Food, Inc. (2008)

An unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry.

Director:

Robert Kenner

Writers:

Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein

Stars:

Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Richard Lobb

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 7 wins & 19 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Eric Schlosser	...	Self - Author, 'Fast Food Nation'
Richard Lobb	...	Self - National Chicken Council
Vince Edwards	...	Self - Tyson Grower
Carole Morison	...	Self - Perdue Grower
Michael Pollan	...	Self - Author, 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'
Troy Roush	...	Self - Vice President, American Corn Growers Association
Larry Johnson	...	Self - Center for Crops Utilization Research, Iowa State University
Allen Trenkle	...	Self - Ruminant Nutrition Expert, Iowa State University
Barbara Kowalcyk	...	Self - Food Safety Advocate
Patricia Buck	...	Self - Food Safety Advocate, Barbara's Mom
Diana DeGette	...	Self - Representative, Colorado
Phil English	...	Self - Representative - Pennsylvania, Co-Sponsor of Kevin's Law
Eldon Roth	...	Self - Founder of BPI
Maria Andrea Gonzalez	...	Self - Mother
Rosa Soto	...	Self - California Center for Public Health Advocacy

Storyline

The current method of raw food production is largely a response to the growth of the fast food industry since the 1950s. The production of food overall has more drastically changed since that time than the several thousand years prior. Controlled primarily by a handful of multinational corporations, the global food production business - with an emphasis on the business - has as its unwritten goals production of large quantities of food at low direct inputs (most often subsidized) resulting in enormous profits, which in turn results in greater control of the global supply of food sources within these few companies. Health and safety (of the food itself, of the animals produced themselves, of the workers on the assembly lines, and of the consumers actually eating the food) are often overlooked by the companies, and are often overlooked by government in an effort to provide cheap food regardless of these negative consequences. Many of the changes are based on advancements in science and ...

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Plot Keywords:

food | food industry | vegan | farming | gluttony | 

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Taglines:

Hungry For Change?

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Genres:

Documentary | News

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for some thematic material and disturbing images

Did You Know?

Trivia

On the Region 1 DVD packaging, the UPC bar-code on the cow is different from the one shown on the theatrical poster. The poster bar-code is 4-73762-52481-6-(18). The bar-code on the Region 1 DVD packaging is the same as the DVD's actual product bar-code on the back cover: 8-76964-00216-5. As of 2017, he bar-code used on the poster is not an active code.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000.

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Connections

References Sesame Street (1969)

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Soundtracks

Sunny L.A.
Written by Nancy Peterson
Performed by Great American Swing Band

User Reviews

Big guys and little guys and what we have to eat

The message of 'Food, Inc.' is that most of what Americans now eat is produced by a handful of highly centralized mega-businesses,and that this situation is detrimental to health, environment, even our very humanity. The ugly facts of animal mistreatment, food contamination, and government collusion are covered up by a secretive industry that wouldn't talk to the filmmakers or let the interiors of their chicken farms, cattle ranches, slaughterhouses, and meatpacking plants be filmed.

Informed by the voices and outlook of bestseller authors Eric Schlosser ('Fast Food Nation') and Michael Pollen ('The Omnivore's Dilemma'), this new film is an exposé that offers some hope that things can be made better through grassroots efforts. True, Kenner points out, Monsanto, Smithfield, Perdue, et al. are rich and powerful. But so were the tobacco companies, and if Philip Morris and Reynolds could be fought successfully, so can the food industry. The fact that the vast Walmart is switching to organic foods because customers want them shows people vote effectively with their pocketbooks every time they buy a meal.

