Since the age of 12, upon hearing Ralph Nader on the radio (mid 1960s) speaking about pesticides and processing of our food I took on what would be a lifelong hobby for me – keeping up on what exactly is happening with our food. When I heard Ralph Nader speaking on my nifty little Panasonic clock radio that day it forever changed the way I see government, the FDA, USDA, and a host of others who I had, up until then, naively believed were agencies and people looking out for us, looking out for “our” health and well-being.
I was shocked! I could hardly wrap my young brain around “why” the people who did have control, say so over what happens, and what doesn’t, were not even interested in protecting “us” from things that can make us sick, diseased, and cause us to die prematurely. As children, I believe we need to know that we are being protected in the right ways, not some of this silly type of protection that’s so common today (which oftentimes seems so superficial compared to what should be done).
About a week later, I decided to do a report for English class and walked to my tiny local library (maybe not even 2,000 sq.ft. in size) and began my research to find out if what I heard Ralph Nader say on the radio was true. I was not at all prepared to discover what I did… a LOT of information on farming chemicals that were, even then, well known to cause health problems.
I spent every day after school in that library finding out just how bad it was. Almost two weeks later I decided to narrow down the topic for my English report to “oranges.” It was by far the most interesting and fun report I had ever done for school. I even drew a beautiful yet frightening cover, and included hand-drawn graphs and assorted pictures to enhance my findings.
Weeks later when my English teacher was handing our reports back to us she was storming around and slamming them down on each students desk saying, “I CANNOT believe how poorly the class did on these reports. What in the world were you all doing while you were suppose to be doing these reports!? What!? I’ve NEVER seen such bad work!”
There I am sitting, sinking lower and lower into my chair attempting to become invisible after believing for the past month that I just created a masterpiece. The teacher made her way to my desk and slapped my beautiful report down onto my desk and said, “and YOU, I want you to stay after class, so don’t go running out when the bell rings!”
Yikes! Did I ever feel horrible, worthless and like my greatest lifetime achievement just landed me in detention. I sank further down into my chair, my eyes welling with tears as I looked down at my beautiful report. About 10 minutes later, in slow motion I reached for the report and opened the cover just to take the quickest of peeks to see how bad the damages were. I was praying I wouldn’t see a big fat “0″.
Woosh, I slammed my hand back down on the report to close it, fearful that my peers would have looked over and seen the 4 inch tall bold red grade… which read… A++
OK, so now I am REALLY confused.
If I got the highest grade on anything I had ever done in school “why” in the world was I being told I had to stay late???
The bell rang and as the kids passed by me they teased me about getting the worst grade in the class and how I was now in BIG trouble. I sat there, silent and showed no emotion.
Once everyone had left the teacher, with angry vibes still in full force, came back to my desk and pulled up a chair. She said, “where did you get this information!? And, is it true, are your resources listed in the back true or did you make them up?”
“Why yes, it’s all true. Ralph Nader, I heard him on the radio talking about this maybe two months ago. Ever since then I’ve done nothing but sit in the library after school reading about it. Do you know… it’s really scary and bad? It’s all in the library!”
What she said next was almost enough to knock me off my chair… “I have to tell you, I am very grateful you did such an excellent job on this report because I eat oranges every day… and I always peel them with my teeth. That means I’ve been getting toxic dyes and petro chemicals in my mouth, that may cause cancer.”
“Oh, well you don’t want to be doing that any more!” I said, “Not only that, but from what I’ve read there are other things being done to our food that are even worse. I didn’t report on those because it was too complicated for me to write about. You may want to find out for yourself, there’s a lot in the library on it.”
She thanked me again and told me I could go get on the bus to go home. I ran out of there so fast, hopped on the bus where many of the kids were still teasing me. They were extremely eager to brag about their C’s and D’s because they were absolutely certain I got an F, or maybe even a zero. After I heard about their grades, I quietly handed my report to one of them. Shock and silence filled the bus.
Ever since then I have “made time” to keep up on the issue in my spare time and avoid whenever possible the foods and drinks that are known to be absolutely devastating to our health. I wanted to inform as many people who would listen to me, how the powers that be were NOT protecting us and what was being done in the food industry was slowly causing disease and killing us. I rarely felt that people were interested, and quite often they were polite only because I was passionate telling what I knew, other times I got the feeling that they could care less. Today, we have the internet, and my one little voice can reach thousands every month.
The differences between today and my first A++ report in a nutshell are… it HAS gotten far worse, the regulating systems and food industry is plagued with corruption, lies, manipulation of the science and facts, flat out false advertising (remember the days when there was a law being enforced about false advertising?), and soooo much more – it’s appalling!
This is why I am so delighted when small groups of people get together and put together information and reach even more people than I can on my own.
So, for todays blog entry… I’d like to share with you a review on a new film, “Food, Inc.” I hope that together we can join forces and make the quality of our lives right now even better… perhaps this film will change your life, like thankfully, Ralph Nader changed mine…
‘Food, Inc.’ : A horror movie with a message 3 1/2 Stars
by Robert W. Butler
I’m happy to have any appetite at all since watching “Food, Inc.”
Director Robert Kenner’s documentary is powerful. Maybe even life-changing.
The film posits that most of us know nothing about where our food comes from and that the big food corporations — a mere half dozen are responsible for most of the food on grocery shelves — would love to keep it that way.
There’s little information in this expose that foodies haven’t already encountered in books and magazines. But people who won’t read such stuff often will watch movies, and “Food, Inc.” is smart, occasionally amusing and very, very motivating.
