About 80% of the Beef Supply Is Controlled by Only Four Companies. List Them.
Film Description
American agriculture has in many respects been the green-eyed of the world. U.S. agri-business consistently produces more food on less state and at cheaper toll than the farmers of any other nation. What could possibly be wrong with that? According to the growing ranks of organic farmers, "slow nutrient" activists and concerned consumers cited in the new documentary Nutrient, Inc., the answer is "plenty." As recounted in this sweeping, shockingly informative documentary, sick animals, environmental degradation, tainted and unhealthy food and obesity, diabetes and other health issues are simply the more obvious bug with a highly mechanized and centralized organisation that touts efficiency -- and the depression costs and high profits that result from it -- equally the supreme value in food production.
Less obvious, according to Food, Inc., is the entrenchment of a powerful group of food producers, that sets the conditions under which today's farmers and food workers operate, in club to maximize profits. The industry likewise maintains a revolving door of employment for government regulators and legislators to protect its power to set those conditions. Then in that location is "the veil," a foreign disconnect -- propagated in good part by millions of dollars poured into marketing and lobbying by the industry -- between the average American and the food he or she eats. Every bit i chicken industry representative puts it, "In a way nosotros're not producing chickens; we're producing food."
Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. has its American broadcast premiere as a special broadcast on Wednesday, Apr 21, 2010 at 9 p.m. on PBS as role of the 23rd season of POV (Point of View), American television's longest-running independent documentary series. POV is the recipient of a Special Emmy for Excellence in Goggle box Documentary Filmmaking.
For all the dazzling technological innovations of American nutrient production, there are many people who would ask, "Merely is it food?" In add-on to graphically detailing animal cruelty, environmental despoliation and economic monopolization, the film Food, Inc. too questions whether the industrial system produces the nutritious, health- and life-sustaining stuff we call nutrient.
To discover the answer, filmmaker Kenner marshals mountains of data, vérité visits to production sites and footage of meat-packing operations secretly shot by workers, plus eye-opening testimony from farmers, workers, consumer advocates and the few industry people willing to speak in their own defense. Food, Inc. also features the on- and off-screen guidance of Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore'south Dilemma) and such practitioners of organic, sustainable farming as Joel Salatin of Virginia's Polyface Farms, to warn that the nutritional value of American food products is increasingly in doubt. More than alarmingly, many of these products, including candy foods, fresh meat and produce, pose existent dangers to public wellness and prophylactic. "The average consumer does not experience very powerful," says Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farms, the third largest yogurt provider in the country.
Maryland chicken farmer Carole Morison risks potential retaliation from the visitor to show the filmmakers what no other Perdue farmer would -- what antibiotics, high-tech breeding and overcrowding are doing to the nation'south chickens.
The Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield companies -- whose business practices are examined in Food, Inc. -- all declined to tell their side of the story to the filmmakers. These companies also use their economic clout to discourage farmers and workers from showing their operations or speaking about their experiences with corporate farming. These four companies, equally a result of corporate consolidation, constitute a huge share of the "seed-to-fork" American nutrient production market. (In the 1970s, the pinnacle five beef packers controlled only 25 percent of the marketplace; today, the top iv control more than than 80 percent. Smithfield'southward Tar Heel, Due north.C., establish is now the largest slaughterhouse in the world.)
One time Food, Inc. begins penetrating the industry's marketing -- family farm images, hyper-perfect food photos, health claims and bewildering make arrays (that all lead back to the same few producers and, in the case of processed foods, to the aforementioned few ingredients) -- its food-gone-bad tales are so numerous that they threaten to overwhelm. But the filmmakers carefully craft a fast-paced narrative that is informative and moving, too as infuriating. Colorful, easy-to-grasp graphics support on-screen testimony, and despite the often grim price of animal cruelty, man sickness and economic pressures unflinchingly recounted past Food, Inc., the film is driven by the brighter visions of the activists and alternative businesses that are leading the movement to brand American food reliably safe and nutritious.
The film includes interviews non only with Schlosser, Pollan and Salatin, but as well with people similar Barbara Kowalcyk, whose two 1/2-twelvemonth-sometime son, Kevin, ate a hamburger and died 12 days later from
E. coli. She then investigated the facts of a beef industry whose drive for efficiency and turn a profit has increased the incidence of Due east. coli, and she has since go a food safety abet, fighting to restore to the USDA its ability to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meats.
Maryland chicken farmer Carole Morison is disgusted enough with the brute-raising practices forced on people like her by corporations like Perdue that she risks potential retaliation from the company to evidence the filmmakers what no other Perdue farmer would -- what antibiotics, high-tech breeding and overcrowding are doing to the nation'due south chickens. Morison subsequently lost her contract when she refused the company'due south demand that she completely enclose her chicken houses, leaving her with few economic alternatives. She is left because the worst-case scenario: selling the family unit farm.
Kentucky chicken-raiser Vince Edwards, a Tyson contractor, approves of the corporate method. "The craven industry came in here and it'southward helped this whole customs out," he says, "and it's all a science. They got it figured out... If you lot could grow a chicken in 49 days, why would you want i y'all gotta grow in three months? More money in your pocket." Simply many farmers are forced to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to come across corporate requirements for efficient facilities while catastrophe up earning every bit picayune as $18,000 a year.
Seed cleaner Moe Parr explains how, afterwards 25 years of practicing a merchandise that goes back to the origins of farming, he found himself ane of the few seed cleaners left in Indiana -- and squarely in the sights of the behemothic agribusiness visitor Monsanto. The company sued Parr for offering a service that might aid a farmer save seeds, in possible violation of the contract a farmer must sign when he buys the company's patented seeds and herbicide system. Parr ultimately could not afford to defend himself against Monsanto's deep pockets and was driven out of business.
From a large, working family, struggling to keep their kids fed while plagued by the health costs incurred by the male parent's diabetes, we larn that a McDonald's double cheeseburger -- fabricated from cows fed regime-subsidized and East. coli-prone corn diets -- costs less than a head of broccoli. Says Troy Roush, vice president of the American Corn Growers Association. "In the United States today, 30 percentage of our state base is beingness planted to corn. That'southward largely driven by government policy, government policy that, in effect, allows the states to produce corn below the cost of product.
The truth of the matter is, we're paid to overproduce and it was caused by these large multinational interests... And the but reason we feed [cows] corn is considering corn is really cheap and corn makes them fat chop-chop."
Food, Inc. is a powerful, startling indictment of industrial nutrient production, revealing truths about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have get as a nation and where nosotros are going from here.
"Eric Schlosser and I had been wanting to practise a documentary version of his book Fast Food Nation, says director Kenner, "and, for 1 reason or another, information technology didn't happen. By the time Food, Inc. started to come together, we realized that nigh of the food in the supermarket had go industrialized just like fast nutrient. And then we realized there'due south something going on out at that place that supersedes foods. Our rights are being denied in ways that I had never imagined. And it was scary and shocking.
"But things tin modify in this country," he adds. "It changed confronting the big tobacco companies. We accept to influence the government and readjust these scales back into the interests of the consumer. We did it earlier, and we can exercise it over again."
Food, Inc. is a production of Participant Media and River Road Entertainment, distributed past Magnolia Pictures.
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A public performance license is required for all screenings held exterior of your abode. If you're interested in hosting a public screening of Food, Inc., we've negotiated a reduced license charge per unit through Swank Motion Pictures. Please telephone call (800) 876-5577 or email Donna Telephone call at dcall[at]swank.com for more information. Be sure to ask for the special POV rate.
Source: http://archive.pov.org/foodinc/film-description/
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