Food, Inc. is a documentary about the food industry in the US. I knew I'd see things like overcrowded chicken coops and cows eating corn instead of the grass that they really need to eat but there were even more disturbing parts then that (although I will never look at large breasts of chicken as a good thing anymore) such as poor people in North Carolina working for a chicken company and having a contract with them but these people are indebted to the company and can never break even much less have a decent living. It reminded me of The Grapes of Wrath and how the Joad family worked in the field on their way to California but by the time they purchased their equipment, they already owed the owners their first few checks. This still exists?!?
Another part of the movie was about Monsanto, a company who came up with a genetically altered soybean seed that grows bigger or faster or is somehow different and better than any other soybean seed. They interviewed one Indiana farmer who still planted more traditional soybean seeds but is surrounded by neighbors who plant Monsanto seeds and which blow into his field. Monsanto, because the seed is patented, has the farmer sign a contract that he won't wash the seeds (I'm assuming this is to reuse them but I'm just a city girl) but this farmer got caught washing Monsanto seeds that had mixed in with his "regular" ones so not only did he get in trouble but so did the seed washer (I can't believe this is an actual job title nor do I know how they spotted theirs vs the other guy's seed). The deposition of the seed washer with Monsanto's lawyer was heartbreaking to watch. Pretty much everyone had to settle out of court, not because they were in the wrong but because they couldn't afford to fight it. The only person that could fight an industry of this size is Oprah when the Texas cattle ranchers sued her for saying she will never eat another hamburger and that took years and millions of dollars (and they did mention that a bit in the movie). Much like with the chicken company in North Carolina, even though the land belongs to the man, the company owns the land and hence, the man.
Sidenote: Monsanto's website does have "rebuttals" or explanations of things that appeared in this movie but I always read this with a huge grain of salt. If it wasn't true, I don't think the movie could have been made and released in the first place especially now that I see how they operate (i.e., lawsuits).
Thankfully it is holiday season so I can cleanse all of this from my system for 2 hours as I watch hopeful movies like Elf or Love Actually (my favorite) and figure out a way to learn where all my food comes from so I can avoid such companies and play the lottery so I can not only build 'Welcome To
7 comments:
I'm lucky I guess. I grew up on a small beef farm, so I always knew exactly where the meat was coming from.
I would be perfectly acceptable if we all went back to raising our own foods. However, I'm probably sure that the same people who make these films wouldn't be as happy about having to make their own tofu. With everything comes a price, even the food in supermarkets.
TC - You didn't name the cows, did ya? ;-)
Ed - Doesn't tofu originate from the soybean which may or may not originate from a Monsanto soybean seed? I'm going to have to trace back my tofu too!
Hi. Popped in from Ed's.
I must say I agree with your introduction regarding the nature of "horror." Slasher movies aren't it, per se, but I'm reminded of something someone wrote about what constitutes "literary horror," for want of a better phrase. S/he suggested that, seeing a woman with live vipers for hair for example was not horrific, but seeing your mother with live vipers for hair would be. The suggestion is that it is the familiar, the mundane, the comfortable or comforting, twisted into the frighteningly profane, which constitutes horror.
In the case of Schindler's List, especially as a representation of the Holocaust, the fact that it was orchestrated by one of the nominally most civilized, cultured and tolerant of European societies, especially when considering the pogroms of Eastern Europe or the Dreyfus Affair in France, that was truly frightening. It demonstrates that the capacity for evil exists in all humans as "potential evil," if you will, waiting only for the correct catalyst to release it.
Cheers.
The movie sounds interesting... Larger isn't always better--something we've not yet learned.
Some tofu does. I actually like the stuff especially stir fried with big breasted chicken!
The COWS yes, the calves no. See, we kept breeding the cows, so they stuck around for many years. But the calves we usually sold most of the heifers, and castrated the bulls to raise the steers for meat. So I learned by like 3 or 4 to not get too attached.
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