Other documentaries have covered this ground before. The 2008 French documentary 'The World According to Monsanto' (2008) focused on how that company, with government support, monopolizes seed planting, and Deborah Koons' 2004 'The Future of Food' went over similar ground. Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar's sweeping 2003 film 'The Corporation' (2003) touched on Monsanto's monopoly too. In more general terms, the ominous, narration-free German documentary 'Our Daily Bread' (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2003) delivered 'Food, Inc.'s' message about dehumanized factory-style food production with a European focus. Richard Linklater's 2006 'Fast Food Nation' grew out of Schlosser's book about how bad and disgusting American fast food is and how it undermines the health. These are all good films, and there are and will be lots more. As this new film mentions, exploitation and malpractice in the meat industry were exposed as far back as Upton Sinclair's 1906 muckraking book, 'The Jungle.'

'Food, Inc.' is a populist and practical film that speaks with the voices of farmers, advocates, and journalists, and focuses on food, what's wrong with it, and what we can do about it. Kenner offers lots of practical information and appeals to everyday people. The film goes back to the Fifties to show how the rise of fast food contributed to centralized, less diverse American food production. MacDonald's now much of the chicken, beef, potatoes, and many other foods produced in the country. The film explains that only a handful of companies control not only most of the beef, pork, chicken, and corn produced in the US but most other food products as well. Moreover not only is corn the major feed given to food animals, but a surprising amount of the tens of thousands of products sold at today's supermarket -- that packaged junk racked in the center of the store that Atkins and now Pollen have told us to avoid, are also derived from corn. Because of the way certain food products have government support, hamburgers are cheaper than fresh vegetables. Kenner focuses on a low-income Orozcos who both work and feel forced to rely on fast food meals because they fill them and their kids more economically than fresh produce bought at the market.

The new industry has developed chickens that grow bigger faster with more breast meat. They're kept in closed dark pens. The story is the same for all these poor mass produced critters, crammed together in great numbers, filled with antibiotics, deformed, suffering, ankle deep in their own excrement, brutally killed. The film has good footage of the big southern meat producer, Smithfield, showing how the new mega-food industry feeds off of exploited low-wage illegal immigrants who it treats as expendable, just like the animals.

An important spokesman in 'Food, Inc.' is an organic farmer (you could just say a stubbornly old-fashioned one) called Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, who's also an author, though the movie doesn't mention his books. His cattle are grass-fed and watching them, we realize that's the way nature meant them to be. They roams free, living a healthy life, trimming back the grass while fertilizing it so it will grow back. Cattle weren't meant to live on corn, and doing so has led to infection. The industry solution to such problems is not to change back to earlier methods, but to add more chemicals. They're doing crazy things like adding bleach to hamburger filler to keep the burgers from being poison.

It's hard to keep a balance in such a documentary but Kenner tries. That Hispanic family is important. Slow food and organics have been a thing of the rich, as their dilemma illustrates. There could be more focus on everyday people and their difficult daily choices. The Walmart story is important too: Walmart customers are everyday people. It's easy enough for well heeled families to buy boutique produce at farmer's markets. Average Joes don't always have the time or the money for that. Also important is Barbara Kowalcyk, who works in Washington with her mother as an advocate for stricter laws. Her 2 1/2-year-old son Kevin died in 12 days from a virulent form of E. coli after eating a hamburger on vacation. She wants not sympathy but control of an indifferent industry. Carole Morison is another vivid voice: she is a southern chicken farmer who lost her contract with Perdue for refusing to switch to dark enclosed tunnel chicken coops, the latest in a series of enforced "improvements" that lead to more production at the cost of more cruelty. She also explains how the farmers in thrall to these big companies are kept in debt like indentured servants.

Armed with witty, clear graphics and ironically bright color, 'Food, Inc.' has a chance of gaining more converts to "slow," organic, local food and opponents to crooked food regulation and monopolistic industry. This seems one of the most balanced and humane treatments of the subject yet.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

31 July 2009 (USA)

Also Known As:

P.O.V. Food, Inc. episode #23.1

Filming Locations:

Kentucky, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$60,513, 14 June 2009

Gross USA:

$4,417,674

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$4,606,199

Company Credits

Production Co:

Magnolia Pictures, Participant, River Road Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1