New Documentary "Food, Inc." Offers Troubling View of American Food

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

Canadian Press Ann Levin, For The Associated Press
<http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/090605/x060515A.html_>
<http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/090605/x060515A.html>


NEW YORK - The new documentary **Food, Inc.** begins with idyllic scenes
of American farmland, panning from golden fields of hay to a solitary cowboy
rounding up a herd of cattle. Then the camera zooms in on a grocery cart
overflowing with packaged food and rolling down the aisles of a gaudily lit
supermarket.


Eerie, horror movie-style music swells in the background. It's meant to
signal the audience that the pastoral fantasy of agrarian America on
everything from packages of breakfast sausage to cereal boxes is not what it
seems, that great danger lurks behind the cheery images of 1930s-era red
barns and white picket fences.


Director Robert Kenner is bent on showing us a far grimmer reality. He
tells of dust-choked poultry houses where chickens never see the light of
day
and are pumped so full of chemicals they produce more meat than their
organs can support. Eventually they collapse under the weight of their
abnormally large breasts and die before reaching the slaughterhouse.


He shows us industrial feed lots where cows are fattened on
chemical-enhanced feed and forced to spend their days standing ankle-deep
in manure.


Kenner relates the heart-wrenching story of Republican-turned-activist
Barbara Kowalcyk, who prowls the halls of Congress with her mother to try to
force lawmakers to enact food safety legislation that she believes could
have saved the life of her 2 1/2-year-old son Kevin, who died of E. coli
poisoning 12 days after eating contaminated hamburgers.


Kenner is hoping his film will raise awareness of the enormous price in
health and safety that he says Americans pay to gorge themselves on the
relatively cheap calories that stock supermarket shelves courtesy of a
handful
of multinational corporations.


Just as the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" helped
galvanize the fight against global warming, Kenner and his partners want to
spur legions of activists to rise up and take aim at lawmakers and
government regulators they believe have been corrupted by lobbyists for
agribusiness.


An alliance of trade associations that represent America's meat and
poultry producers have set up a website to counter virtually every claim in
the
documentary, from the contention that E. coli contamination could be reduced
by feeding cattle grass instead of grain, to charges that U.S. federal
inspection agencies are understaffed and ineffective, and foodborne
illnesses
are on the rise.


The food industry says the film has **an astonishing number of
half-truths, errors and omissions** and that scrapping current production
methods in
favor of locally grown, seasonal organic food would result in a dramatic
increase in food prices and fewer fruits and vegetables year-round.


Janet M. Riley, senior vice president at the American Meat Institute, says
that contrary to the menacing image presented in the film, the industry -
comprised of **ordinary, hardworking people** - provides **the safest, most
affordable, most abundant food supply in the world.**


She also says it would be foolhardy to abandon modern food production
methods during a global recession, when people are starving in parts of the
world.


**Why would we want to turn the clock back to a less efficient way to
produce food?** she says.


Kenner's arguments will be familiar to readers of **The Omnivore's
Dilemma** author Michael Pollan, whose numerous books and articles have
decried
the physical and even moral hazard of the industrial food system.


Pollan is featured in the film, as is **Fast Food Nation** author Eric
Schlosser, who wrote the best-selling 2001 expose of the fast food industry
that was later turned into a movie.


Pollan, who has criticized industrial agriculture for a decade, calls
Kenner's documentary **the most important and powerful film about our food
system in a generation.* *


He says the director has broken new ground with his reporting on such
things as a new, high-tech system of meat processing that bathes beef filler
in
ammonia to kill harmful bacteria.


Even though alternative agriculture represents just a small part of the
U.S. food industry, Pollan says he is **full of hope** about the future. He
cites the booming demand for organic food and the growing popularity of
farmers markets.


According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sales of organics have
more than quintupled, increasing from US$3.6 billion in 1997 to US$21.1
billion in 2008.


Kenner, too, is optimistic, ending the film on an uplifting note. He sees
a hopeful model in the fight against Big Tobacco, which also seemed
invulnerable to attack by health and safety advocates - until it wasn*t.


Like Pollan, Kenner is heartened by what he*s seen so far from the Obama
administration.


Pollan, in particular, applauded Michelle Obama*s decision to plant an
organic garden on the South Lawn of the White House. Kenner says the
president
won*t be able to tackle his other priorities of reforming health care and
halting global warming without changing the way Americans produce and
consume food.


So what do Kenner and Pollan believe the average person should do if they
want to shun the agribusiness model?


Says Kenner: **Go to a farmers market whenever you can. Eat a little less
meat. Read labels when you go into a store. Shop the outer rows of the
supermarket. Cook at home. Buy less processed food.**


And Pollan? All of that, and also this: **Get involved in your school
lunch program. Get junk food out of the whole school. Sign up with a
listserv
for one of the many groups that*s tracking this. Your congressman/ woman
needs to hear from you."


Still, Lowell Catlett, dean of the School of Agriculture at New Mexico
State University, says U.S. consumers actually have a pretty good deal.
Before
World War II, a quarter of a million Americans died every year from a
combination of unsanitary food and water and inadequate sewage facilities.
**Overall, we have a safer food system,** he said.


The film opens June 12 in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with
wider distribution beginning June 19.