I Don't Ever Want to Eat Again: Review of Food, Inc.

I went to see Food, Inc. last night at the Historic Normal Theater. I suspected the movie would be good based upon what I've heard so far and seen in the trailers and interview clips; I didn't have an inkling how powerful it would be.

I'm disappointed that the movie isn't showing in more theaters. It was only a three-day engagement at this theater, the only theater in the area that has carried the documentary so far. I'm not sure whether it is only showing in select theaters because that's how the movie makers wanted to release it, or because those are the only theaters who are interested. If the former, shame on the movie makers, who should want to get this documentary in front of every consumer in the nation. If the latter, shame on the theaters--this movie would gather quite an audience after a mere showing or two.

I was pleased that, in keeping with the theme of the documentary, the theater served locally grown organic popcorn, donated by The Common Ground Natural Food Store, and Pepsi Throwback, which is made with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup but, unfortunately, only a limited-time product.

I was also heartened to see that a significant portion of the audience was composed of college-age students; the remaining audience members ranged from mid-30s to 70s, with one mother bring along two young boys, approximately 5- and 6-years-old. I could hear them asking her questions throughout the film, but unfortunately, couldn't make out the questions they were asking, nor her whispered responses.

Now, on to the movie: O.M.G.

The overriding theme of this documentary, narrated primarily by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma, is that the food industry is deliberately keeping consumers in the dark about where their food comes from and how it is processed. And based upon the information provided in the documentary, I can see why--our food system is definitely FUBAR, and I use the term food very loosely here. As one of the narrators notes, most of the ingredients in our food today is really only "cleverly rearranged corn"; even non-food items such as batteries and diapers are connected to corn. The movie showed a list of ingredients and additives that often appear in our processed foods that are corn-derived. The list disappeared faster than I could write, so visit the article "Corn Aliases: How the King Crop Hides in Everything You Eat" for a list of the most common corn-derived additives and compare to your pantry's canned and boxed goods' ingredient labels.

The scenes depicting industrialized animal farms--which the narrators indicate should truly be called factories rather than farms--are deeply disturbing. A not-dead-but-clearly-ill cow is moved around by a forklift; chicken catchers kick chickens toward the crates; chickens are manhandled on assembly lines like mechanical parts; cows stand knee-deep in their own manure (which, by the way, gets into our food), and chicken carcasses are buried in a compost pile. The animals shown were packed so closely that in many cases, they could barely move except to extend their necks a little bit to reach food or water. According to the film, these animals are fed mixes of animal parts (including feces), corn silage, and chicken litter. The chickens, as one chicken farmer indicates, never even see the light--they are kept completely in the dark. He tells viewers that today's chickens are designed to grow in 49 days (instead of nearly 3 months); this overly quick growth has serious consequences for the chicken, says another chicken farmer, whose bones and organs cannot keep up with the growth, and many of the birds can only take a step or two before collapsing. Is it any wonder that disease is rampant among these animals?

To offset the diseases and to speed animal growth, the animals are fed a regular diet of antibiotics and other antimicrobials. In fact, as the Food, Inc.: Participant Guide discusses that about 80% of today's antimicrobials used are used on these animals; only about 20% are actually used for human health. Unfortunately, this rampant use of antibiotics leads to antibiotic resistance, creating superbug E. coli and other diseases; in fact, one chicken farmer indicates that she is now allergic to all antibiotics as a result of being exposed to so many of them. As consumers ingest the meat that was administered these antibiotics, resistance develops to the antibiotics currently used to fight off diseases in humans.

Another discussion taken up in the movie is the impact of industrialized farming on the environment. Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms discusses how industrialized farming has moved away from natural cycles. As he speaks, he nonchalantly guts a chicken that the audience has just seen bled and beheaded. He talks about the killing and processing of the chicken as an intimate activity for the local organic farmer who processes his own meat as opposed to the distant, objective, mechanized kind of processing that occurs in an industrialized setting. Salatin clearly cares about his product, and points out that if a farmer loses his focus, he will end up viewing his animals differently, his clients differently and ultimately, the consumer differently--which Salatin sees as a bad thing. It was disturbing to see the chicken killed; and yet, as the movie points out in the opening, the industrialized producers of the food we buy package food that looks far removed from its origins. For example, Schlosser points out that today's meat often has no bones and doesn't look like the animal it comes from. Such distancing makes it easy for the consumer to give no thought to how the animal the meat is derived from was treated.

The movie also discusses the condition of farm workers, pointing out that our government has often turned a blind eye to immigrants entering the country illegally because they make up a large percentage of our farm workers. (The Participant Guide discusses in greater detail just how this happens and how farm workers are subject to different labor laws than workers in most other fields.) The movie explains that now that the country is on "immigrant alert," the government makes a show of arresting and deporting a certain number of illegal immigrant farm workers each day without actually conducting any serious full-fledged immigration raids. Additionally, because many farm workers are in the country illegally, they are abused by the industry, subject to dangerous--and in some cases, lethal--heat and pesticides; the EPA, which regulates pesticide use on farms, has acknowledged the problem and yet has done nothing to solve it. The Participant Guide goes into greater detail of the problems encountered by farm workers, painting a very bleak picture. And yet, do we as consumers ever really give a thought to the workers who process our food?

