Susan Granger’s review of “Food, Inc.” (Participant Media/Magnolia Pictures)
Robert Kenner’s disturbing documentary dissects the industrialization of North American food production and delivery systems and how it has affected our health, environment and economy.
Although Michelle Obama is raising veggies on the back lawn of the White House, you can forget about the bucolic concept of chickens, pigs and cows roaming freely on the family farm or sheltered in barns and feeding on grass. Today, they’re raised in nightmarish Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, that are sheltered from scrutiny by secrecy and intimidation.
To complicate matters, the FDA and USDA have been rendered almost powerless by judicial rulings and legislation which has led to lax health and safety controls. Kenner even utilizes footage from a California legislative hearing to demonstrate how agri-business lobbyists were able to restrict meat-labeling laws that would indicate that the source was cloned animals. And don’t think that because you avoid ‘fast foods,’ you escape the grim peril.
Incorporating information from Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” and Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” as well as commentaries from those two authors and other food advocates, farmers, experts and government officials, Emmy Award-winning director/producer Robert Kenner ( PBS’ “Two Days in October”) delivers a blistering indictment of greedy giant food conglomerates like Monsanto, Tyson, Purdue and Smithfield. Sure, it’s all one-sided – making it ‘advocacy filmmaking’ – because company representatives refused to respond. But explain that to the family of two year-old Kevin Kowalcyk, who died after eating a hamburger contaminated with E.coli.
Back in 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle,” a muckraking novel that exposed unsanitary conditions, corruption and labor practices in the U.S. meatpacking industry, which brought about some reform. Let’s hope the all-consuming “Food, Inc.” has the same effect. If Wal-Mart can change its policies and products because of public pressure, so can every one of the conglomerates. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Food, Inc.” is a stomach-churning yet persuasively necessary 9 – but don’t plan to go out to dinner after viewing this graphic film.
