Review: Food, Inc.

Documentary filmmakers have lots of options in how to approach a subject.

• You can turn yourself into an example of the subject and capture your own reaction, like Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me.
• You can interview lots of different people and show the story in their words, like Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis in King Corn.
• You can ask the “bad guys” on camera to explain themselves, like Michael Moore in … oh heck, you’ve heard of Michael Moore, you know what he’s done.

In Food, Inc., Robert Kenner went a different way. He drops a metaphorical ton of information on you, with a narration that is unabashedly activist in it’s anti-corporate-agriculture message.

Don’t blame (just) the farmers

Unlike most of the food movies that have come out in the last several years, Food, Inc. isn’t mostly about the food. Kenner makes the point that the food that comes out of the industrial agriculture system is the unavoidable consequence of how the system is set up. It’s the whole system that’s flawed.

Look at the labels in the supermarket, or the commercials on TV, and you’d think farms still look like they did in the early 20^th century: Red barns, silos, cows in the pasture. You can find those, but the vast majority of what Americans eat today comes from factories where the working conditions are so bad that none of the major manufacturers will let you film them.

Kenner tried to film a chicken operation. The day he showed up the farmer said he had been contacted by lawyers from “the company” who “suggested” that he shouldn’t let the cameras in. Kenner found one chicken farmer, Carole Morrison, who let the cameras in anyway because she was fed up with the conditions she was forced to keep. When the film came out Morrison lost her contract with Perdue and is now facing the loss of her family farm.

You don’t see what you don’t look for

One surprising inside look was the control room of a beef slaughtering operation. The operator proudly showed off a bank of video screens that allowed him to monitor lines in several locations around the country. From this one point, a single operator controls the speed of the production line at multiple plants in different states.

If you wonder how he can possibly see enough to know if he needs to slow down a line — or what he’s supposed to do if there are problems in two locations at once — you’re starting to understand how “efficiency” is leading directly to contaminated meat. Multiple current and former slaughterhouse workers explain how there simply isn’t enough time to properly handle the meat according to the guidelines that are supposedly in place.

The companies that run the slaughterhouses don’t want to see problems. And they work very hard to make sure their customers don’t look too closely at how things really work.

We don’t need no steenkin’ First Amendment

If things were really so bad, wouldn’t we be hearing about it from lots of former employees? You’d think so, except for two things.

First, slaughterhouses employ thousands of undocumented immigrants, and everyone knows it. So the employers work with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to schedule regular raids where a pre-determined number of workers — enough to look good on the news, but not enough to affect production — will be rounded up and arrested or deported. If an employee makes trouble, they’re rounded up in the next raid.

The other reason you don’t hear it is that it’s illegal to criticize food.

Go back and read that again. I backed up the DVD twice because I couldn’t believe I was hearing it right. In 13 states it is illegal to criticize food.

These states have passed various laws granting food exceptional protections against libel that seem to violate the first amendment. But to prove that, someone has to fight a case all the way to the Supreme Court. Ask Oprah Winfrey how well that works. On second thought, don’t bother. She doesn’t talk about the lawsuit, and won’t provide copies of her original statements to reporters.

In Colorado, it’s not just a civil matter, it’s criminal. You can go to jail for criticizing food.

Legaleze run amok

I’m sort of done with the movie review now. Summary: Go get it. Watch it. Be shocked and repulsed. (I haven’t even gotten into the whole revolving door from the FDA to Monsanto.) Now I want to go on a bit of a rant about that Colorado law.

Here’s the text of the Colorado law, followed by an explanation:

It is unlawful for any person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation or any servant, agent, employee, or officer thereof to destroy or cause to be destroyed, or to permit to decay or to become unfit for use or consumption, or to take, send, or cause to be transported out of this state so to be destroyed or permitted to decay, or knowingly to make any materially false statement, for the purpose of maintaining prices or establishing higher prices for the same, or for the purpose of limiting or diminishing the quantity thereof available for market, or for the purpose of procuring, or aiding in procuring, or establishing, or maintaining a monopoly in such articles or products, or for the purpose of in any manner restraining trade, any fruits, vegetables, grain, meats, or other articles or products ordinarily grown, raised, produced, or used in any manner or to any extent as food for human beings or for domestic animals.

Got all that? Okay, let’s see if I can break this down some.

• It is unlawful for any
  • person,
  • firm,
  • partnership,
  • association,
  • or corporation
  • or any servant, agent, employee, or officer thereof
• to
  • destroy
  • or cause to be destroyed,
  • or to permit
    • to decay
    • or to become unfit for use or consumption,
  • or to
    • take, send, or cause to be transported out of this state so to be destroyed or permitted to decay,
  • or knowingly to make any materially false statement,
    • for the purpose of
      • maintaining prices
      • or establishing higher prices for the same,
    • or for the purpose of limiting or diminishing the quantity thereof available for market,
    • or for the purpose of procuring, or aiding in procuring, or establishing, or maintaining a monopoly in such articles or products,
    • or for the purpose of in any manner restraining trade,
• any
  • fruits, vegetables, grain, meats,
  • or other articles or products ordinarily grown, raised, produced, or used in any manner or to any extent as food for human beings or for domestic animals.

So let’s take the relevant parts: “It is unlawful – for any person – to – knowingly make any materially false statement – for the purpose of in any manner restraining trade (of) any – meats.”

So for example if you are a vegan, and you say to someone in Colorado that “Eating meat will kill you”, there is a law on the books that can put you in jail. You might win your case if your statements were not “materially false”, but you’ll go broke trying to prove it.

I happen to like eating meat. But if someone wants to disagree with me they should be allowed to. And they shouldn’t have to be financially destroyed defending themselves for doing it.

That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the system.