You know that expression you are what you eat. 3

Well, CNN has a raw ingredient. 4

Siri's. 5

It looks at how the U. 6

S food industry has changed, how engineering and importing have replaced old fashioned growing and how consumer demand still factors into how the industry produces our food. 7

Our reporter, Cristina Alesci, has gone inside some of America's biggest food companies, seeing what most folks haven't seen before. 8

And today we're zooming in on animal feed and how, what? 9

They ultimately makes its way to our plate. 10

I know I'm not supposed to do it, but every once in a while it's necessary. 11

Burying my face in the best barbecue I can find. 12

Americans eat a lot of meat on average, up to £126 of poultry, beef and pork every year. 13

For some, it's more than their own body weight. 14

But depending on the animal producing, £1 of meat could take two, three or even £6 of feed. 15

And what some of our livestock is eating our things you've never put in your mouth. 16

We're going this way. 17

This is a hog finishing farm in Iowa. 18

It's where pigs get fat over the course of 5 to 6 months. 19

Pigs go from about £13 to £270 in this room. 20

Why did they get all quiet? 21

We want to hear what I have to say. 22

Wow, the smell was awful. 23

But for me, the most unsavory part of this process is the one you rarely get to examine closely. 24

In fact, it's one of the most opaque corners of the meat industry. 25

It's the animal feed itself. 26

Most animals raised in this country eat a secret formula. 27

Some elements of the mix are even unknown to the farmer, but it's safe to say that it includes proteins, fats and, in many cases, drugs. 28

But the base for much of it is lots and lots of corn. 29

You feel like this is what you were born to do. 30

I feel this is what God put me on the earth for. 31

Roger Zylstra has been farming corn for more than 30 years. 32

This corn is not corn. 33

We know it's not going to put on my grill. 34

No, it is not. 35

We grow it as a commodity. 36

It really ultimately comes down to economics. 37

And if it wasn't for the meat industry, Roger might have a tough time staying in business. 38

That's because America's livestock are essentially just corn conversion machines. 39

First, the corn travels to a storage facility like this one. 40

This is one million bushels, or £56 million of corn, and that's just the overflow from the massive storage containers. 41

We need to hold a whole year's worth of production at one time, and then it's metered out throughout the remainder of the year. 42

Nearly 40% of all the corn grown in the U. 43

S goes to animal feed. 44

Rick Weigel makes hog feed How many ingredients you're looking at the end of the day, probably 10 to 12 different ingredients in that includes pig fat. 45

So, yes, the pigs are eating pig fat. 46

One of the biggest feed makers is 250 miles north Cargill in Minnesota. 47

We believe our purpose here is to be able to see the world and to feed the world, we got to find the most efficient way to grow healthy animals. 48

So we spend a lot of time doing the research to tackle exactly that question. 49

Cargill says it can get animals justus fat on half the feed compared to 40 years ago. 50

But for many in the industry, it's not just about less feed. 51

It's about bigger animals. 52

How do you get livestock to explode in size in just a few months? 53

The industry has a term for it renderings. 54

Animal byproducts like meat and bone meal, leftover grease from restaurants and even meal made from poultry feathers. 55

To get a chicken to market weight, it takes between 42 48 days. 56

I mean, that's amazingly fast. 57

Doctor Keep Knapman investigates the impact of industrial food production on public health at Johns Hopkins. 58

One of his studies found arsenic and chicken meat. 59

It came from a growth promotion, drug and feed that has since been suspended by the FDA. 60

In another study, Nak men's team found that some chicken feather meal contains small amounts of the active drugs in Tylenol, Benadryl and Prozac. 61

An industry group rejected the findings, but Knapman stands by it. 62

No matter how they got there. 63

These feathers are destined for use in animals. 64

That was surprising and a little troubling to us. 65

Some producers even use waste feeding cows and pigs. 66

What's known as poultry litter or simply put chicken poop, which, believe it or not, is considered a high protein, lower cost feed. 67

The FDA proposed banning the practice in 2004 to prevent mad cow disease. 68

The FDA decided against the regulation. 69

It said the science simply didn't justify a ban. 70

The FDA estimates that 1% of all chicken poop goes into feed, but none of the farmers I interviewed said they used it, and there's one more ingredient that's essential to getting growth out of animals. 71

Where the drugs, they're in the drug room, we hand way them out and they're dumped in each batch of Michael says the majority of his customers request antibiotics in their feed. 72

This is where it comes from. 73

We asked, keep Knapman about the drugs we saw in this room. 74

I did see one drug that has an active ingredient called carbon ducks that has been shown to be carcinogenic on caused birth defects, at least in animals. 75

In that drug has been banned and Canada in the you and in Australia it's still approved for use here, but with some restrictions, which Wagle says he follows closely and get this. 76

More than 70% of all antibiotics sold in the U. 77

S. 78

Are for food production animals. 79

When I tell people that 75% of the antibiotics in this country go into the animals supply chain, it blows their mind. 80

It's it's not possible. 81

How can that be any boxer for humans and just not possible, that blows their mind. 82

Jeff Don is trying to reform the food industry from the inside at Campbell's. 83

Why is that important? 84

Why should people care about that process? 85

Because that for those who don't care, because clearly it is a sub section of society that does care. 86

But there's tons of other people that don't get it. 87

All of this cost money. 88

You know, none of this stuff comes free, and there's a reason that amount of antibiotics was used by the meat industry because it was effective for them. 89

It was efficient for them. 90

Ultimately, if the low cost food requires us to do these things to animals in our food system that aren't long term healthy, haven't we really simply just externalize that cost on the long term health issues? 91

Here's my using So many antibiotics is a problem. 92

Antibiotics or viral drugs that help defend us from bacteria that can make us sick or even kill us. 93

But bacteria can evolve every time we use antibiotics. 94

Some bacteria survive, and those drug resistant bacteria can then multiply and spread. 95

This can result in what many call a super bug. 96

As we use more more antibiotics, this problem magnifies generating more kinds of super bugs and making ones that already exist even more powerful. 97

There are already some strains of drug resistant bacteria out there, and public health officials warn that will only get worse if we don't cool it on the antibiotics. 98

The FDA says it's changing antibiotic guidelines for animal feed by December 2016 that ordinary INS will have to make sure the drugs were used judiciously and quote when needed for specific animal health purposes. 99

Feed makers I spoke to said they follow FDA regulations, but Knapman isn't satisfied with the FDA or the industry. 100

But is there an alternative? 101

Maybe going organic? 102

We're farming the same way that my great grand parents with a farm without drugs, the same pound of meat, will cost you more. 103

Consumers are willing to pay I think there will be continued to be more of a man, and there's the heart of it demand for cheap meat. 104

We produce it as efficiently as possible. 105

And the conditions the animals live in means drugs are often used not only to keep them alive, but to make them fat. 106

Food executives say industrial methods are the only way we're gonna feed nine billion people in the next three decades. 107

Maybe. 108

But when you buy an unprocessed raw ingredient, do you know what's really in it, where it's been before it gets to your plate and whether it was produced as safely as possible. 109

Right now, those questions are still too hard to answer.