Go See Food, Inc. This Weekend
The documentary on the food industry went into wider distribution this weekend. Critics agree — SEE IT!
After an hour and a half of sighing, wincing, and clucking over the manifold outrages portrayed in Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc., I gave up the thought of “reviewing” the documentary and decided, instead, to exhort you: See it. Bring your kids if you have them. Bring someone else’s kids if you don’t. The message is nothing new if you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation or Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both are in the film). But every frame makes you choke on your popcorn—if for no other reason than the focus on government-underwritten corn and the companies who put it into everything from soda to Midol to the gassy, E. coli–ridden bellies of factory-farmed cows. The sheer scale of the movie is mind-blowing—it touches on every aspect of modern life. It’s the documentary equivalent of The Matrix: It shows us how we’re
living in a simulacrum, fed by machines run by larger machines with names like Monsanto, Perdue, Tyson, and the handful of other corporations that make everything. We humans can win, but we should hurry, before Monsanto makes a time machine and sends back a Terminator to get rid of Schlosser and Pollan.
WaPo:
In the muckraking tradition of Upton Sinclair and the slick documentary stylings of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Robert Kenner’s “Food, Inc.” seeks to lift the curtain on the cynical and often sickening workings of the modern industrial food system. This absorbing film looks terrific and does a superb job of making its case that our current food ways are drastically out of whack. The trick will be getting “Food, Inc.’s” message beyond its natural constituency of the already-converted to the millions of shoppers whose choices in the marketplace, the film argues, represent a tsunami of untapped power.
Starting with the chicken and beef industries, the filmmakers trace how fast-food culture created the corporate concentration of agricultural production and the disappearance of the traditional family farm. With damning hidden-camera footage and interviews with such pioneering journalists as Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, “Food, Inc.” deftly demonstrates how issues such as illegal immigration, public health and intellectual property law intersect at the largely hidden nexus of Big Meat.
The world of food has changed. The simple hamburgers our grandparents ate are distinctly different from the ones many of us consume today.
“Our food has transformed without us seeing these changes,” Kenner said. “Chickens are designed to have large breasts and grow a lot faster. The tomatoes, they don’t go bad. But they have no taste at this point. They’re nice and shiny and red. They look the same on some levels, but they’re a different tomato.”
A hamburger from an industrial plant can be ground from 400 animals from six different countries. This method of mass production — in which only 12 plants make more than half the meat on the market — makes a cheap burger, but the risk might not be worth the reward if any stage of the process introduces contaminants.
“You have one plant that might be grinding 10 million burgers in a week and that’s very dangerous,” Pollan said. “If a microbe gets in there, E-coli or something like that, it now affects 10 million people.”
And the food industry is fighting back:
The Stranger:
Here is a farmer sitting at his kitchen table, tired and defeated: Monsanto, insanely, won’t let him use his own crop seeds and help others do the same, as farmers have done since time immemorial. Here is a mother who lost her child to E. coli from a fast-food burger: She determinedly walks through the halls of justice, though it’s been years and no headway has been made. (Bonus, repeated several times: home movies of the toddler playing on a lakeshore before he died.) Those chickens that live smashed together in giant dark hangars, bred to have breasts so big they couldn’t walk even if they had room? Present, and plenty are prematurely deceased, all limp and feathery. Assembly lines of meat-processing plants are accompanied by foreboding music. Hidden-camera footage shows hogs being shoved en masse into death chambers.
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11 Responses to “Go See Food, Inc. This Weekend”
Again, beware the over-bashing of “corporate food” or Big Food and note that this nation and society don't need a “food policy,” which smacks of PC totalitarianism, but merely reform of long-existant federal and other government interventionsm and meddling in agriculture (“agricultual reform” or “- policy reform”). No, we don't want government promotion of “localvore” faddishness as “serious” policy, sin taxes on snack and other foods and drinks and constituents (like the demon high fructose corn syrup), but rather sensibility.
“slick documentary stylings of “An Inconvenient Truth'”
Perhaps to the sucker set, but to intelligent, normal people this Convenient Religion of Global Warming tome is idiotic (when not intentionally deceptive-manipulative) irresponsible alarmism. (No wonder the PC morality-free crowd loves it so much.)
“sighing, wincing, and clucking over the manifold outrages”
[snicker]
In a public theater, or in a private screening in Hollywood or at a Manhattan cocktail party?
[snicker]
“Bring your kids if you have them. Bring someone else’s kids if you don’t.”
That's a cue for “food education” [sic] similar to “nuclear education” [sic] in the 1980s.
Corporations evil. Republicans evil. Our military and nuclear energy XXXXXXXXXX Modern agriculture evil. American way of life evil. Our adversaries are superior.
The real question — does the movie concentrate on demonizing industry in the USA, or does it engage in more broad-minded thought (which isn't indicated by the advertising and current commentary about it, as well as by the behavior of the “food activists”) and discuss food products and their adulteration and other problems (like microbial contamination and chemical poisoning) that come here from … China?
(Works for pharmaceuticals, too. Take some bird or animal droppings, dry them and grind them and then compress them into suitable shapes, apply mystery food coloring as needed…)
On a more serious and to-the-point (-or-subject) note:
Part of me would rather volunteer to help the Detroit abandoned-lot gardeners or those working in the DTE substation garden sites (eventually could number over 7,000 locations in southeastern Michigan), but I may actually go watch this movie sometime, Joe. I've been in the Midwest before and am familiar with the fun and follies of companies like IBP, and here around Detroit there are high-intensity feedlots:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090528/METRO/9…
There's a place I used to visit when I lived in Upstate New York that had Sunday afternoon lefty-movie matinees as an attraction, and no doubt if they still do it, they'll show this movie. (My favorite there was the showing of “The Corporation.”) My DC friend and I may see this next time I'm in DC; we saw Moore's “Fahrenheit 9-11″ together there in the past. No doubt “Food, Inc.” will be shown there, too.
Also
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090528/METRO/9…
Have a good-appetite day.
[...] and clucking over the manifold outrages portrayed in Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc ., I … Read Full Post: Go See Food, Inc. This Weekend – The Moderate Voice Adding Related Info:Get a taste of Guam: Food fair welcomes all this weekend – Guam Pacific Daily [...]
I agree that this film is a must-see. It is the most eye-opening experience I have had in a while, and already bought organic, range-fed meat. It has inspired me to actively encourage others to do the same. 1 in 2 americans born after 2000 will develop Type II Diabetes?! And the government is subsidizing this lifestyle and this industry which is doing massive and RAPID damage to our health, it's workers' safety, US and foreign farmers and food supplies, and our planet's and children's futures. Please go see it.
The previous commenter apparently has ties to corporate agriculture; maybe even some of the genetically-modified growers. See the film. You will agree.
Cows are not intended to eat corn. Feeding them the way that this antecdotal example does is the reason for the deadly E. coli development intheir guts, which has KILLED people. Also interesting that the only photo hese is of the feed, not the quality of life of those animals. It is a CAFO, and likely is generating poisonous runoff into other agricultural areas.
Kim, if you revisit this thread that is now somewhat old, the two Detroit News links I provided earlier are links to stories about CAFO operations.
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