Food, Inc., a searing expose and engrossing documentary of the food industry based on Michael Pollan’s An Omnivore’s Dilemma, is a real tearjerker. Seriously. I teared up about five times, including:
- When Mexican immigrants who were recruited by Smithfield Foods to work in the world’s largest slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, NC (butchers 32,000 pigs a day!) are dragged out of their trailers in handcuffs at 4am by authorities who were tipped off by (surprise) Smithfield Foods, who use immigration raids to discourage unionization.
- When an elderly seed cleaner in Indiana is hounded out of business by agribusiness giant Monsanto, who views the centuries-long practice of seed cleaning as a threat to the patent of their genetically modified soy seeds and relentlessly harasses small farmers with lawsuits and intimidation.
- When a dogged food safety advocate discusses how her 2-year son hemorrhaged to death after eating a hamburger tainted by e-coli, a virus that breeds in a cow’s stomach when it is feed grain instead of grass (which, of course, most cows are nowadays in order to fatten them quickly and cheaply).
- When a Hispanic family who eats Burger King hamburgers for breakfast laments their ability to buy fresh vegetables because dad’s diabetes medication costs too much. Why does a hamburger cost 1 dollar yet a pound of broccoli costs $1.99?
- When a hidden camera at the Smithfield slaughterhouse captures the terrified squeals of pigs on the killing floor.
Everyone in America should see Food, Inc., and be forced to contemplate what has become of their food supply. This movie is more disturbing than King Corn, Fast Food Nation, and Super Size Me put together. Yet it’s not an angry, ranting movie. The filmmakers are merely lifting the “veil” that’s been placed over the American food supply and showing us its disturbing imagery. The fact that Food, Inc. is shocking and disgusting is, in itself, shocking and disgusting.