The film draws heavily on the work of authors Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) and Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”), both of whom appear on screen. “Food, Inc.” looks at the fallout of 50 years of food production shifting from family farms (cows grazing in grassy meadows, chickens pecking away in the barnyard — you can still find those images decorating packaged food) to a corporate model based on bigger, faster, more profitable.
Divided into easily digested (sorry about that) chapters, “Food, Inc.” touches on hot-button issues facing the food industry and its customers.
• Early on, Kenner’s film crew visits a chicken farm. Thanks to modern chemistry, the time needed to raise a chicken from egg to table has been cut by a third. Growth of the chickens’ breasts — love that white meat! — so outpaces that of their bones and internal organs that the birds can take only a couple of steps before falling over.
In any case, modern chicken farming doesn’t want them walking — they spend their brief lives crammed wing-to-wing in dark chicken factories, never seeing sunlight or smelling air not redolent of urine and feces. Yum.
Chicken grower Carole Morison takes us through her chicken building. It’s nasty enough, but Tyson is demanding she build a new one with no windows. Morison declines, claiming it would be cruel and inhumane. Her Tyson contract was subsequently canceled.
• We spend time with Barbara Kowalcyk, whose young son died from eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger and who now devotes herself to working for tighter FDA and Department of Agriculture oversight. Problem is, the inspection program has been gutted over the last decade.
Asked how her own eating habits have changed as a result of her personal tragedy, Kowalcyk (a lifelong Republican) declines to answer. Unlike Oprah she hasn’t the means to fight a libel lawsuit by the cattle industry.
• “Food, Inc.” argues that public policy often discourages good eating. By subsidizing corn and soybean production the government makes the products made with those crops (which is to say darn near everything processed and packaged) way cheaper than fresh produce.
The film follows a family whose members can eat cheaper at a fast-food burger joint than by buying the ingredients for a salad.
• Late in the movie Kenner turns to genetically modified crops, particularly Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, which resist herbicides that kill nearby weeds. The film’s concern is less about health issues with such crops as with the company’s overwhelming dominance in soybean production and its relentless pursuit of farmers who violate their contracts by attempting to save seeds from one harvest to replant next year.
Watch the trailer…
Find theatre listings in your area here…
Read more on our food and what we can do in previous articles I wrote…
1 comment
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July 10, 2009 at 8:30 am
Ed Nicholson
With respect. If possible, I’d like to correct one item in this review:
Carole Morrison grew for Purdue, not Tyson.
When the producers of the movie contacted us, we suggested that there were many, many more growers like this http://bit.ly/1at215 than the person they wanted to interview. When they refused to interview any of the ones we suggested, we felt the movie was not going to provide a balanced perspective. Then they reported in the film Tyson “declined to be interviewed.”
Ed Nicholson
Tyson Foods
Thank you Ed for pointing that out, I personally used the info provided regarding Carole Morrison. If it was incorrect, my apologies.
I believe that the real issue being addressed in this film is not as much of question of Tyson policies and procedures, but of the food industry as whole.
You do have to admit the quality of our food today is appalling and it’s not getting any better.
The point is, we ‘want’ chickens (and other animals) to be eating their natural diet – insects and grass, outdoors as this produces a significantly more nutritious product for us to consume. It’s a win-win for the animal, the environment, and us.
For instance, in the news lately we hear about the methane gas from cattle feedlots and how it’s contributing to global warming. That is a prime example of what happens when you give any living thing an ‘un-natural’ diet. Cattle that has been allowed to live their life in a pasture and eat their natural diet of grasses and weeds do NOT produce a gas that contributes to global warming. The feedlot diet does nothing but produce everything we don’t want, simply driving past one of these areas is more than enough to indicate something is wrong with that practice.
Chickens are birds, they’re suppose to be in the sunlight, rain, temp differences, and eating bugs, weeds and some types of grasses. All of those things produce a bird that is far better in health, taste, and nutrition. And, we are not at all amused by simply allowing the door to be open so the chickens can go outdoors if they so desire – which is an insult to our intelligence at best.
When animals do not get what their bodies need (which does NOT come in the from of a grain that’s been Genetically Engineered and vitamin supplemented water) to be healthy and life sustaining we are the ones who suffer, and we are – one look around at the health of the people and the planet, there is plenty indication of that.
I for one, will not consume any animal product unless I know the farm from which it came allows their livestock to live a natural life, eating foods its body knows how to digest and process. Ethically and morally, I cannot encourage anything less than that. Because this type of practice is more expensive for the consumer, I choose to eat less animal products and only buy from farmers who raise livestock in a manner that is more in alignment with “MY” standards – I don’t want to eat an unhealthy nutrient deficient animal product and have poor health as a result.
It’s bad enough that since the USDA takeover of the organic regulation (1990s) has lowered the standards for organic certification – we’re watching what ‘was’ a perfectly fine industry go completely down the tubes. So much so that I’ve stopped buying organic – I’ve been a loyal organic shopper for 30 years, the industry has lost me as a customer. I buy local and from farmers who grow/raise according to the old organic standards.
I watched the video you provided, the couple look like they’re very nice people doing the best they can with the “feedlot” technique. To me that doesn’t matter, you could sit there all day showing me farms that raise chickens like that, it’s simply not close to being good enough. I just don’t find it acceptable, for the livestock/chickens, or for people to consume.
I hope that this is taken by you, and others, as something what we all really want and we are encouraging you to get there.
Thanks for your comment,
Evelyn