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Web-Exclusive Review: Food, Inc.

Alternative Press - John Millin on 6/10/09 @ 10:26 AM - altpress.com

DOCUMENTARY
FOOD, INC. (Magnolia Pictures)
STARS > Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin
DIRECTOR > Robert Kenner
OPENS > JUN 12
RATING > 5/5

You'd think-or at least hope-that just about everyone in our post-Fast Food Nation, post-Super Size Me, post-mad cow disease culture would have a pretty firm grasp on the profit-driven, labor-exploiting, bacteria-ridden state of the food industry in this country. The more we know, the more likely we are to do something about it. That's the theory behind Food, Inc., anyway, director Robert Kenner's unflinching and gruesomely enlightening documentary about the various ways and means by which our food ends up in the grocery stores and, eventually, on our plates. It's no wonder America is so full of morbidly obese, diabetes-stricken, E. coli-sucking citizens these days. Through interviews with Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma) and Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (a "beyond organic" family operation in Virginia)-not to mention the owners of a few factory chicken farms and the lab wizards who came up with such ubiquitous food additives as high fructose corn syrup and modified corn starch-Kenner paints a sobering picture.

Not enough meat on the chickens? Perdue and Tyson force their contract farmers to buy hormone-enhanced feed and keep the animals in cramped, filthy, daylight-free conditions to create a sad, mutant bird that can't even walk because its breast is so unnaturally big. Unsurprisingly, no one from Tyson or Perdue cares to comment.

E. coli in the burgers? Instead of insisting upon disease-free meat, a processing plant starts pumping out sheets of hamburger "filler" that's been washed in bleach. And then there's Monsanto, the chemical company that brought us such synthetic delights as the now-banned pesticide DDT and Agent Orange, a defoliant used in the Vietnam War that caused nearly half a million deaths and even more birth defects. Now they're in the business of patented soybean seeds, and are pressing charges against their own farmers for reusing seed instead of re-purchasing for each new growing season. We won't even get into the revolving door of food corporation executives who land jobs at the FDA and USDA and alter health and labor regulations to favor the food corporations only to re-enter the private sector and assume even higher-paying positions at those same corporations. It's like they think they're in Congress or something.

The film's one glimmer of hope is Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. A well-spoken proponent of organic and common-sense farming practices, he points out the many advantages of his small, family-run operation: His cows walk around freely and graze on grass (imagine that) instead of being crammed into pens and pumped full of the same corn products that kicked off America's fat-ass epidemic in the first place. Ventilated chicken coops be damned, he says, how about nature's own fresh fucking air? Salatin's whole philosophy-no chemicals, no hormones, no bullshit-makes so much sense and produces so little waste that you'd think the whole farming industry would be run that way. Kenner's hope is that one day it will. -J. Bennett

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