Farm News
What to Eat After Seeing Food Inc.
Food Inc. is a horror movie, with more blood, guts and dead bodies than any Friday the 13th sequel. In fact, it’s pretty hard to watch. But it is more than just a great documentary—it’s a shot across the bow of the American food industry.
If you’ve read Fast Food Nation or The Omnivore’s Dilemma, you’re primed to see images from the killing floor, Midwest feedlots where cattle stand check-to-jowl in their own manure, and chickens that collapse under their own weights. Animals transformed into pure protein generators are disturbing enough, but the human cost is equally heartrending.
- A family of four in Los Angeles spends just $11 for a bag of burgers but can’t afford broccoli or sweet potatoes at the supermarket. Meanwhile, the father’s diabetes medicine runs $200 per month.
- Barbara Kowalcyk lost her son to E.coli poisoning from eating a hamburger. Because the meat in a single fast-food burger can be blended from up to 1,000 different cows, the diseased animal will never be identified.
- Chicken farmers avoid speaking on-camera about how they raise chickens for fear they will infuriate industry buyers and lose their main contract.
In the same way the movie Blood Diamond increased awareness of the exploitation inherent in conflict diamonds, Food Inc. and the accompanying website may begin to awaken consumers and retailers to how food is produced in this country. That’s dangerous knowledge: Can we really enjoy a meal if we know that animals and people who produced it live a horrific existence?
Change Comes One Meal at a Time
At Friend of the Farmer we started with this simple proposition: every day we make choices of what to buy and where to buy it.
You buy a car perhaps once every five years, but every single day you have a chance to support the kind of world you want to live in. Budget is of course an issue for many. But a 10% shift in spending to small, sustainably run farms would reap huge benefits. Knowing your farmers and the effort they put into bringing a carrot or lamb chop to market makes you more aware of every element of food production. You can often taste the difference and you certainly value the food more when you serve it to friends and family. The product might even come with a story, a history (see Leahy Farm’s Milking Devons).
Wegman’s, an innovative retailer based primary in northern New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has not only been buying locally for years but is also running their own organic research farm. Imagine now that for every new store that Wal-Mart builds they also start up a 50-acre organic farm that delivers produce from less than five miles away vs. the 1,500-mile trek most produce makes in this country.
How Quickly Can We Adapt?
In a recent interview Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan said that food issues are today where environmental issue were in the 70s: We have a long way to go. But change often seems glacial and then all of a sudden it’s just ‘how we live’. Imagine now not recycling newspapers?
One accelerator for change may be a deadly pathogen—a food-borne illness—that truly terrifies people in the way that swine flu did earlier this year. The esoteric dynamics behind the recent financial meltdown were incomprehensible to most of us, but folks can readily understand that government regulation and testing has a direct and desirable impact on food safety and quality.
Other accelerators are consumer knowledge and fear of the unknown. For example, when consumer concern about synthetic bST drove Walmart to stop selling dairy products from cows treated with the hormone, the market for bST dried up.
What to Eat After Seeing Food Inc.?
Frankly, after seeing this film, the only thing that seemed safe at dinner was the bottle of wine. The main menu required far more attention. “Is the Berkshire pork chop from a small farm?” “How were the chickens raised?” “Are the vegetables organic?”
A trip to the supermarket may feel more fraught, more complicated. Or less so, if you start to search out locally produced food at your supermarket or, better yet, make a trip to a farmer’s market, or sign up for a share in a CSA. That way your food dollars have the greatest impact right at the source—with the farmer.
More Reading
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This is a great movie, brilliantly put together. It’s very appropriate for kids, too, at least any 8 years and older. It should be shown in schools and libraries and community centers around the country, and the good part is that it gives solid, concrete ways that people can address the problems.
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If Food Inc were required viewing for all members of Congress that would be useful as well. Solutions don’t have to be overly complex. But people have to look beyond 50 years of farm practice.
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I have yet to see the movie, and it may be because that question looms too large!? WE try to eat healthy, grow some of our own vegetable, and despite having 3 teens, try to avoid the typical “Chain” food eateries.
It’s hard though, and can be costly. “Organic” as a “standard” or a marketing piece is often in question as well. What is the true certification and assuredness that you’re not just being marketed to under the guise of “healthy”?!
I like Robert’s suggestion that schools integrate this into their programs. For a a couple of reasons! OMG the absolute “crap” that some of these schools are serving to our children is a crime and they need to be held more accountable for our children’s health and ability to function and learn through proper nutrition. Secondly, our children need to know they have choices, and be taught not just by the schools, but AT HOME too that eating healthy has exponential benefits.
Thanks for bringing this to new light David. We have a long way to go, but each step forward is just that!
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Solutions sometimes seem overwhelming especially if you think you’re going up against agribusiness.
But every meal is a chance to make a difference. Drive the extra two miles to a farm stand and load up for friends and family.
If you own acreage that is maintained primarily for its beauty but was at one time highly productive farmland, consider giving a young farmer a start. You’ll get a tax credit and lots of fresh produce to boot.
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[...] I particularly enjoyed his post: What to Eat After Seeing Food, Inc. [...]
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Great post. Thanks for the read.
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I just watched Food Inc. for the first time last night. Definitely worth watching. The segments I liked best were the segments about the chicken farmers and the segment on Monsanto. I was unaware that 90% of soybeans are genetically engineered, nor was I aware of the tactics Monsanto uses.
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Monsanto’s tactics are aggressive. In this country we have a history of saving and sharing seeds. Many question whether something so basic as food should be even receive patent protection. That said, the bigger concern is that we are so committed in this country to one kind of seed from a single supplier. Lack of diversity in Ireland and the potato blight caused the death of one million Irish and the migration of one million more. The total population dropped by 20-25% in a seven-year period.
Now Round-up ready Monsanto seed that truth be told requires less work for farmers and less tilling is being challenged by weeds that have adapted, like pig weed. More on that story here
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