Food, Inc.: Industrialization of Farming and Its Impact

Introduction: Where Does Our Food Come From?

The film Food, Inc., by award-winning documentary maker Robert Kenner, starts out with a simple goal: to find out where our food comes from. In his quest to answer this question, however, Kenner and his two narrators, Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, uncover unpleasant and startling facts about the way our food is raised, processed, and ultimately produced for mass distribution. Essentially, this widely discussed documentary exposes the negative impact that industrialization has had on farming, on our health, and on our environment. This paper proves these negative effects by referencing topics covered by the film, including what society should do in order to reverse the potentially irreversible damage that this system of food production threatens to cause.

Kenner opens the film with an important line of narration: "The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000." The film continues by noting that, despite this dramatic change, the images used to sell food are still the pristine depictions of agrarian America from over a hundred years ago — pictures of farmers, green grass, and picket fences that remain ever-present on the products we buy. However, this pastoral fantasy is only a fantasy. The reality, as the documentary makes clear, is quite gruesome.

With over 47,000 products on the shelves of the average supermarket, the apparent endlessness of choice and the absence of seasonality — especially for produce — is unsurprising. Tomatoes, for example, are available year-round, yet, as Pollan and Schlosser state, what looks like a tomato is only the "idea" of a tomato, most likely picked green and ripened with ethylene gas. Or consider the meat aisle, where bones are non-existent. When shopping in a supermarket, one does not necessarily question these things or find them unsettling, but as the film argues, there is a clear curtain between consumers and producers. The reason for this curtain is that the industry does not want consumers to know what they are eating, because if they knew, they might not want to eat these products.

Factory Farming and Corporate Consolidation

Meat, for example, is not produced on a farm but in a factory. The animals and workers are being exploited in these massive facilities, and the multinational corporations that control the system refuse to address these conditions. The sad fact is that multinationals control the entire food process, wield enormous power, and have little interest in having the full story told. Fast food is something that many of us have eaten at some point in our lives, yet how often do we stop to reflect on what we are actually consuming? The idea of a "rural" reality hidden from us, as Pollan states, is quite startling.

With the advent of fast food — which the film frames as the transition from "fast food to all food" — the factory system took over restaurant kitchens everywhere. Workers performed only one repetitive task and could therefore be paid far less. This is how McDonald's became a massive success in the 1950s, and thus the mentality of uniformity, conformity, and cheapness, which dominates today, also brought unintended consequences. Meat was no longer raised naturally but was engineered to grow faster and taste more consistent. The documentary shows chickens, cows, and pigs living in appalling conditions to accommodate consumer demand.

Due to this kind of production, only a handful of companies now produce the vast majority of our food. In the 1970s, the top five beef companies controlled only about 25% of the market. Today, just four companies — Tyson, Swift, Cargill, and National Beef — control over 80% of the market. This consolidation is not limited to beef; it applies equally to pork (Tyson, Swift, Cargill, and Smithfield) and chicken. Only three or four companies control the nation's meat supply, and these companies are extraordinarily powerful — perhaps the most powerful agribusiness entities in the history of the world, according to Pollan.

Tyson alone changed the way chickens are raised, with birds now being grown and slaughtered at twice the historical rate. A chicken in the 1950s was roughly half the size of a chicken today. Due to this accelerated growth — achieved in fewer than 50 days — a chicken often cannot support its own body weight and, as the documentary shows, will simply collapse and die. Food production is highly mechanized; products must taste identical and be uniform in size. The only priorities, according to a representative from the National Chicken Council, are producing large quantities of food on minimal land at the lowest possible price.

One Tyson grower in Kentucky manages over 300,000 chickens living in deplorable conditions and bluntly states that the only reason to want chickens that grow faster is "more money in your pocket." He casually notes that the chickens never see sunlight, and he eventually changes his mind about allowing the filmmakers inside his chicken coops. Only one participant — a female grower — actually shows the documentary crew inside her facility. What she reveals is deeply shocking. As she puts it, "It is nasty in here [the coop]; there is dust flying everywhere, there are feces everywhere… this isn't farming, it's just mass production like in a factory." She also reveals that antibiotics are administered to the chickens and allows the camera to film a Perdue pickup, which is always conducted at night because chickens are less resistant in the dark. Neither Tyson nor Perdue agreed to be interviewed for the film.

The catchers who collect the chickens are later shown being treated much like criminals. This same grower also illuminates the financial realities of owning a chicken house, which can cost up to $500,000 to build and operate. This is precisely how the large companies keep farmers under control — by withholding any say in business decisions, including how the chickens are raised.

Conclusion: Reversing the Damage

The documentary covers many different and important topics, all of which demonstrate the profound negativity of agricultural industrialization. At the end of the film, change is encouraged across all sectors of society. First, people must demand high-quality food. Consumers can also "vote" to change the system three times a day through their purchasing decisions, choosing companies that treat animals, workers, and the land with respect. They can choose foods that are in season and organic, read labels carefully, know what is in their food, and buy locally whenever possible. Citizens can also support legislation that would protect consumers and restore meaningful authority to the USDA and the FDA. These are all solutions that can help alleviate the threats facing our society — and we can contribute "with every bite."

Ultimately, Food, Inc. is a serious social commentary that documents the negative impacts of industrialization on our food supply and on our society as a whole. One review aptly described the film as having "a deceptively cheery palette," but noted that director Robert Kenner's documentary — which "does for the supermarket what Jaws did for the beach" — marches "straight into the dark side of cutthroat agri-business, corporatized meat and the greedy manipulation of both genetics and the law." This assessment is entirely accurate. The film is a powerful compilation of systemic failures, paired with a genuine roadmap for how those failures might be reversed. One can only hope that meaningful change begins sooner rather than later.