A friend told me about the documentary "Food Inc" and recommended that I watch it. What a crock of shit that was. Seriously I can't think of a single motive behind the production of the damn thing beyond promoting a return to an archaic system of production and business. I really wonder how much the SEIU contributed to the production budget. The film talks about the need for more unions and seriously glamorizes, of all things, the auto unions. What the hell do you think has driven the American auto industry to near bankruptcy? And now we want to do that with the food supply? They talk about subsidizing organic and natural foods. Fuck that.
The current methods of farming and production have kept Americans well fed, and provided Americans with one of the lowest cost to income ratios for food in the world.
And it's not just Americans. Much of the world has benefited from the current methods of food production, and the world's population could not be sustained by "going back to the old ways." Is anyone complaining about going to a store and paying $3.00 a pound for meat? I am pretty sure that everyone would complain about paying $13... If you have a problem with the system, but "organic." Buy "free range." But don't try to vilify the system that keeps food on the table for a couple hundred million Americans and billions of people worldwide.
Farming is not "pretty," farming is not "glamorous," and farming is not something that most people want to see. As the grandson of a corn, wheat, and cattle farmer, I have seen the system in action and I know that it works. It may not be pretty, but it works.
And the "organic farmer" in the film was a joke. Some old hayseed hippie ranting about the way that things should be, and how he feels about the animals. Screw his cattle, I want a steak, NOW. Screw his pigs, I want some bacon, NOW. And last but not least, screw him. The thought that just because he wants to live in harmony with nature, I should overpay for beef, pork, and eggs?
Laughable.
His desire to not be "the biggest," and to care about his animals and the land...
The world isn't a damn Disney movie, and the "old ways" were left behind for a reason.
The film's attacks on the Bush administration were truly LOL funny. Give me a fucking break. There hasn't been a president in my lifetime who has argued heavily for increased regulation of food production...
My heart aches for lady in the film who lost her son to E-Coli. No parent should lose a child like that. I lost a brother when I was 13. He was 12. It hurt like hell... But, I heard nothing about PROPERLY COOKING FOOD mentioned in her arguments. Preparing a hamburger "well done" kills E-Coli. Plain and simple. 73,000 people have infections from E-Coli every year, and only 61 people die. The young are more susceptible, as are the elderly, but at the end of the day cooking food properly would have saved him.
As for fast food. Another instance of "give me a fucking break." The film states that fast food companies are "engineering food" and that Americans have very little choice.
FUCK THAT
Americans have massive amounts of choice.
Type-2 Diabetes : Put Down The Soda. The family makes the comment "the soda is so cheap." Yeah, water runs from my tap for a very low price. I bet that it comes from their tap at a similar low rate.
Monsanto... The company patented a genetically engineered strain of bean that produced a higher yield. They spent MILLIONS developing a specific strain of the bean that was resistant to pesticides and disease, and it is their property. I love the comparison to Microsoft, as if somehow that is a bad thing. Microsoft is a company that has developed a product that a majority of users willingly choose as the best on the market. They have made billions as a result of that production. If Monsanto is "monopoly" then they can be sued by the government. And yet somehow they have not. Perhaps it's because people can choose to not use Monsanto's product. They can buy and plant whatever seed they please.
The hippie who owned the organic food company made a point that I think fits best. "We had to prove that we were profitable." This ass sold out to Dannon, and he is somehow going to bash people who sold out to Coke, Colgate, Johnson & Johnson, etc... What a freaking hypocrite. He's sitting there talking about how bad large producers are, and in the same shot he is going to talk about a multi billion dollar deal with WalMart? And that's where this whole "natural" movement will fail.
People want to profit. Enough people want to profit that they are going to chose to work towards the most profitable end result. And at the end of the day, the "old way" is not profitable.
Oddly enough, I buy my food from a locally owned market. One of those things that I do to support a local business that I feel best represents my interests, and the interests of my community. And I buy locally grown produce when possible.
I do not "look for" organic, and for the most part I do not make any effort to buy organic. If you want to, good for you.
But to make a film indoctrinating people with the idea that somehow large farming operations are evil, and to not provide a single counterpoint is just ridiculous.
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