Keating_Food+Inc+annotation

1. ‘Food Inc.,’ Directed by Robert Kenner (2009)

2. The narrative of the film brings to light the corporate side of the food industry, focusing on the growing, consumption, and policy of livestock, seeds, and marketing. It brings it viewers, the customers, back to a time before the product became their dinner, before it was even bagged and frozen. Great visual stimulation makes one realize what you’ve really been eating and who makes the decisions of how its prepared. Unfortunately this film was only a small example of the entire industry, but provided a big punch into making its viewers question

3. Some sustainability problems that the film draws out are: //Economic//: no longer farming, but rather mass-producing and aiming for profit, not sustainability

//Cultural/behavioral//: - There are no seasons in supermarkets; reminds us that we shouldn’t be trucking in goods from around the world, but rather relying on local produce or finding a more sustainable and energy-friendly way to make goods available to wider audiences

- The 1930’s boom of ‘drive-thru’ restaurants changed the way the Americans experienced food: homemade gave way to fast, greasy, factory-oriented food production with low wages and easy replacements

- The $1 menu, fast food, and junk food: cheap food is being used to feed poor families; not good quality, but cheap to make and package; the largest obesity contribution is a person’s income…”faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper”

//Organizational//: - Crop specifics -- the land dedicated to just corn (30% and government controlled) to feed livestock and create hundreds of corn products (ketchup, batteries, diapers, Cheez Its, etc.); this poorly organized land dedication isn’t allowing other products to be made while unnecessary products (cow feed) are

- Treatment of animals: antibiotics (given and then provided in meat given to customers without warning of effects), corn-fed cows (not physically able to digest), bacteria mutations in animals

//Legal//: - We have an blatant faith in government to protect us, but isn’t: it’s capitalizing on the profits made

- Involvement of company brass being involved in governmental positions (Monsanto, Smithfield, etc.); food industries have different protections than other industries, and whether that is caused by those positions being filled by previous corporation-savvy persons, the misconstrued/biased views towards the legislation being passed (especially for financial security) need to be altered

Each of these are part of the wide world of what we call the food industry, an industry like any other that capitalizes on what consumers want, convenience, and the lack of questions that are asked once that product is available to them. The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy is one of the major flaws, not only in hiding harvesting practices and ingredients from customers, but also allowing this to continue

4. The most persuasive parts of the film to me were the striking images and interviews from farmers describing their struggling lifestyles, trapping them to continue “working for the man” to pay off their enormous debts; the labor and reimbursement barely covers their living costs, let alone loan payments. The cow farms, chicken farms, and meat factories mentioned only made me stronger in my vegetarian lifestyle, but weaker/guilty to think that even the dairy products I use are probably made in the same manner. The bitter sweetness of my reactions still makes me feel guilty when I shop for foods in the grocery store…

The survival of the farmers also brings me to the treatment of the farmers from their corporate employers: companies didn’t want farmers to talk about how their livestock and chickens were handled when the interviews were taking place. The noose that the companies put around these farmers make me feel the greatest sympathy for them: the companies are making millions of dollars off of their products, but can’t seem to allow anyone to know how their products are made. Specifically, Tyson re-engineered their chickens to grow twice as large in half the time and produce more breast meat than normal chickens; the birds couldn’t even stand, let alone walk, and some even died in the pen’s dirt of their own feces because they couldn’t support themselves. Talk about the ultimate supply and demand strategy…

And Monsanto was also another large contender in the suffocation of their farmers: they control of product from growth to market, keeping strict guidelines and watch over their farmers for fear that they might be saving seeds or somehow trying to steal their technologies. The amount of control from higher powers is outstanding, and leaves the farmers no feeling of empowerment or dignity at that rate. Lawsuits were even brought up against farmers for allegations of cleaning seeds and possibly stealing seeds.

Whoever thought that farmers had it easy was completely proved wrong by this film. I personally had no idea about the monetary and occupational restrictions that farmers were under, let alone the conditions of livestock farms. The final facts that 70% of grocery items contain GMOs (not all of which are even labeled) and that the average product travels about 1500 miles from the farm to the supermarket made me just want to start planting vegetables in my backyard and supporting myself on whatever I could grow. The deception and thin lines that have been established to allow these corporations to not have to tell us where our food comes from or how its grown make me feel like it’s all a lie: we run to the grocery store, thank them for their convenience, and check our with less than 15 items to make it home in time, never looking at labels or thinking about how those ingredients were packaged.

5. Maybe I got wrapped up in the moment, but I don’t recall any parts of the film that left me feeling not convinced. Maybe it is my vegetarian bias that led me to absorb all of the information like a sponge, but I do know that I should take everything I hear with a grain of salt…but the film only convinced me more that there were questions that I had never asked myself (and I doubt my parents ever took the time to ask) about where my food came from and what work really went into making it. I used to travel a lot when I was younger, driving through the open fields of Amish country and appreciating their hard work to support their families; but what I didn’t know was that that naive impression of farming was opposite to that of today’s corporations.

6. //Food Inc.// left me wondering which companies I could trust, and whether I could even trust ‘organic’ labels or not. I am torn between

7. This film is very likely to change how people [meaning anyone, really – anyone who doesn’t grow their own produce or milk their own cows] see the problems associated with the large companies that they used to trust, like Tyson, leading them to question products that they currently buy and possibly switch over to those that are more environmentally conscious and sustainable. And if there aren’t any available (I know I feel struggle with what I should and should not buy at the market), maybe they will strongly consider farmer’s markets, local produce, and goods that are available to them without the name brand, poor harvesting tactics, and unknown chemicals.

8. Any intervention suggested by film surrounded taking personal action in what you’re purchasing: each dollar spent is a vote to what products you support. Questioning where your foods are from and what is in them is key to that decision process, especially in adopting shopping at farmer’s markets, joining a co-op, and even buying hormone-free meat and non-caged eggs.

9. Throughout the film there was a lot of preaching of facts, but I think that the images and interviews with the farmers shown were more indicative of what the audience should know: the facts presented were astounding, but knowing the personal struggle that the farmers deal with while the companies flourish off of their meager harvests is disgusting, aside from the conditions that the animals must be subjected to. Relating the personal elements from the ‘behind the scenes’ to the industrial elements of how the vegetables/meats are transformed into our grocery-ready products provided great contrast, showing the separate worlds of “before” and “after” that our products experience.