The table is set; each person is carrying a plate of food into the dining room. The plates are steaming; everyone sits down and prepares themselves for what is about to be an amazing meal. It is now time to eat, everyone is enjoying their food, but fails to remember what this food had to go through to get to the table everyone is now sitting around and enjoying themselves. Every form of food goes through some sort of process to get to the point where it is edible for human beings, but not one everyone is aware of. I first became aware of this when I watched the movie “Food Inc.” This movie gives you are real in depth look behind the scenes of what your food goes through before it makes it to the store. The industry that is the biggest culprit of a disguised process is the meat and poultry industry. Their process consists of the alteration of animals, terrible living conditions, and mistreatment of the animals. Food is something everyone loves, but the same cannot be said about the process it goes through. The first part of the devastating process starts with the way the animals are altered. There was a time where the growth of animals was done with no help of enhancement tools, but today that is no longer the case. According to the movie Food Inc. originally a chicken took about 70 days to grow to its full potential, with the help of enhancement tools a chicken can be grown in half the time and end up growing larger then a naturally grown chicken. This process is only a benefit to the growers and company selling the chickens. For us consumers, all we receive is a lower quality product. For the chicken, who unfortunately is the last of anyone’s concerns is feed more then it would normally like, and must consume food items that are ones it would prefer not to have. Chickens are not the only animals this process is used on; across the food industry this is a very common thing. Farmers could with no problem grow there stock the natural way, but to the profit they receive out ways the better quality item they could be producing, let alone the better ways they could be treating there animals. If the way animals are altered is not bad enough, the conditions the animals live in are no better. Most household pets get to sleep in a nice warm bed or with their owners somewhere, but for animals that are grown for slaughter don’t have that option. The majority of meat, dairy, and poultry production in the U.S. takes place in factory farms. These factory farms are large, profit driven companies, which view animals as a unit of production, rather than living creatures, and exchange the animals' health for efficiency and profit. The animals are kept in close quarters, in the dark at all times which leads to terrible outcomes. Keeping the animals indoors as closely together as possible, rather than letting them roam freely on the open land, exposes them to high levels of toxins and their own feces. To counteract the disease inherent in such conditions, animals are given constant low daily doses of antibiotics, which are contributing to problems with antibiotic-resistant bacteria (sustainable). Other practices that take place, such as debeaking chickens or cutting off cows' tails, are said to increase efficiency and safety, but they cause discomfort and pain for the animals. Many disagree with the whole act, but the process that the animals are put through is not one that benefits them one bit, but for the producers it is the best thing they could ever do for themselves. In addition to the way animals are altered and the terrible conditions they live in, animals are highly mistreated. After viewing the movie Food Inc. I had realized that animals are treated with no remorse when it comes time for them to be prepared for sale. For example when it is time for chickens to be picked up from the factory farms, a group of people late at night come and put them into small tight crates to bring them to the factory where they will be killed. This process is not done gentle by any means; the workers just grab the chickens and throw them into crates as if they were some piece of trash. Also from watching the movie I witnessed the employees who were coming to gather the chickens, just kick them around for no reason. No human being would want to be kicked around by someone for no reason, so for no reason what so ever should these employee’s feel they can treat the animals any differently. Many companies know they are mistreating their animals because many have refused to let camera’s see what they really doing before their products hit the market. Once the animals whether it be chickens, pigs, cows, or any other animal at that matter, are ready to be slaughtered for processing, they are once again treated as if they were a cold blooded killer. According to Farm Animal Rights Movement, approximately 10 billion land animals are killed every year for food in the United States, and 58 billion are killed worldwide (About). Farm animals are either stunned by electricity or killed by cutting the blood vessels in the neck. Both of these actions happen quickly and are done while the animal is still alive. The animal does need to be killed for food because that is what a human needs to survive, but for someone to stare a live animal in the face and cut its neck open is most likely the best and most human way of handling this process. If after the animal is killed, and is noticed that it’s not good enough to sell it is thrown out. When the animal is thrown out the only loss that is brought to attention is the fact that the company just lost out on a chance of profit, instead of the lose of an innocent animals life.

All in all, the way our food makes it to our dinner table is not the most humane possible. Animals start of by being altered so they can be processed faster and are larger to give a company a higher profit. The alteration process is bad for the animals in so many ways, which in turn is bad for the consumer as well. As the animals are growing they are living in terrible conditions. These conditions cause death to many animals before they even make it to the point where they are killed to be prepare for sale to the public. For the ones that do survive, they are mistreated and eventually killed. As the animals grow they are only looked at as money. They get nothing but abuse from the day they are born to the day some one takes there life, and by taken I mean killed as if they were the most deadliest thing on earth. Food is great and serves many purposes, that is one thing everyone can agree on. I’m sure everyone can agree as well if they really knew what it took to get them that food, they would look at food in a whole new way.