“The way we eat has changed more in the past fifty years than in the previous ten thousand.”
That’s an astonishing statement, but Robert Kenner’s Food Inc. does a good job of making that charge stick. Most of us here in the overdeveloped world have no idea where our food really comes from, and wealthy and powerful interests are determined that it stays that way.
The packaging on the food we buy in the supermarket bears images of bucolic bliss, of sturdy clapboard barns and cows grazing peacefully in idyllic pastures. Food Inc. pulls back the veil and shows us where our food really comes from, from the hog and chicken factories where the animals are jammed shoulder-to-shoulder and spend their lives ankle-deep in their own feces; to the grimy trailer parks that house the undocumented workers who labor in these factories and spend their lives in fear of the INS; to the fields, stretching farther than the eye can see, bearing row upon row of genetically modified corn and soybeans which are transmogrified into a dizzying variety of products, from chicken nuggets to soft drinks to flashlight batteries (FLASHLIGHT BATTERIES???)
We watch a chicken, bred for pectoral muscles so freakishly enlarged it can barely stand, taking a few tottering steps before collapsing in a pile of chicken manure. We accompany a young family on a trip through a fast food drive-through and listen to the mother assure us that they can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetables – and then casually mention that they spend over two hundred dollars a month for the father’s diabetes medicine. We learn about Monsanto’s ham-handed attempts to bully farmers to buy their genetically modified soybeans, and then listen as an industry lobbyist piously assures a congressional hearing that there is no need for consumers to know that they are eating genetically modified food.
But the most astounding moment in a film full of astounding moments comes when the filmmakers interview consumer advocate Barbara Kowalcyk. She watched her two-year-old son Kevin die after eating a hamburger tainted with hemorrhagic E. coli, then became an advocate for tougher food safety laws. We follow her as she meets with congressional representatives and testifies before legislative committees. Clearly she is a courageous woman, And yet, when the filmmakers ask her how her own eating habits have changed, she pales, swallows hard, and refuses to answer, telling us that the food industry could sue her if she says the wrong thing. The narrator intones, “They don’t just want to control the food supply – they want to control what you can say.”
And they’re absolutely right about that. As the film reminds us, Oprah Winfrey was sued by Texas cattle ranchers for questioning the wisdom of grinding up dead cows and feeding them to live ones (a practice which, by the way, has since been outlawed). She won, after spending six years in litigation and a million dollars in legal fees. And how many Americans have the resources to draw upon that she does?
Go see Food Inc. While you still can.
Food Inc. is now playing at the Charles Theater in Baltimore.
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