Posted on 07/31/2009 12:35:56 PM PDT by Gabz
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of dramatized horror-suspense, once told me that the greatest scares came in broad daylight, not in the dark. So it might be with "Food, Inc.," a documentary that opens our eyes to what we have been conditioned to feel was a "safe place" in life.
We still go to grocery stores that feature pictures of rustic farms that suggest Americana. We notice that a double cheeseburger is cheaper than broccoli. We are in a rush. We buy cheap and save time. We may be fooling ourselves.
"Food, Inc." shows the over-controlled world of food production, a stomach-churning expose of an America that has turned from farms to food-factories.
Directed by Robert Kenner, the much-discussed documentary has finally reached the local scene with its alarm bells ringing loudly. It indicates that we're eating dangerous, disgusting stuff while four major companies are eating the profits. Just four, according to this treatise.
In the '70s, some 70 companies controlled beef in this country. Today, four control more than 80 percent.
It's good business, but are there hidden costs?
A Virginia farmer, incidentally the most levelheaded and credible of the many talking heads in the film, states it most succinctly: "We have allowed ourselves to be so disconnected and disinterested about something so intimate as what we eat."
Shouldn't we be safe in our disconnectedness? While we're busy making a living, and living, shouldn't the government take care of this for us? Why should we even have to spend 90 minutes looking at a documentary on this subject? We pay our taxes.
The breakdown of very basic governmental controls of food regulations seems to be, or should be, at the center of "Food, Inc."
We're up against the big boys here in criticizing, or fighting if you choose, an industry that is enormously successful at what it does - feed the world. With "Food, Inc." coming out in the middle of a lingering recession, it has its work cut out for it, more than even before, in combating successful business.
The meat industry even took on Oprah Winfrey, suing her for her comments against hamburgers. Winfrey won the case, but only after a year and costs of more than $1 million.
At least in this film, there are some pointed suggestions of what we can do: Buy local, plant gardens and, most importantly of all, vote and be heard in favor of a government that will take care of this for us.
Kenner's treatment is straightforward. It admittedly is biased but out of necessity. The big four rejected offers to be interviewed.
Their defense, we guess, would be that of efficiency. However, efficiency at every turn creates problems. Someone claims that "we are hitting the bull's-eye at the wrong target."
Smithfield hog processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., identified as the largest slaughterhouse in the world, slaughters 32,000 pigs a day. Fifty years ago, it took 70 days to raise a chicken to become a fr yer. Today, it takes 48. Clearly, the companies see this as progress.
The poor chickens are engineered to, most of all, have fatter breasts and to grow fat quicker than their bodies can sustain, which means they, at times, can't stand up.
We need to turn away as we see a still-alive cow being scooped up in a forklift.
The American farmer is pictured as the most intelligent and successful food producer in the history of the world, and yet he is also pictured as presently under the control of his contractors. Farmers who try to save their own organic seed for planting, as opposed to those patented by Monsanto, are "investigated" by company men and arrested.
One, who fought back, spent $400,000, never getting to court. Faced with an additional $1 million in costs to pursue the case, he settled out of court. In shadows of the McCarthy era, another is forced to read the names of his customers who use the seeds that are not chemically treated. They, too, will ostensibly be arrested. "The list" means they are ruined. This is when the film becomes a good deal more than a food warning. It deals with control.
Corn becomes a major villain because we have been so successful in producing it and, subsequently, so busy in finding new ways to use it. One hundred years ago, the average farmer could produce 20 bushels of corn an acre. Today, he can produce 200 bushels on the same acre, we are told. Thirty percent of the land base in the country, according to the film, is planted in corn or soy beans. Overproduction is encouraged.
Most alarmingly, according to the film, cows, which evolved to eat grass, are fed corn, and E. coli disease is said to come as a result. We are shown a young boy named Kevin, who dies 12 days after eating three hamburgers. His mother campaigns to pass what is called Kevin's Law to regulate food processing, but she is afraid to speak on camera for fear of being sued for libel as a result of what she claims are "special" libel laws that protect the meat industry. Oprah Winfrey also knows about such laws.
It this film cause for alarm? At least it is cause for viewing. The emphasis in "Food, Inc." is on the "Inc."
Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com
Ping to the Gardener’s List.
