Film Festival Film #5: Food, Inc

[bcholmes]

Food, Inc is an exceptionally well-made documentary about the business of food production. It includes a lot of commentary from Eric Schlosser (who wrote Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (of The Omnivore's Dilemma). There's a lot of material about why the industry has changed, how unions in the meat industry have been destroyed, what kind of health consequences exist and some of the stuff that's going on with organic foods.

The film is very slick and very well-made and I wouldn't be surprised if it made it into a Best Documentary Oscar. Eric Schlosser was very well-spoken at the Q&A. Two comments stand out: one had to do with a segment of the film where WalMart is getting in to the organic food business. The head of a big food producer speaks eloquently about how perfect is the enemy of the good and we can't get rid of capitalism overnight and if WalMart gets behind organic foods, that can means tons of chemicals and pesticides are taken out of the ecosystem. Schlosser commented in the Q&A that while all that may be true, we're always going to have a problem if big corporations like WalMart have that kind of power.

The other comment he made was that he wouldn't want to eat an organic tomato that had been picked by slave labour.

It's interesting that while I was already aware of most of the facts in the film, the film assembles the facts in a way that's very accessible and fairly powerful.