Food, Inc. The movie

If you’ve been reading Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food and other books and articles about our industrial food system, you will actually learn very little from the new movie Food, Inc.

This movie excels, though, at putting faces to the stories, and providing a visual context to the words in the books and articles. You get to peer inside the factory chicken farms and watch how the chicken chasers box up the birds for their final trip, then see Carole Morison, the farmer, picking up the dead chickens left over in the deserted chicken house.

Meet Moe Parr, being sued by Monsanto for encouraging farmers to clean a portion of their crops so they can replant it as seeds next year. Monsanto alleges that Moe encourages other farmers to fringe on their patents. Moments later the film makers list national policy makers with close connections to Monsanto and other large corporate food interests.

Meet Barbara Kowalcyk, whose son died due to food contamination as she visits lawmakers trying to convince them to pass Kevin’s Law, named for her son. Congress has yet to pass it.

This film could be just a diatribe against large food companies, but we’re introduced to Joel Salatin, a Virginia farmer that shows how our food system could be. It provides a powerful counterpoint to the massive systems put in place to provide us “food”. Joel is an interesting character. I heard him speak at the Community Farm Alliance annual meeting in Louisville a couple of years ago. This film let me visit his farm and get a glimpse of his form of agriculture. Simplicity is the keyword. He has developed an intensive agricultural system using the cattle, hogs and chickens and their interactions to maximize his farm’s productivity. His cattle get fresh pasture every day, so they have clean coats when they go to slaughter, thus minimize the possibility of contaminating the meat. The film shows a segment of a traditional beef processor using a high-tech system which infuses the hamburger with ammonia to kill the microbial contaminants (the plant manager indicates their system is used in 70% of hamburger sold in this country, with 90% in a few years). Joel has little need of these systems.

Note: Last month at least two people were killed and 41 injured explosion at Con Agra's meat processing plant that manufactures Slim Jims. The news story makes it sound like ammonia was involved in the explosion. I have been wondering why a meat plant would need large quantities of ammonia.

We also see the culture clash when Wal-Mart representatives meet a small dairy farmer on her farm in Vermont.

All in all, a great film about our industrial food system and why we should be asking questions.