I just went to see Food, Inc. , the newest documentary on the food industry.  I munched on popcorn through the previews but once the movie started I swung too quickly between wanting to vomit or wanting to cry that I didn't touch it again.  The documentary covers different aspects of the food industry: chicken, beef  and pork processing, a food safety activist whose son died from e coli, Monsanto's domination of the soybean industry, the effects of corn growing on processed foods and also on illegal immigration.  Throughout the movie were snippets of Michael Pollan, author of the Ominvore's dilemna, sitting in his kitchen talking to the camera.  There wasn't  whole lot that was new to me in the movie.  It is different to see video footage of cattle feed lots, chicken raising buildings, and slaughterhouses.  It's different than just looking at photos.  One shot of a meat packing plant showed this humongous steel machine with conveyor belts and pipes with steam bursting out of them.  The machine transformed cows into boxes of ammonia sterilized ground beef ready to be shipped to McDonald's.  Other images that stand out in my mind are acres and acres of brown feed lots with cows standing in them, pigs being positioned into a slaughering machine by giant metal walls that closed in on them, a chicken farmer in Kentucky putting on her mask to show the camera inside her coops.  I liked the areal view of the Smithfield ham processing complex because it is so huge.  

I learned two new things from the movie.  One was how when the corn industry in the US started booming and producing tons of corn below market prices, many Mexican farmers lost their livelihoods.  So chicken and meat processing plants put employment ads in Mexican newspapers and brought the illegal workers here to work in their factories.  The film showed a police/INS raid on a trailer park in Kentucky. People's doors were broken down and men and woman thrown into vans and carted off.  In the background lurked a few very expensive looking black cars that presumably belonged to the factory owners.  Every month 15 people are turned in to INS.  More than that would disturb the assembly lines.  The point was that the factory workers rather than the company owners were being punished.  

The second new thing for me was a story about Monsanto and soybean farmers.  Years ago someone made a herbicide that killed everything but soyplants.  Monsanto patented a soy plant that resisted the herbicide.  So now, most soyfarmers hold contracts with Monsanto.  Years ago, farmers could clean their seeds from one crop and use them to plant the next year's crop.  There used to be two or three professional seed cleaners in a county.  Monsanto doesn't allow their farmers to clean their seeds.  The film profiled a seed cleaner who was being sued by Monsanto.  The man's oldest friends were scared to talk to him for fear of being blacklisted by Monsanto and losing their income.  

The message of the movie was that people have lost any say in how their food is produced, but that every time we buy food we are sending a message.  Small organic food producers are being courted by the biggest food conglomerates in the country.  Even Walmart has stopped carrying milk with recombinant bovine grown hormone in it.  

While I watched the movie I pondered how much the musical soundtrack influences one's emotional response to the material.  I felt a little manipulated.  This little documentary was quite slick.  

Well, right after the movie I was quite pleased to be able to walk up the street to a new farmers market and spend some money!  I came home with cherries, tomatoes, bread, eggs, and spinach.