Food, Inc.

On Wednesday night, I finally got the chance to watch Food, Inc. on PBS. It's a documentary about the American food industry, more specifically the meat, corn, and soybean industries.

Now I've seen the PETA video about the horrors of slaughterhouses, chicken houses, and feedlots (Warning: Do NOT click on the previous link unless you have a strong stomach!), and I was expecting more of the same: excruciating scenes of sick and dying animals, fetid killing floors, and desolate swaths of polluted ponds and fields.

Instead, I was surprised to find that the documentary focused on the human costs of industrialized farming and food processing. The film covered a wide range of abuses, many of which I had never heard of before, including

• food corporations' gross exploitation of immigrant worker communities,
• the coercion of American farmers by giant seed and meat corporations,
• the rising diabetes epidemic as an unintended consequence of government subsidized corn products,
• and the prevalence of e. coli and salmonella contaminations in slaughterhouses across the country (which the USDA is largely unable to regulate).

I know that these bullet points seem unbelievable--you may be thinking, what a bunch of hippie, anti-capitalist babble!--but the documentary does an excellent job of talking directly to the persons involved and explaining these issues clearly. So I highly recommend that you check it out for yourselves and form your own opinions.

One of my favorite things about the documentary was its concluding message: each of us has the power to change our food by "voting" with our money. By buying conscientiously, with an eye toward human costs as well as the more obvious monetary costs, we can change the way food in America is grown and raised. So buy locally, choose sustainably raised and organic foods when possible, and go to your local farmers' market this weekend!