¶ … Robert Kenner, Food, Inc. creates a lasting, shocking and deeply troubling portrait of the ugly, greed-based business of food production in America. One of the things that the film does extremely well is communicating the idea of "mass food production." While many Americans are aware in an abstract way that their food is mass produced, few have an accurate comprehension of what that means exactly. The film showcases this in an unforgettable fashion, with sweeping, aerial shots of miles and miles of cows standing inch deep in their own manure, endless rows of chickens -- chickens jammed so close to each other they can barely move, standing among corpses of other chickens -- long assembly lines of slaughtered pigs, hanging by one hoof. The film asks the spectator to bravely confront the realities, the ugly, unsanitary, greed-based and extremely dangerous realities of this type of food production.

The film is not merely an entreaty for a decent treatment of animals, though it does that memorably and effectively. The viewer is shown close-ups of chickens' eyes as they watch other chickens butchered, and hears the shrieks of pigs as they tumble, frightened and terrorized, to the...

The film also exposes the human exploitation that occurs, stemming from the gluttonous, insatiable and apathetic desire for money that big corporations possess. The film explains that working in a meat processing factory in the 1950's was a respectable job where you received a decent wage and good benefits. However, with big business' need to produce products in a faster, cheaper in larger quantities, working in a meat processing factory in America is like working in a sweatshop; workers have to operate at furiously fast speeds, creating the same movement over and over again for hours on end. The film shows big corporations like Tyson bullying farmers to the point where they strip them of any sense of self-respect and autonomy of being an entrepreneur, goading them to change their farming methods and buy new equipment these farmers can't afford. Food, Inc. effectively spells this out for you, with text on the screen stating that the average farmer has $500,000 worth of debt and makes $18,000 annually.
Food, Inc. shows daunting injustices of the food industry, some of which seem absurd. It clearly points to eerie overlaps in the Federal Justice system, such as the fact…