I only recently started reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. is really the perfect companion film which touches upon and (perhaps) expands on the core themes of that book. This is a highly potent documentary – it is designed to stir emotions and thoughts – and it is not shy from advocating a specific agenda.
The basic premise of the narrative is thus – in the last 50 years, the rise of the fast food industry (and to a lesser extent, the massive retail chains) has led to a complete overhaul of food production. Practically everything we eat is now produced through a heavily consolidated and industrialized value chain; and virtually everything we buy in supermarkets can be traced back to one crop – corn. In this relentless drive for greater scale and lower costs, we have fundamentally altered the food we eat, and in the process created many new problems. For example, cattle traditionally eats grass, and when they are fed corn they develop digestive problems (as well as being a breeding ground for E. coli); in turn we pump them with anti-biotics, and all this is passed on eventually to the consumer, who bear the hidden costs with severe health issues and even sudden illness and death.
Furthermore, with massive consolidation in the industry, there is prevalent abuse of workers and farmers due to the mismatch in negotiating power. Agriculture heavy-weights such as Monsanto patent their seeds and actively sue farmers who keep seeds (and thereby infringe their patent); other companies abuse illegal immigrants by using them as cheap labor then allowing authorities to deport them.
The filmmakers contend that this is an industry that blatantly disregards consumers, workers, and its products. It’s an emotionally charged and visually shocking argument, with images of a lost infant (due to E. coli) and undercover footages inside hog slaughter houses. It is intentionally intimidating and leverages all the typical narrative tools available to documentaries.
On the whole, I really like this film. I think it makes a compelling argument. However, there are definitely issues large and small that beg further discussion (and I’d be very glad if this film stimulates debate on such an important topic). For example, one point the film advocates is to buy locally produced food, with the conventional wisdom that this is environmentally friendly. I’m not ashamed of myself being a “skeptical environmentalist”, so I’ll just go ahead point out that there are studies that show locally produced food may actually have a larger footprint (even this essay in support of local concedes this point).
A bigger point of debate is the issue of genetically modified food (GMOs). This used to be a favorite back in the day when I was a college debater, so I really can’t resist saying that the jury is still out, whether from a philosophical or practical point of view. Philosophically, you can argue that the only difference between artificial modification and natural evolution is the speed of which the change is achieved. Of course, with natural evolution the entire food chain has time to adjust to mutations; with artificial modification there could be severe unintended consequences, especially when the industry is so consolidated so a “revolutionary new product” can be rolled out in a matter of years and not centuries. Philosophically you can also argue that mankind has always been trying to change nature (indeed the whole history of mankind is such a tale), and modifying genes really isn’t that different from earlier agriculture techniques such as crossbreeding. Back in China, we’ve always celebrated Yuan Longping and his hybrid rice, which yields 30% higher than traditional seeds – which probably has done its part to alleviate food crises in China. Which brings us back to the original point – yes, it’s terrible that in the pursuit for higher yields at lower costs the food industry has created some serious issues; but this doesn’t mean that the pursuit for higher yields at lower costs itself is fundamentally wrong.
The issue is still one of regulation. it’s fine for the film to advocate organic foods etc., but for most people in the lower income class that will probably always be a luxury (unless of course you scale up organic food production, but that itself seems to be a vicious cycle – scaling it up will inevitably create the same problems we have today, i.e. lots of new production processes with unintended consequences and hidden costs). What we can and should advocate is effective regulatory response, so that consumers are protected.
8/10
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