Another theme addressed in the film is the idea that a multinational corporation like Monsanto can now own life; as an example, the film mentions that Monsanto has patented its Roundup-Ready soybeans and thus has complete control of the distribution and sale of this product. What this means for farmers, according to the documentary, is that they can no longer save their own seeds and must buy seeds from Monsanto each year. If a farmer is found to have saved seeds that carry Monsanto's Roundup-ready genetic trait, whether deliberately or accidentally (cross-breeding can occur between one farmer's crops and his neighbor's), the farmer can be sued by the company. (For more information about Monsanto's past, take a look at this material from the documentary The World According to Monsanto by filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin. The clip runs about 6 minutes and 43 seconds.) Food, Inc. shows a seed cleaner--an individual who goes to farms and, using a seed-cleaning machine, separates a farmer's seeds from other material so the seeds can be replanted the next year. The seed cleaner interviewed in the documentary is sued by Monsanto for essentially encouraging farmers to save Monsanto genetically altered soybean seeds. Lest the reader think this is an unusual case, think again: according to an article at http://www.globalresearch.ca, author Linn Cohen-Cole indicates that

Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, Missouri, in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.

An implication in the documentary is that consumers should perhaps be questioning the motives of such practices, which can be easily construed as intimidating. Should multinational corporations such as Monsanto be allowed to patent and control our food? The film leaves the implied question in viewers' hands.

There is so much more to this movie, and frankly, one viewing isn't enough. If you get the opportunity to see this documentary, please go see it. And then let's have a conversation about it.

Review of Fresh

I really enjoyed my visit to Antiquity Oaks on Friday. I don't have any pictures to share (I decided not to be burdened with the camera). They don't just raise Nigerian goats; they also have heirloom chickens for eggs and meat, Shetland sheep, llamas--I was particularly taken by the tale Katherine spun of how their "guard llamas" keep coyotes away through intimidation!-- and cows, and probably other animals I have already forgotten about! I got to pet a baby Nigerian who was only about a week old. They have 32 acres, much of it forest. It is an absolutely beautiful farm, and I was delighted to tour it.

After the tour, we viewed a screening of the movie Fresh in the family's barn. The movie started at a chicken farm, and I was greatly disturbed by the way each crate of fluffy young chicks was dashed--and I mean dashed, not just set gently, shaken out, or even lightly dumped--to the ground. Deborah and another woman later talked about how disturbing that scene was to them, too. Both raise chickens, and they treat the chicks very gently, placing their beaks in water so the chicks know where the water is and treating them as if they are very fragile...which they are!

But the movie wasn't just about chickens. The overriding theme of the movie was how industrialized farming really doesn't add anything to the environment; rather, it takes and destroys, versus organic farming, which uses natural cycles to keep the environment healthy and productive. For example, the film talked about how industrialized farming takes nutrients from the soil and only replaces only a couple, and cow manure sits in bit manure lagoons because large cow operations don't have any way of dealing with the massive cow waste. The animals are crammed in tight quarters and not allowed to engage in their normal social activities--grazing and pecking, for instance. Because they can't engage in these natural activities, chickens peck one another and pigs bite other pigs' tails. Industrialized farming's answer? Mutilate the animals--cut off their beaks and tails. Cut to an organic farm with a diverse culture of creatures, not just a monoculture of cows. Cows eat the grass, and their manure fertilizes the soil. The chickens follow the cows, eating bugs and grubs left behind in the soil and manure. Everybody's happy, the soil is healthy.

Another major theme discussed was the problem with animal feed. Industrialized farms feed cows corn silage, animal wastes, poultry litter, you name it. Many of the problems we experience with our food today--BSE (Mad Cow disease), salmonella, E coli, and more--originate in the feed lot, where animals are eating parts and wastes of other animals. Cows and chickens are herbivores, meaning they eat vegetation, not carnivores. When we feed animals a diet of a meat instead of their natural diet (cows naturally eat grass, not grains; chickens are grain feeders), they are much healthier, requiring little to no use of antibiotics. Additionally, the meat from these animals is much more nutritious.

The movie doesn't just point out some of the ways industrialized farming is going wrong; it actually points to ways that people are farming naturally. I was moved by the farmer who industrialized his pig farming operation, only to find that they needed to use massive doses of antibiotics to keep the pigs healthy. Ultimately, he felt that his farming methods were misguided; he exterminated his herd and started over, raising his pigs in a natural way. He is much happier now. Another man has an organic farm in the middle of a city. He raises fish, and uses the dirty pond water to water and fertilize his crops.

While I don't have the land or time or ability to create my own organic farm, these people give me hope that industrialized farming isn't the only way to go. Without making the point explicitly, the movie definitely leaves the consumer realizing that every time we go to the grocery store, we vote for our farming methods with our dollars. If we spend our money on organic food, which is healthier for consumers, for the animals, for the farm workers, and for the land, we can send a clear message to industrialized farm operations that what they're doing isn't what we want.