Food Inc.,

I just watched Food Inc., directed by Emmy Award-winner Robert Kenner. This documentary film examines corporate farming in the US particularly focusing on the meat and vegetable producers.

And let me start the review by saying that this film both blew my hair back and did not. Before watching it, I knew that a critical and honest look at where our super-market items come from would be unsettling, and it was--this was no surprise. But for some reason, I also wasn't ready for it.

Many of the images and statistics are very shocking. Cows standing in knee-high liquidy maneuer just before they're taken away for slaughtering. Chickens stimulated to grow meat so quickly that their bones can't keep up, and so they can only walk a few steps at a time. Chicken farmers are forced to keep up with their contracting company's regulations, which has led the average chicken farmer, who makes $18,000/year, to be upwards of $500,000 in debt. The piggies were cute.

I'm all for treating animals nicely, but their humane (or lack thereof) treatment was the least of the concerns in the film. In Smithfield, NC sits the largest meat packing plant in the world, and most of the employees are foreign workers. The company recruits these workers from Mexico, gets them here, treats them horribly, and makes deals with immigration officers to arrest about 15 workers per day in order to maintain a state of fear and lack of voice/rights from the workers. In the 1950's, being a meat packer was a respectable job with a livable wage and benefits. Now, because of conditions in the plants, it is one of the most dangerous jobs available--right up their with coal miner.

On the farm, corn is mass produced beyond your imagination. The pictures of mountains--literally mountains--of corn were probably the most astonishing. And because we have so much corn, first we sell it in other countries driving local farmers out of business, and second we break it down into High Fructose Corn Syrup and inject it into about %90 of what you buy in the super-market.

Less than twenty years ago the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to patent life. Why does this matter? Because one company began patenting the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that you could then plant to produce the highest yielding crops. Seeds! We modified seeds to make more food. That's good. We then patented them so that one major company, Monsanto, owns virtually all the seed planted by American farmers.

Why does this matter? Imagine your a farmer who is finishing up the season's harvest. Part of your task is to gather and store seed from the harvest in order to plant for the next year. But now you can't, because if you do, then Monsanto will sue you for stealing their property because they own the patent on that seed. Some farmers resisted buying Monsanto seed, even though their neighbors didn't. The wind carrys pollen from the neighboring farm to their farm and Monsanto seed with it. Monsanto's greesy investigators find out, and then they slap an already struggling farmer with an expensive lawsuit. One farmer, just because he didn't use Monsanto seed, was sued for "inciting other farmers against using Monsanto seed leading to profit loss." That's furiously ridiculous. That farmer settled and payed Monsanto the settlement fee just because it's more expensive to fight the legal battle.

There are laws in certain states that make it illegal for anyone (yes, anyone) to speak against the meet production industry, because the industry would then sue you for slander and profit loss. The injustices pointed out by the film piled for an hour and a half and made me want to punch some corporate executives in the head.

The film offers some glimmers of hope: examples of how the tobacco industry was forced to change and so might the food industry, Walmart offering many more organic options, and small local meat farmers surviving in the market against big corporations by providing better quality and selling at farmers' markets.

I recomment that everyone watch this film. I award it the ever-coveted "Nathan-two-thumbs-up." The movie offers a peak into the kitchen to see who is preparing our food and how it is being done. You don't have to go rent it or put it on your Netflix que. Just, do like I did and search for it on YouTube. I watched the whole thing there in 10-minute segments. So, you have no excuse not to, and if you watch Food Inc., I predict you'll begin to watch food a bit more closely.