A few years ago, this little movie called Food, Inc. came out and I didn't bother going to see it for whatever reason. It's a really interesting examination of the food system in America.
It goes through the history of how our current system came into place, and its effects - both on labor and the animals involved, and how huge some of the food companies really are. Just thinking about how animals are raised and seeing the way the industry handles these living creatures is kind of mind-boggling, and I think seeing footage is vastly different from just reading about it. It's strange realizing how many industry insiders are involved in even governmental oversight of our food systems.
This documentary is really well-rounded, too, and much less judgmental than, say, a secret video filmed by PETA or whatever. They keep things fairly balanced and the tone is very even-handed but it still feels to me - as a vegetarian - like sort of an indictment. Looking at a huge lot full of chickens that can barely walk and are stumbling all over each other is horrific, and animals constantly die on the floor of the house even though they're stuffed up with antibiotics. Their housing is unclean, and animals end up wading in their own feces.
They also go into depth about the preponderance of corn in our food, both as human and animal feed. A huge proportion of America's farmland is dedicated to corn and it's used for all kinds of things you wouldn't even suspect. One obvious example is how common high-fructose corn syrup is as a sweetener in absolutely everything, even thinks you wouldn't traditionally expect to be sweetened.
A lot of companies refused to even talk to the investigative journalists making the film, which doesn't bode well for them. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle over a hundred years ago, but it seems like - despite advances in technology and technique in raising animals - things have barely changed in some ways.
One of the worst things, to me, is learning about all these problems but being powerless to avoid them. My income fluctuates, and I can't always afford sustainable or organic foods, meaning I - like so many millions of Americans - am trapped in this system, locked into terribly produced foods with little other choice. There are just these entrenched economic interests, and even though we trust our government and the FDA/USDA to protect us they exercise their incredible financial and political leverage to override any meaningful oversight. You're constantly hearing about outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli that don't get recalled until well after people have died, rather than being caught and shut down at the source/ahead of time.
Here's the trailer:
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You can view the whole film on Netflix, streaming instantly. You can also buy the DVD or Blu-Ray version online at their site, and it also seems to be up on Youtube for a couple of bucks if you just want to watch it that way. If you Google a bit, you should be able to find it for free - I'm not sure if any links I find will be taken down in the future so I'll leave that up to you to find.
Have you watched this film, or read/watched any other books or films about America's food system? What do you think? If you live outside America, what are things like there?
