Food, Inc. As Its Title

¶ … Food, Inc.

As its title suggests, the film Food, Inc. is an expose of American, commercialized agriculture. Instead of a family farm producing and raising meat, milk, vegetables, and grains, our food system is based on mass production. Food is no longer simply 'food' but rather is a part of a massive industrialized system of corporate control embodied in the personas of Monsanto, Smithfield, Perdue, Tyson, and McDonald's. No aspect of the food system is free of such controls. The film is thus very much informed by the work of cultural critics such as Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore's Dilemma and Erich Schlosser, author of Fast Food nation, both of whom make appearances in the film.

What is particularly surprising about the film is the extent to which the American food system has changed so fast. During the 1930s and 1940s, independent farms were still a reality in many sections of the country. However mass production and fast food changed the way that food was produced and sourced. Fast food companies and conventional food retailers make up so much of the demand for food, they can dictate the terms of how it is produced, giving emphasis to speed and cheapness rather than health and ethics. Large meat retailers dictate to farmers how food will be grown and produced: what type of animals they will raise and how, and what type of crops they will raise (corn and soy vs. healthy fruits and vegetables, and genetically modified and commercially-produced Monsanto seeds vs. heritage and organic varieties).

This focus on standardization and mechanization is obviously disastrous for the health of the animals caught in the wheel of industrialized agriculture. One does not need to be a vegetarian to shudder at the unhealthy ways animals are processed to become food. For example, most beef cattle raised in the U.S. are 'finished' on corn. Because they are fed this unnatural diet far too young before they can digest such foods (to hasten the time to slaughter), they must be fed antibiotics. Antibiotics also enhances the growth of cattle but has led to a myriad of biological problems, including the explosion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Animals in factory farms are closely confined, subjected to constant stress as the result of their conditions and are fed an unnatural diet. This is in direct context to the natural methods of farming adopted by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. Salatin's farm is entirely self-sustaining. His cattle graze as they are rotated through paddocks; chicken peck for food in cow dung and create fertilizer. Salatin is the hero of a film that otherwise shows human being's complete depersonalization of the food system.

What is particularly tragic about the human-animal relationship portrayed in Food Inc. is the lack of choice humans have in terms of their food. Big Agra has biologically engineered animals through selective breeding to suit their own androcentric needs, rather than to honor the animal's needs. This includes breeding chickens with breasts so large they can hardly stand. Humans view animals as disposable commodities. And people have fewer and fewer options not to eat this 'engineered' meat and also to afford it.

The ideal situation for all animals raised in agriculture would be to live in the conditions of Polyface Farm. However, the solution to improve the lives of animals in the film is not an easy one. Although it would be nice if every film functioned like Salatin's, it would be difficult to feed the world's burgeoning population using such small-scale farming techniques, or at least to do so at the current cost of food. We will, the film suggests, have to allow food to cost more. But many families are already cash-strapped as it is, in terms of putting food on the dinner table. The film acknowledges this, showing how for some families shopping at Wal-Mart and buying inexpensive, processed foods such as corn-fed meats seem to be the only viable alternatives.

The 'answer' may well be to simply eat less meat -- eat as much ethically-produced meat as you can afford, which is likely to be vastly less than the mainstay of most American diets. While not every person feels healthy or comfortable with a vegan or vegetarian diet, the idea that meat is a necessary component of everyone's diet in large quantities, three or more times a day is a relatively recent one. In many food cultures, meat is a 'sometimes' food and seen as a condiment, not as the focus of the meal except on feast days. There is a reason that meat was often seen as the food of the rich. Unfortunately, this also means that if one is to eat ethically, the wealthier one is, the easier it is to be 'ethically pure' about the meat one consumes. Quite simply, the rich need to make fewer personal sacrifices than the poor to put pressure on the food companies to improve their farming practices.