveyed: what are we actually eating, and who has to pay the consequences for us to eat it?
We can begin with the introduction to Estabrook's book Tomatoland.  The author goes in to discuss how tomatoes are supposed to be, and what we are actually getting when we buy tomatoes in the super market.  Have you ever had a fresh tomato? My family used to have a garden when I was younger, and we alway grew and ate our own tomatoes.  Just like Estabrook states in his introduction, the tomatoes were not the prettiest sights, but their soft figure and immensely juicy flavor trumped any tomato bought in a grocery store.  "Around our place, Brandywines [tomatoes] go fast.  They may be ugly.  And fragile.  Yet there is no better tasting tomato than a garden-ripe Brandywine" (xi).    Instead of having large quantities of these natural, home-grown tomatoes, however, we are buying tomatoes loaded with pesticides.  Not only are these tomatoes loaded with pesticides, but the workers that are constantly picking these tomatoes are suffering horrible consequences, including illness from poisoning, and being exposed to chemicals that could cause terrifying birth defects in children. So, not only are we getting unhealthy, chemical filled tomatoes, but we are also killing the people that work in fields filled with them.
Likewise, this phenomenon carries over to Pollan and Cook's pieces.  Similarly to the Estabrook introduction, Cook's article about chicken farming stresses the damage caused not only to the product (in this case the chickens), but also to the workers surrounded by them all day.  Cook throughly describes the terrible consequences the workers in chicken farms face every day: "Amid clouds of ammonia and fecal matter carrying salmonella and other harmful bacteria,  workers called "catchers" wade into 100-degree holding pens crowded with angry fowl" (78).  So, not only are the workers exposed to these bacteria externally, but they also have to face the scratching and pecking of angry, mistreated birds as well, which can in turn cause lacerations and cuts that allow easy access for the surrounding bacterias.  This hellish environment is what we have caused because of our ridiculously large demand for chicken.
Cook's article then has similarities to Pollan's piece regarding the ethical views of eating meat, and how we treat animals in order to obtain our food.  He discusses chickens as well, how they are forced into tiny pens allowing no room, and are starved and deprived of water and sunlight in order to lay more eggs.  He also mentions pigs, who are just as smart, if not smarter than dogs, who are treated terribly and raised for their meat.  Now, where I am from, raising animals for meat is very common.  We show animals at our county fair, and raise and fatten the animals up to be butchered and eaten.  However, we do not treat our animals cruely, and they are killed in the most efficient, un-painful manner possible.  I am an avid meat eater, and I have nothing against raising animals for food. To treat animals as humans are treated is also something I do not agree with. However , the stories told by Pollan and Cook are not something that I am even remotely okay with.  I believe that animals should be treated with respect, and never have to suffer for our own food needs. Reading their pieces in regards to what some animals have to go through is absolutely terrible.  Overall, these three pieces should really make us think about what we are eating, and the consequences that not only affect the workers, but also the products themselves.