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FOOD INC. - SEE IT, BELIEVE IT!
FoodInc., recently out on DVD, is an unflattering lookinside America's corporate controlled food industry directed by Robert Kenner,with Michael Pollan, and author Eric Schlosser.
"Our food has changed more in the last 50 years than in the last 10,000 years" is the opening quote in the film that goes on to tell us that there are 47,000 products in a supermarket, portrayed as coming from farms, but which really come from factories that not only mistreat animals but mistreat the factory workers who process and pack the meat. These are huge industrial conglomerates that literally control farmers through threat and lack of funding. In America, each individual consumes 200 pounds of meat each year. This is meat raised in inhumane conditions and with animals fed an unnatural diet of corn. The point is well made in the movie that feeding corn to cattle changes the stomach contents of the cow to the extent that it promotes the growth of Escherichia coli 0157:H7, the bacteria that killed a number of people after they ate contaminated hamburgers. The industry's answer to that problem was not to go back to feeding cattle what is their natural food- grass - but to kill the bacteria with ammonia, adding another chemical to the processing.
Profit, at any cost it seems, is the only concern of the 4 chief packers that corner 80% of the meat market. These are the food conglomerates like Tyson and Purdue, that keep chickens in the dark for the 49 days it takes to raise them, many of them so weak that they can hardly stand, and filled with antibiotics and living in crowded conditions.
We can do it differently. Some farmers already are. They are going back to old-style farming without pesticides, feeding animals their natural food and keeping them in the sunlight so that they can roam around with freedom. True, eventually they are slaughtered, but they have eaten grass and other natural food that is full of antioxidants, phytochemicals, and other nutrients that they pass on to you and me to help us fight stress. These are anti-stress chemicals passed on to us when we eat the food.
It's important to see this film, if you haven't already, not just because it portrays what is rarely seen by us (having no idea where the food is coming from that we are eating) - but because we are the only people who can change it. You have to see it to believe it.
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