POL 300 Day 15: March 22

Do people have the right to know what is in their food?

Simply put, yes. There are basic reasons, such as that people have food allergies that can be quite serious, sometimes deadly, to wheat, nuts, etc. and knowing where their food comes from is vital to their health and happiness. For religious reasons, an Orthodox Jew or Muslim is going to need to know where the food comes from and if it is meat, how the animal was killed (kosher or halal). The average consumer should be interested enough to know where their food comes from since they are putting it into their bodies. Eating is a bit of an afterthought since it's a mandatory thing to do which is largely why I think people don't think much about it since what their eating has become habit and like any habit, it is hard to break.

Is it our responsibility to find out where our food comes from, the producers responsibility to make it more clear, or both?

I think it is both. We have to demand it or the producers will not let us know because we may not want to know. Ultimately though, the blame lies mostly with us because we are the ones who put the garbage in our mouths, mash it up, and swallow all that fatty goodness that goes straight to our ass. Junk food, in my opinion, should come with a warning label the same way cigarettes and alcohol does since the damage that it does to our bodies is similar (cigarettes cause cancer and heart disease, so does "bad" food; junk food damages your liver, so does alcohol). No producer in his right mind would let us know this UNLESS we demand to know it.