Food+Inc.

Film Annotation: “Food, Inc” In 2008 Robert Kenner directed “Food, Inc.,” a sensational film saturated with facts about the industrialization of the food industry. This film will appeal to everyone who consumes or has consumed industrial food. If you live in America I image that you would have had to live a life dedicated to being a hermit in order to avoid the foods discussed in “Food, Inc.” The injustices that have been brought to the system of food production should elicit enrage from anybody that has respect for themselves. Although, if I was older and witnessed many injustices I might not care anymore; I might not let it be the straw that breaks my back. But I’m not old, I’m young, and embarking on the rest of my life and am enraged at the contamination and corporatization of the material that sustains my life! It is absurd that there is even a choice at the supermarket to buy poisoned or non-poisoned apples. How did the witch of Snow White come to control all of our food? One way that the witch has come to rule is by allowing the food industry to regulate itself. There is virtually no regulation of the food industry. Many of the people who advise the President on food issues and who are in the FDA have previously worked at food companies. Courts have ruled that the USDA cannot shut down a food processor if they repeatedly fail microbial testing for contamination, and the courts have also approved the patenting of life. Corn is so heavily subsidized that 30% of U.S. land has corn on it, fish and cows now eat corn, and many of our food choices are just “clever rearrangements of corn.” Kenner did an excellent job at presenting the litany of placeholders in our government. Deregulation and the placeholders that serve as Presidential advisors, judges, and legislators are a huge sustainability problem. Another showcased sustainability problem is the power that companies have gained through capitalism and with help from placeholders. Eighty percent of produced meat is made by 4 producers; there is little competition. One interviewed hamburger meat filler producer stated that he expected his company to be supplying to 100% of hamburger makers within the next 5 years. Monsanto has acquired a monopoly of corn by patenting their “Round-up Ready” corn. Monsanto has an “investigation team” of about 75 people whose job is to augment Monsanto’s control of the corn market. Any farmer who cleans corn seeds to save the seeds is at risk for being sued by Monsanto for “encouraging the farmer to break the patent law.” Monsanto uses aggression and intimidation to coerce farmers into buying Monsanto’s patented corn. It is a problem that corporations are allowed to ream out farmers like this; doling out $1 million to investigate and prosecute a farmer is nothing for Monsanto while the farmers often many pay legal fees and pay for lawyers only to settle with Monsanto before they even have access to justice. Access to justice is creating a sustainability problem because many small farmers cannot survive. Conversion from small scale to large scale usually precludes a conversion from quality healthy food to “uniform” and “cheap” food. The legality of patenting life is also at the heart of Monsanto’s ability to monopolize. Patenting life creates guilty farmers out of farmers who are doing nothing but continuing to clean seeds and plant them as farmers have done forever. The natural processes of pollination can move genetically engineered seeds and contaminate innocent farmers’ corn. Patenting corn has consequently illegalized not buying Monsanto’s corn. One of the most astonishing parts of the film was an image of an operations center at Beef Products, Inc. that monitored a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. There were multiple TV screens that monitored the cows and the processing of the meat. Kenner’s presentation of the control room led me to believe that the control room was the main way that Beef, Inc. attended its farms and moved the cows around. The TV screens reminded me of the control rooms I have seen at work that monitor the electricity flow in New York. Although electricity needs can be variable and unpredictable the fact that electricity is a physical phenomena involving the physics of charged particles warrants controlling it with technology. Raising cows does not warrant extensively using technology to interact with them. There is definitely a scientific consensus that cows are alive and electricity is not. The methods used to manage electricity and farm animals should not appear so similar. The control room reflects the general paradigm shift in how the people producing our food regard their responsibility. Food producers have lost respect for the life that will supply energy to humans. In many environmental problems we overlook the link between “nature” and “us.” Our paradigm implies some sort of barrier between “nature” and “us.” Again and again this paradigm proves to be a faulty perspective of reality. One practice that has become popular in meat production is feeding antibiotics to chickens. Because the issue of antibiotic use in food production is detailed in itself but just one aspect of the industrialization of food, Kenner’s coverage of the use antibiotics was brief. ( [|Learn more about feeding antibiotics to animals] ) “If you feed them to pigs and chickens and cattle, they make the animals grow faster…. In any case, America's drug and meat companies have convinced farmers that you have to feed antibiotics to your animals almost every day if you're going to compete in this age of factory farming.” (Zwerdling) An important detail he was able to capture is the resistance that chicken farmers now have to antibiotics. Human health implications are surfacing as a direct result of our objectification of animals. There were few unconvincing parts of “Food, Inc.” Kenner tried to create an unbiased documentary and featured how industrialized food production provides jobs to poor communities. I am not convinced that the food producers are essential to the economic health of these communities. Although he impressed upon viewers that in some communities the food producers are one of the only employers, it soon become clear that the food producers are not really helping the community. Rather, the food producers are taking advantage of the dire situation citizens and illegal immigrants are in. “Food, Inc.” prompts me to contemplate how organic farming is successful and efficient. One of the reasons that the bad practices of industrialized food production are perpetuated is that they are very successful at reliably producing larger amounts of food. What is life like as a modern organic farmer? Would life as an organic farmer be more appealing than life in front of a computer screen in a food processing control room? I think the life of an organic farmer would be more comfortable than working in a food processing plant. Kenner discovered that the nails of the meat processing plant workers fall off because they handle so many chemicals on a regular basis. The politics of illegal immigration is also worth extra research. It’s interesting how companies leverage their illegal status as equivalent to unworthy of basic human rights. Would organic farmers be unable to use the labor of illegal immigrants? If so, converting the current food production work force to all organic food production would not be fluid. Why are large companies prone to exploiting their workers; does exploiting workers like they do really provide any significant economic advantage? Kenner compared each meal to vote. He said that every time we eat we are effectively voting for how we would like our food to be produced. “Food, Inc.” asks viewers to be more conscious of the what they consume. This movie suggests eating meat less often, buy organically grown fruits and vegetables as much as possible, and avoid the empty calories that are the “clever rearrangements of corn.” “Food, Inc.” focused mainly of the implications industrialized food has had for humans rather than the entire ecosystem. More information about monoculture could have been included. For example, I learned that monoculture and huge tracks of land contribute to the decline of bee populations. Many of these vast plots of land are used to cultivate our heavily subsidized corn, and they are also sprayed with toxins that affect us. Kenner did uncover how the same paradigm that abuses animals abuses workers and allows for chemicals and antibiotics to leach into our food. However, more closely linking “environmental” problems (abuse to animals and plants) with “human” problems could have reinforced the connection and dependence of humans and our environment. __ Sources: __ Zwerdling, Daniel. "Documentary: Antibiotics on the Farm." //Animal Production Systems//. 01 09 2001. American Radio Works, Web. 19 Feb 2010. .