Thought some of you might be interested in this “review” in light of some of the things we’ve been discussing in regard to the various farm bills and corporate farming.
And there you see the Socialist agenda. The message is that our food will be so much better once it is all produced on government owned collective farms.
Doesn't that say it all? Maybe a Beef Czar, a Pork Czar, a Corn Czar and a Seed Czar and then they can DO something about this!!
Yes, it IS a Michael Moore type film - in that it has a very strong bias and agenda.
Freedom and the free-market that these people hate so much have given us a dizzying choice of food, so much so that we are getting fat.
These lib elites hate fructose, for example - but why does fructose even exist? Because the Gov’t has insisted on trying to prop-up/control the sugar market and politically connected sugar processors for the last 50 years!
Can a conservative hate fructose too?
Can a conservative hate fructose too?
Yes, I hereby declare you may do so!
This is a bunch of hooey.
The recent deaths of people due to E. coli is because they ate meat contaminated with the fecal products of cattle. This is a standard result of the slaughter process and is not a problem if the meat is cooked properly. Rare hamburgers are a bad idea.
It can be argued that feeding cattle on corn is not a good idea, but it doesn't create new strains of bacteria. The basic issue is that while all mammals have E. coli in the intestines, humans don't do well when they ingest some of the varieties carried by cattle, deer, etc.
Can I keep my fructose in my - Fresh Apples, Pears, Corn, Grapes, Figs, Yams, Beets, Bananas and on and on?
I don’t know why we conservatives leave this sort of awareness to the liberals so they get the reputation for being green and health conscious.
Follow the money trail to understand government corruption.
Whatever probems this may cause, the government will never take a hand in their solution; on the contrary, with the inheritance tax quickly eliminating the traditional American family farm, corporate interests are sure to make rapid progress in co-opting to an even greater extent all food production in the United States.
Moreover, with the major food corprations maintaining huge lobbying firms and making consistent and maximal contributions to election funds, our bought-and-paid-for legislators can be counted on only to fall into line with whatever policies they’re told to establish and keep in place.
These people are nuts.
Corn IS grass; corn kernels are grass seeds.
Cows can’t eat grass; their gut isn’t able to digest it, so they grow a huge population of symbiotic bacteria that DO “eat” grass, and feed them the grass.
The bacteria then pass their byproducts, which the cow can digest, along to the next stop along the digestive tract.
Yea, cause that's worked out sooooo well in the past.
Idiot.
It's been over 10 years since her libelous remarks. Where is the so called American mad-cow?
Not all meat is bad and not all veggies are safe. Ecoli scares hit the produce world all the time.
And when it comes to overprocessed foodstuffs, fake “vegan” meat substitutes are completely “unnatural” no matter what is used to make the foodstuff paste and preserve it.
my ultimate goal is to acquire a place of my own where I can raise enough food for myself and my family...since I moved to the city a number of years ago, I have very rarely drank milk or eaten beef...mainly this is because it does not come close to the sort that I was raised on...oh that I could provide the same good food for my children...
You can also get a butcher to grind up any cut of meat at the shop fresh. You may be less likely to get fecal or brain matter mixed in with your meat that way.
Unless the Left wants to make the charge that steaks are also contaminated meat.
Robert Lockwood Junior was a bluesman. He grew up in America. He was raised by Robert Johnson and learned guitar from Charlie Patton.
He lived into his 90s and continued to tour and perform.
A reporter asked him what the secret to his longevity was. He said that he didn’t eat that crap you city folks get at the store, he went to Amish country to get unadulterated meats and dairy products.
If you are in the right location, you may not need to run the farm yourself to still get foods that adhere to the old methods.
believe me...Floriduh is not the right location...except for citrus in the winter time...and if you get far enough south for mangoes as well...
Steaks can indeed be contaminated and grinding it up can make a non-problem into a problem. Here’s why.
A steak may have the problematic bacteria on the outside of the meat as a normal part of the butchering process. Nobody has to have been sloppy or anything. It just happens.
Cook that steak, even very rare, and the bacteria on the outside, exposed to direct heat, are quickly killed.
Grind that same steak up, and some of the bacteria formerly on the outside are now on the inside. Make a patty out of this same meat and cook it rare, and you may not kill some of the bacteria that are now on the inside.
Result: potentially fatal dysentery.
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