I heard about Food, Inc. while shopping at my neighborhood co-op. I expected an indictment , but I hadn't thought the images would horrify me so utterly. I wished our society collectively had higher regard for the source of our food.
If you can't stomach hidden camera shots of industrial killing floors and mass production of animals for slaughter, skip to the segments that explore ways the four largest U.S. food corporations control farm production. Some farmers never catch up with the commensurate borrowing they must do to keep their buyers. It sounds much like indentured servitude.
Animals, farmers, and workers suffer at the behest of major corporate players. Corporations recruit illegal immigrants for dangerous factory work. Then they appease immigration by allowing deportation of some of them, as long as workers are banished in small enough numbers production doesn't slow. The scenes in the documentary show fifteen workers at a time hauled out of their trailers by night.
The film proposes that as consumers we have the power to vote by purchase. In recent years consumers have voted with their dollars. When ConAgra acquires an organic yoghurt company, it's a good guess there's consumer interest in organic yoghurt. The more people buy organics, the more people support important principles of growing and manufacturing safe food.
We all recall the widely publicized beef e-coli or spinach salmonella outbreaks in the past several years, but click on http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FSIS_Recalls/Open_Federal_Cases/index.asp to find out where beef was recalled several days ago. Unless we proactively look for such updates we may not even know about recalls that occur every few days.
That's how "76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illnesses." These are U.S. Center for Disease Control statistics.
What is the problem here? Could it be that cows are herbivores and farm factories are fattening them quicker on corn and that makes them increasingly prone to e-coli? It certainly doesn't help that cows enter slaughterhouses jammed together covered in feces? Can we expect yesterday's agribusiness executive who holds the top position at the US Department of Agriculture to protect us from foodborne illness or the industry from incurring expenditure?
A handful of U.S. companies controls our food production, and a mind-boggling variety of products on grocery store shelves is an illusion. Variety masks not only the behemoth food giants but a sameness of contents. Corn is not only the predominant ingredient in animal feed; it's present in all sorts of derivatives and additives that we find in ketchup, cheese, peanut butter, salad dressings, Coca-Cola, juice, Kool-Aid, Twinkies, and of course, meat--to name a few products.
If you can't stomach hidden camera shots of industrial killing floors and mass production of animals for slaughter, skip to the segments that explore ways the four largest U.S. food corporations control farm production. Some farmers never catch up with the commensurate borrowing they must do to keep their buyers. It sounds much like indentured servitude.
Animals, farmers, and workers suffer at the behest of major corporate players. Corporations recruit illegal immigrants for dangerous factory work. Then they appease immigration by allowing deportation of some of them, as long as workers are banished in small enough numbers production doesn't slow. The scenes in the documentary show fifteen workers at a time hauled out of their trailers by night.
The film proposes that as consumers we have the power to vote by purchase. In recent years consumers have voted with their dollars. When ConAgra acquires an organic yoghurt company, it's a good guess there's consumer interest in organic yoghurt. The more people buy organics, the more people support important principles of growing and manufacturing safe food.
We all recall the widely publicized beef e-coli or spinach salmonella outbreaks in the past several years, but click on http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FSIS_Recalls/Open_Federal_Cases/index.asp to find out where beef was recalled several days ago. Unless we proactively look for such updates we may not even know about recalls that occur every few days.
That's how "76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illnesses." These are U.S. Center for Disease Control statistics.
What is the problem here? Could it be that cows are herbivores and farm factories are fattening them quicker on corn and that makes them increasingly prone to e-coli? It certainly doesn't help that cows enter slaughterhouses jammed together covered in feces? Can we expect yesterday's agribusiness executive who holds the top position at the US Department of Agriculture to protect us from foodborne illness or the industry from incurring expenditure?
A handful of U.S. companies controls our food production, and a mind-boggling variety of products on grocery store shelves is an illusion. Variety masks not only the behemoth food giants but a sameness of contents. Corn is not only the predominant ingredient in animal feed; it's present in all sorts of derivatives and additives that we find in ketchup, cheese, peanut butter, salad dressings, Coca-Cola, juice, Kool-Aid, Twinkies, and of course, meat--to name a few products.
I won't even get started on genetically modified ingredients, contained in 70% of our processed foods.
Watch the eye-opening film instead. Further information can also be found at:
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
