Are We Really Hungry For Change?

Robert Kenner’s new film Food, Inc. seeks to lift the veil on the American food industry.  But is this latest food exposé destined only to preach to the “foody” converted?

WORDS: BORIS BELL

“Which movies are starting soon?”
“Ummmm …. Transformers 2?”
“Hmmmm … what about Humpday?”
“Uhuh … who’s in it?”

Can you guess the next line of this totally fictitious conversation, taking place outside an imaginary movie theater this summer? I suppose it could be anything you want it to be. We could even contrive this little gem:

“I know … why don’t we pay to watch a profoundly disturbing documentary about systemic corruption and contamination in our nation’s food industry? Forget Transformers. I’ve gone right off Megan Fox since I heard she’s getting hitched. Let’s get the lowdown on all these genetically modified crops we’re eating. Look, it’s starting in five minutes. I’ll grab the tickets, you get the popcorn!”

Oh to be a fly on the theater wall if, by some miraculous marketing guile, the promoters of Food, Inc. actually manage to stir the sleeping majority of the American public from their collective, television-induced psychosis and fill those red seats with the “unconverted.” Sadly, I suspect that a statistically significant portion of those who drag themselves away from “The Celebrity Apprentice” at home would rather focus on an assortment of computer-generated robots and, of course, the ever-diverting Miss Fox.

Whatever your preference, Food, Inc. will be a brutal wake-up call for many Americans about the state of their food industry. Since the rise of fast food in the 1950s, the food industry at large has come to be utterly dominated by a few major players who have one mission: to control everybody’s food,  bland and simple, from seed to the supermarket. And they make no secret of that fact, at least. Food, Inc. details how fast food transformed meat production into highly efficient, centralized, and mechanized animal processing plants. Some of the movie’s content will come as no surprise to some, but it’s still far from easy viewing.

Food, Inc. isn’t shy about examining the corporate giant, Monsanto, which controls corn and soy crops through a series of patents. These patents allow them to “own” crops by “owning” the genetic modifications inside the seeds. Monsanto has been able to litigate against non-compliant farmers through legal precedents set by judges like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who once acted as a lawyer for Monsanto. The whole system, Food, Inc. suggests, is completely corrupt.

We learn how these huge corporations have infiltrated our government, shaped its policies and introduced ridiculous laws that make it illegal to openly criticize parts of the food industry … and don’t you even dare take a photograph of a cattle ranch facility! We are told the stories of farmers who are prosecuted for owning or renting machinery that allow them to save seeds from their crops. We also discover how the food regulatory agencies are controlled by the very industry they are supposed to be scrutinizing.

Perhaps most importantly, Food, Inc. shows America that “cheap” food comes at a price. The environment, our health, the welfare of animals and the conditions of immigrant workers, we are shown, more than pay the premium on our behalf.

Food, Inc. could have been a woeful depressumentary about the self-administered culling of poor Americans through GMO-ridden junk food. But it ends with a very positive, uplifting message. We can make a change, and we can vote three times a day with the food we put on our plates and in our bodies. Food, Inc. is as much about access to information as it is about access to good, healthy food.

Go and see this movie and I promise that you, like me, will be telling everyone you can to go see it too. Drag them kicking and screaming if you have to.

For more info visit: www.foodincmovie.com