Tracing Environmental Geographies: Cajun Chicken Pasta

1) A) One major ingredient I used in my dinner was boneless chicken breasts made by Tyson. Although it is hard to trace exactly where Tyson chicken is produced I gathered some information about Tyson chicken farms. Tyson uses “more than 4,000 farmers to raise chickens for Tyson Foods. We supply the birds, feed and technical advice, while the farmers care for the chicken’s bye providing the farm, housing and labor. The average farmer has been raising chickens for us for 15 years.” So even though I can’t track the exact location of where the chicken was raised, I found out that it was raised by a Tyson Chicken farmer. Due to my girlfriend being gluten free the second ingredient used in my meal was Tinkyada gluten free brown rice pasta. I learned that this pasta is produced by a company called Food Directions Inc in Ontario, Canada.

B) I learned that in general “according to the United Nations, raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30 percent of the Earth’s land mass. Obviously these chickens being raised fall into this category. Both the chickens take up land to be raised and the crops grown to feed them take up land as well. I also found that it takes 468 gallons of water to produce just 1 pound of chicken. This also obviously depletes our natural resource of water. The pasta on the other hand does not require nearly as much water to create. There is a small amount of water used to create the pasta, and another small amount used to cook the pasta.

C) I found an article showing chemicals used in Tyson Foods. I read that Chicken plant workers would spray carcasses with dangerous chemicals. Also although Tyson labels their chicken as being raised without antibiotics, they admitted that they inject its chickens with antibiotics before they even hatch.

D) I was unable to find any information regarding this, however I made a few estimations on the subject. I have heard that where chickens are raised is often a very dirty environment. I know that workers have to wear masks while inside the chicken areas. Therefore I can imagine that these chicken areas are definitely affecting the air quality in the surrounding area.

E) These impacts are local to the areas that the product is being made, or the chickens are being produced. Going along with the antibiotics being used, this turns into a global issue, because people are affected all over the world wherever the chicken reaches.

2) A) I personally bought my ingredients at my local grocery store in downtown Milwaukee. I would imagine that almost all of the products I consumed in this meal arrived at the grocery store via truck.

B) I believe the ingredient that traveled the furthest to me would be the pasta from Ontario, Canada. There were other items that were fresh, however these were most likely more local items since they were primarily fresh produce. For example there was green onions in my meal, and I believe these were probably more local because they are a fresh ingredient compared to dried pasta that has a longer shelf life.

C) There is quite a bit of waste when it came to my meal. The chicken was packaged in a Styrofoam container, which was wrapped in a plastic material that all went into my garbage. The pasta was packaged in a plastic packaging that I actually recycled, so that had less of an impact on the environment.

3)Below is a picture shown where Tyson Foods has food plant locations.