Hello loyal readers, and thank you for checking back in. Today's post is going to be a change of pace as well as a first for me - I'm going to do a movie review! Please hold your applause until the end.
While at home last Saturday night, Tiffany and I were browsing our Netflix "watch instantly" queue (just about the best thing ever) when we came upon a recommended documentary called Food, Inc. Having recently watched Super-Size Me, we were in food-doc mode. The film's description promised to expose the disturbing underbelly of the food industry as well as the detrimental effects that mass-produced chickens, pigs, and cows have had on America's health and economy. As a cook as well as a person who eats food regularly, this interested me. I clicked play and off we went. Ninety-four minutes later, I was genuinely disturbed and disgusted.
Side note - I don't really know how to frame this, since I'm covering new literary ground here. Do I recap the movie book report-style or leave the plot uncovered so that the reader can be shocked/surprised as I was? I'll try to stay somewhere in the middle, just in case the movie isn't available to some of you.
We start things off with a few statistics and an overhead shot of a "corporate" cow farm. It seems that things have changed since the old days, when cows (and chickens, pigs, and so on) were raised in wide open fields, allowed to forage and grow naturally, and only slaughtered when the time came. The obscenely high supply of beef, poultry, and other foodstuffs required by the McDonald's (they seem to keep popping up in these things) and Burger Kings of the world has forced the food supply industry to adopt a factory-style approach to farming. Cows, chickens, and pigs are packed into tiny shacks or fences, fed food engineered to fatten them up at twice the rate nature intended, and processed as quickly, efficiently, and effortlessly as possible.
We go to images of the inside of a typical modern chicken coop. There are so many chickens crowded into this shed (that's all it is - a tin shed with a few fans) that one can hardly see the ground. The chickens are fed corn - something they'd never, ever eat in the wild - and are fattened at about double the natural rate. They are engineered to grow larger than normal breasts because folks prefer white meat. Consequently, most of the chickens shown were so top-heavy they could only walk two or three steps before falling down from exhaustion. In addition, it turns out that a byproduct of having thousands of chickens enclosed in a small tin shed is the rampant spread of bacterial infection. These chickens spend their days wading around in one another's filth and excrement, so bacteria has a field day jumping from bird to bird. Naturally, the solution is to pump them full of antibiotics. The grower informs us that she is completely allergic to antibiotics due to her constant exposure to them Once the chickens have reached their weight limit, trucks arrive during the night to collect them. The next day, we see the now-empty shed, completely barren save a few dead chickens the collectors left behind. The grower informs us she will probably lose her contract with Tyson because she let cameras in. A postscript informs us that very thing happened a short time later.
Our next stop is a giant cornfield somewhere in the Midwest. We are shown rows of corn stretching as far as the eye can see. What an image of Americana. Corn, it seems, has gone from the dinner plate to just about everything we Americans use in just under 100 years. Corn is in most processed food and drinks, gas, plastics, and even medicine. It seems to be a true miracle crop. As it turns out, corn also is the main food supply used by meat mass-producers. There are several good reasons for this. Obviously, when animals are packed into very confined spaces, they can't forage for grass like nature would intend, so they are fed corn in troughs. Their corny diet has the added benefit of fattening the animals up very quickly. Additionally, we are told that the United States government, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to subsidize farmers who grow corn with taxpayer money. Several farmers report that they sell corn for far less than it costs to produce, but that they profit thanks to Uncle Sam's checks. Finally, remember when I mentioned that McDonald's is the largest purchaser of beef, poultry, and so on in the world? You can imagine that they would want their chicken sandwiches in Des Moines, IA to taste exactly like the ones in Ft. Lauderdale, FL taste. This is accomplished by feeding the sandwich fodder the same food - corn. So corn, it seems, is king. Naturally, this has several side effects, but I'll only cover one - illegal immigration. Stay with me here, because this all ties in.
Remember those government subsidies I mentioned before? Well, they make corn incredibly cheap to the final buyer. So cheap, in fact, that (thanks to NAFTA) corn can be exported to Mexico and STILL be sold cheaper than the farmers in Mexico can grow it. Big deal, right? Well, floods of cheap American corn in the Mexican market created a new problem. Mexican farmers began to go out of business because they couldn't price match the American corn, and the Mexican economy began stuttering from unemployment. The meat processing industry swooped in by laying off American workers, sending buses to Mexico, and hiring the now-unemployed Mexican farmers to come work for them. You would think that this active lawbreaking would be punished...and you'd be right, if by punished you mean law enforcement rounds up a few illegals here and there instead of punishing the company importing them. The level of corruption at work is shocking.
I could go on and on for another three or four paragraphs. The movie covers E. Coli's devastating spread (including a poor mother whose child died after eating an infested fast food burger). It is clear the fault rests in the hands of the food producers. We also learn that the entire soybean market is controlled by a single company that uses its power and position to strong-arm farmers into using their genetically altered beans. I could go on and on. Bottom line - Food, Inc. ought to be mandatory viewing for anyone who eats. Think about it - how much do you know about the origins of the food on your plate? In the old days, people either grew and raised their own meat and vegetables or bought them from someone they knew and trusted. Modern eaters have had their eyes covered as two or three big companies have redesigned the food production industry with little or no government regulation. In fact, the government only steps in when the producers screw up on a grand scale. This isn't acceptable. We need to be informed as to how our food is produced, from coop to supermarket. If you can watch this movie and still feel OK about that McChicken sandwich (or even store-bought birds) then more power to you. I can't. I'm sold on organic now. And those are five words I never thought I'd say.
