This semester, my curriculum is focused on American history, particularly the more contemporary issues that the different regions of the US face. Covering the Central Plains/Midwest this week, I warned my students that this region (in comparison to our exploration of the South, filled with a rich music, political, and food history; or New York, another center of rich music and cultural history; or Chicago, front row of the underground rise of the mob in the face of Prohibition) was not the most exciting. However, it is the center of one of the greatest cover-ups in American culture and is setting a dangerous trend for other rapidly industrializing countries.
I ended up showing Food, Inc, a really great documentary on how twisted our food industry is.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QqQVll-MP3I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The factory farms that have hopped up our chickens to grow rapidly and to enormous sizes. Beef, fattened up on corn and huddled into massive lots and systematically slaughtered. Corn, corn, corn, subsidized to below its cost of production and streaming into every area of food. Down to how most of these huge corporate factories rely on cheap labor (basically undocumented immigrants) and reward them, of course, with low wages, no health care, and exposure to disease and bacteria as they hack away at beef. These same immigrants are busted by ICE while the companies taking advantage of them are protected by the law.
While this is an epidemic in the States, I thought it was particularly relevant for my students because I see China heading in that direction. Most prominent example would be milk. Sanyuan milk already had its scandal in 2008 with melanin found in its infant powder. The rapid industrialization of China as it continues to develop first, second, and third tier cities will only push people from the countryside into the cities. The growing presence of fast food will place pressure for cheaper meat but more importantly, feed into this culture of not understanding where exactly your food is coming from. As an American, to see that fast food (and all the twisted implications of it) is where we're leaving the greatest legacy in a growing China is food for thought.
