Blog #6: Food Inc.

Food Inc. was a very interesting film, it repulsed me in two ways: first, the treatment of the animals and second, the corporate industry in and of itself. I was flabbergasted to hear how corrupt the food industry actually is. It seems completely wrong for there to be three or so major corporations in charge of our entire food supply and that how they exploit farmers across the nation. I really can’t comprehend how any government official could know and even be in cahoots with such a system. Well… I can comprehend it because I know that it goes on in the food industry as well as the pharmaceutical industry and I’m sure many more. But it disgusts me that people with so much power care so little about the greater good. In the film they showed the story of the family who had to choose between healthy food and the father’s diabetes medication. When I was listening to their story I was so sad because they are being detrimentally affected by two of the, in my opinion, most evil industries. It hurt me to hear that in paying for the medication and eating fast food their youngest daughter was likely to be diagnosed with early onset diabetes. And if in the future the daughters remain in the same income bracket (with the assumption that the system does not change) the process will repeat itself. I was shocked to hear the statistics that 1 in 3 American children born after the year 2000 will be diagnosed with diabetes, and 1 in 2 for minority children.

When they compared the food industry with the tobacco industry, I felt that kind of ray of hope considering the downfall of the tobacco industry. But I still felt kind of doubtful about the whole thing because if you think about it, the tobacco industry had a pretty large market, but they had nowhere near the market of food. Everyone eats food, you can’t just not, but not everyone smokes. This difference I think is very integral to thinking of the industry because to me, it reflects how big, influential, and basically all controlling industry it must be if they affect every single person in the country. When the film talked about Monsanto and the soybean operations, I couldn’t believe what I heard, that 90% of the soybeans in the U.S. are their patented gene… Are you kidding me? That just seems creepy and unnatural. And then of course how all the farmers are being sued for the wind blowing over Monsanto patented soybean pollen.

When watching the part about the actual animals, I shielded my eyes a few times because it just made me sick to see their living/pre-dying conditions. The filth of the chicken, cow, pig farms was awful and to think how easily E. coli can develop. The mother’s story was really heart wrenching and you wonder why corporations will not do anything to literally clean up their industries. I really did not know how little the USDA and FDA did for the safety of the citizens. It’s really hard to think about our government not caring enough about its citizens to make their primary source of living safe.

I could say a lot more but I think I’ll end this. I hope that the food industry will be reformed for the future generations.

Robbin Shoemaker, et al. United States Department of Agriculture. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Economic Issues in Agricultural Biotechnology. Agriculture Information Bulletin No. AIB762 64 pp, March 2001. Web. 10 May 2010.