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Food, Inc.

If you ever get an email entitled “The Birth” from a friend, delete it as quickly as you can. I know that the birth of your child is the most special moment in your life, but trust me, it is not quite so beautiful for everyone else, especially if you are having an at home water birth, which my friend’s wife was having. The first photo in the set was that of the happy couple in something that resembled a kid’s plastic inflatable swimming pool that could be found in almost any backyard across the nation. A hippy-looking character stood behind them. I don’t want to go into detail about what was in the photos but let’s just say I can never eat Lipton’s cup of soup again. After several pictures of the loving couple holding their new child, the last one in the bunch was a close up of the placenta. Puzzled, at that very moment my friend called and asked me if I had looked at the pictures yet. I mentioned that I was just looking at them and, to this day, I wish I could take the next few words back, “Um, why did you take a picture of the placenta, just wondering?” I am a creative person but not creative enough to make up what came next. My friend said, “The midwife is going to dry it out and then grind it up into supplement pills.” I know that each word he just spoke was English, but for some unknown reason the sentence made no sense to me, so I asked him to repeat it to me again. The same words followed by the same reaction on my part. Then I thought maybe he was joking. The guy is one of those pretty boys, so he has never had to develop a sense of humor, but it was not a joke. It seems that this is common place, that the placenta is rich with vitamins, minerals, and 100 percent natural. I replied that so was my urine but I don’t drink that. Being accused of being narrow minded, he gave me a pamphlet to read. The fact that someone wrote a pamphlet about this is kind of concerning to me, but I read the thing. A week later, my friend rang and the first thing he asked is if I had learned anything. I replied that I had, that I was never eating at their house again.

The documentary Food, Inc. makes you never want to eat a lot of things again. For the weak of stomach, this film is extremely graphic with footage from packing plants and poultry sheds. It should be noted that this is an advocacy film, not a fair and balanced look at our current food supply system. Much of the same ground has been covered in more famous works such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Filmmaker Robert Kenner almost admits this debt by crediting the two authors, Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. Kenner’s goal is to show us that the cozy relationship between corporations and the government often is not beneficial to the consumer. This interaction between the two has allowed corporations to not only enjoy corporate welfare and but also exploit the laws to their advantage. Some of these conglomerates, such as Walmart, Monsanto, Tyson, Smithfield and Con Agra have even been able to create almost near monopolies often at the expense of small farmers and producers. This relationship taints both Republican and Democrat politicians. Hence, a trip to the supermarket or our favorite fast food joint is not as safe as it should be. E-coli, listeria, bse, campylobacter, salmonella and possible “super bugs” have grown resistant to antibiotics.

How did all these dangers get in our food supply? I blame the centralization and industrialization of production. With our reliance on factory farming, in order to bring so many animals so close together, an over reliance on antibiotics is needed. Other chemicals such as steroids are needed. To save on costs, hygiene and health standards are often overlooked in slaughterhouses and processing plants. Sick and “downer” animals are slaughtered. Our crops are grown and our food is produced in countries where health and safety standards allow for widespread contamination.

In many ways this film is an agricultural version of the documentary The Corporation. Since the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people have bought into the notion that governmental regulations are bad, that government is never the solution and always the problem, that unregulated business will always do what is best for themselves and the consumer. We are a nation of self-made men. At least that is the myth we tell ourselves. The truth is much more complicated. We have always had big government with us. It is big government that built the Erie Canal. Big government came in and moved often peaceful Indian tribes off their lands and provided the troops to protect those often violating the treaties we signed with these nations. Big government gave millions of acres of public land to the railroads. Big government financed the interstate highway system and provided the revenue that built the industrial heart of this country during World War II. Big government has invaded foreign countries that were no threat to us to protect the economic interests of fruit companies, rubber manufacturers, mining corporations, and oil conglomerates. It has never been a question of big government or no big government, but what kind of big government we have and who benefits from it. Through recent problems with tainted spinach, peanut butter, pet food, and contaminated toys, the question one needs to ask is “whose interest is big government, through laws passed and regulations often overlooked, trying to protect, the common man or major corporations. As we have discovered recently, what is good in the short term for GM and Wall Street, is not always good for America.

Everything this documentary details, including the corporate secrecy, is true, but one needs to take a step backward and look at our current food supply system compared to the past. On my desk is a picture of the main street of my hometown from the turn of the 20^th century, typical small town Americana, right out of Disney central casting, but something always bothered me about the picture. One day it hit me, it was the grocery store with it’s barrels and a pallet of lutefisk (lye-soaked codfish for those of you lucky enough not to have experienced it) sitting in front of it. There was a dog doing what dogs do right on the lutefisk. You know someone bought that fish and that could not be good. People forget that the major reason the United States Department of Agriculture was founded was to protect the consumer. Tainted food was commonplace at that point in our history. We were known as the “alcoholic republic” in our early days, not because we enjoyed partying but because our water was filled with bacteria and milk killed people. Raw meat and rotting fruits and vegetables sat in the sun for hours waiting for someone to buy them. There was no quality control. People died and got sick all the time from what they ate. Our slaughterhouses were true nightmares to behold, just read “The Jungle” by Sinclair Lewis. There has never been and there will never be a time when what we eat is 100 percent safe. Problems will always exist in how we get what we eat.

In our concern about the safety of the food we eat, we can go overboard. While there are real issues, the sky is not falling. Better governmental oversight can take care of most of the problems. Just because there are chemicals in something that goes into our mouth does not make it dangerous. Not everything that is natural is good for us and sometimes is darn right dangerous. Our food supply and the safe guards we should implement are like my friend and his wife. Almost every time I tell the above mentioned story, most people have the same reaction. They get a perplexed look and say, “That can’t be good for you.” It is that same common sense that we need to have when it comes to what we eat and how we get the food to market.

Verdict: Okay