(Review for SBCC Journalism class – October 19, 2009)
Campbell Hall was all a buzz Thursday night, when UCSB’s Arts & Lectures Program kicked off it’s ‘09-’10 film series with “Food, Inc.” – a documentary by Robert Keener and Eric Schlosser that exposes the startling truths about how our food is made, and processed, and by whom.
The film begins with jovial Tyson chicken farmer, Vince Edwards, who, while driving by his farm, sniffs the air outside and smirks, “Smells like money to me!” The producers go on to reveal that the majority of our country’s food supply is controlled by only a few powerful companies whose goal it is to make food “faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper” for the sole purpose of putting more money in their pockets. These factory farmers are so focused on revenue that, among countless other despicable practices, they grossly mistreat animals and grossly forsake consumer health.
To maximize profits, these companies stuff their livestock into vast windowless spaces, force feed them unnatural diets, including growth hormones, and leave them to stand up to their thighs in manure. At one point Edwards says “If you can grow a chicken in 49 days, why would you want one you got to grow in 3 months?” Again, “faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.”
Two particularly brutal scenes that generated gasps from the audience were of fluffy yellow chicks on a conveyor belt that drops them several feet into a cardboard box, and of a cow so overfed and crippled it couldn’t stand up and needed to be moved for slaughter by a fork lift. During these and the many other scenes of the filth, cruelty and disease of factory farming, audience members cringed, gasped and cupped hands over their eyes in horror.
Conversely, there were almost as many hopeful and triumphant moments in “Food, Inc.” during which the audience laughed, clapped and cheered. In both extremes, the filmmakers did an outstanding job at making us feel.
Hands down, the highlights of the film were the appearances of Joel Salatin, an organic farmer who raises his livestock in open fields and feeds them grass. He was just the shot in the arm the audience needed when everything was looking bleak. Scenes showed the big strapping, big smiling Salatin touring his farm on a bright, beautiful, blue sky day, showing his cattle peacefully grazing in open fields, and him cleaning chickens in an immaculate stainless steel outdoor kitchen.
After all the ugliness that had been exposed in the first part of the film, Salatin was the knight in shining armor that helped “Food, Inc.” end on a high, optimistic note: “Imagine what it would be if, as a national policy [we had]… such nutritionally dense food that people actually felt better, had more energy and weren’t sick as much! Now that’s a noble goal!”
As much as Food, Inc. exposes the powerful companies that control our current food supply, it also empowers us as consumers to effect change and control our future food supply by buying only local and organic. Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Organic Yogurt, another highlight in the film, encourages us to “vote” when we shop: “When we run an item past the supermarket scanner we’re voting for local or not, organic or not.”
A self-proclaimed food snob, I have bought mostly organic for forever. But if buying strictly organic and local everything will help send a message to the greedy corporate giants and change the course of our nation’s food supply, count me in. Smells like progress to me.
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Food, Inc.
Producers: Robert Keener and Eric Schlosser
Running time: 97 minutes
DVD Release: November 3, 2009
Rating: PG
Information: foodincmovie.com
