Food, Inc.
Crit
A sort of Inconvenient Truth for the gastrointestinal system and the food chain, and nearly as disturbing, which is to say nearly as good, and structured much the same: a series of intellectual left jabs and right crosses punctuated by the occasional emotional knockout punch.
The film admirably demonstrates that food giants treat their workers (largely illegal immigrants with zero political leverage) just as humanely as they do the animals they cram into tiny quarters and stuff with hormones and food for which the animals aren't evolved to digest. Oh, and us? Well, we get to ingest feces carrying e-coli.
In a sort of mantra of frustration, we are told that "[Giant corporation] refused to interviewed for this film," Tyson, Perdue, Smithfield, and Monsanto serially filling the blank. All are cited for examples of corporate bullying, of course, but none as jaw-dropping as Monsanto's successful legal efforts against farmers who never bought or planted the company's patented soybean seed but whose neighbors did, thus resulting in fields contaminated with pollen carrying Monsanto DNA, the seed bearing which the farmers then had the temerity to clean and plant. Huh? you're saying. Right.
The quintessential remark from the film, which applies to so many examples of public policy and personal behavior, is delivered by a hands-on chicken, beef, and pork farmer, who observes that we are amazingly skilled at "hitting the bull's-eye of the wrong target." Oh, ain't we, though?
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