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1 – 150 world reply
I watched the Netflix film, Cowspiracy.
 
The film discussed how the production of livestock in the United States requires an exorbitant amount of resources, such as land and water, and how this process produces a detrimental amount of greenhouse gases.This documentary is mostly a statistical look at how the production of livestock in general is worse for the environment. They use comparisons with vegan diets to really emphasize how much more unsustainable a meat-based diet is; the use of land and water is more than 13 times higher than a vegan diet, and the production of CO2 is twice as high. In 2009, it was found that 13% of greenhouse gases come from worldwide transportation while worldwide animal agriculture produced over 51% that year. It also goes over the costs of dairy production, with a single gallon of milk taking about 1000 gallons of water to produce. 
 
I believe that we, in the United States, will likely stay in a position of diminishing returns for the next century, when it comes to producing livestock. I have taken some courses before on environmental sciences and I agree with this documentary’s position that producing this much livestock isn’t sustainable for humankind in general. It was also stated that the companies who lead these livestock operations have so much power and money that it is almost impossible to limit their stake in capitalism. We have reached a point in this industrial society that shows how easy it is to produce the large quantity of grains necessary to produce this large quantity of cattle at a given time. They are able to produce meat-based meals for relatively low prices at fast food restaurants, which many people continue to buy because it’s fast and available. I personally don’t believe that we may be seeing any major shifts in the diet of Americans in the next 30 years or so, but this film definitely opened my eyes to the toll it takes on our resources and our environments.

2 – 150 world reply
 I watched a documentary film called, Food Inc, which was released on June 12, 2009. The film was created and made by Robert Kenner. During the beginning of the film we are introduced to factories that kill animals like pigs, chickens, etc. The narrator in the film explains that these factories are the ones that make the food that we see in the market, but they keep a lot of secrets from us, of what they do to the food and animals because they don’t want us to know the dark truth. Turns out the animals and workers are abused in these factories and they put in things that actually can cause bad effects to us or may lead to it not even be actual food, but chemicals. They are afraid of what society might say or do so that’s why they try to not let anybody find out about this. The film then talks about how the food industry is taking over the world. They use McDonalds as an example by saying how they started off as a single restaurant. However, as time went on they thought of new ideas to spread out, which they succeeded in. McDonalds cut budgets and made a new system that put workers in focusing on doing one thing each day so that they don’t waste money. This led to McDonalds globalizing the world, since they now have more than 34,000 restaurants worldwide. The film goes on to focus on the chicken industry by saying that Tyson is one of the biggest company in the chicken industry and they talk about what bad things they do like how they genetically modify the chickens so they can be bigger, since that’s how people like it. However, this caused health problems for some people that ate their products. An example the film gives is what happened to a family in Colorado. A little boy that ate meat from a certain company, got sick within days. Nothing could be done and he died. The mom reached out to the company so they can stop putting things in the food so people would not get sick, but was sadly ignored. The film ends by showing many farmers, families, etc, pleading with these industries and companies to stop putting in things into their meat because it leads to health problems and even death. The last thing that is seen in the film is a caption that says “Buy from companies that treat workers, animals, and the environment with respect”.