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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] "Food, Inc.": New documentary looks into the business of food
  • Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:38:33 -0600



"Food, Inc.": New documentary looks into the business of food
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2009345834_foodinc17.html
published June 17, 2009

The new movie "Food, Inc." purports to show the danger lurking in
mass-produced foods. Director Robert Kenner — along with authors Eric
Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation") and Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's
Dilemma") — hopes the documentary will raise awareness about agribusiness
the same way "An Inconvenient Truth" alerted viewers to problems of global
warming. The movie opens in Seattle on Friday, June 19.

NEW YORK — The new documentary "Food, Inc." begins with idyllic scenes of
American farmland, panning from golden fields of hay to a solitary cowboy
rounding up a herd of cattle. Then the camera zooms in on a grocery cart
overflowing with packaged food and rolling down the aisles of a gaudily lit
supermarket.

Eerie, horror-movie-style music swells in the background. It's meant to
signal the audience that the pastoral fantasy of agrarian America on
everything from packages of breakfast sausage to cereal boxes is not what
it seems.

Director Robert Kenner shows us poultry houses where chickens never see the
light of day and are pumped so full of chemicals they produce more meat
than their organs can support. Eventually they collapse under the weight of
their abnormally large breasts and die before reaching the slaughterhouse.

Kenner relates the heart-wrenching story of Republican-turned-activist
Barbara Kowalcyk, who prowls the halls of Congress with her mother to try
to force lawmakers to enact food-safety legislation that she believes could
have saved the life of her 2 ½-year-old son Kevin, who died of E. coli
poisoning 12 days after eating contaminated hamburgers.

Kenner is hoping his film will raise awareness of the enormous price in
health and safety that he says Americans pay to gorge themselves on the
relatively cheap calories that stock supermarket shelves courtesy of a
handful of multinational corporations.

Just as the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" helped
galvanize the fight against global warming, Kenner and his partners want to
spur legions of activists to rise up and take aim at lawmakers and
government regulators they believe have been corrupted by lobbyists for
agribusiness.

An alliance of trade associations representing the nation's meat and
poultry producers have set up a Web site to counter virtually every claim
in the film.

The food industry says the film has "an astonishing number of half-truths,
errors and omissions" and that scrapping current production methods in
favor of locally grown, seasonal organic food would result in a dramatic
increase in food prices and fewer fruits and vegetables year-round.

Kenner's battery of experts includes Michael Pollan, author of "The
Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser.

Kenner and Pollan urge consumers to shun the agribusiness model.

Says Kenner: "Go to a farmers market whenever you can. Eat a little less
meat. Read labels when you go into a store. Shop the outer rows of the
supermarket. Cook at home. Buy less processed food."

And Pollan: "Get involved in your school lunch program. Get junk food out
of the whole school. Sign up with a listserv for one of the many groups
that's tracking this. Your congressman/woman needs to hear from you."





  • [Livingontheland] "Food, Inc.": New documentary looks into the business of food, Tradingpost, 06/18/2009

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