Okay, Michael Pollan can come across a little snobbish—“Eat food”; “This isn't a real tomato. It's an idea of a tomato.” But he uses it to good effect, especially in Food Inc., also featuring Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation). Finally I got to see it last night.
When I first showed up at UCD, which has ties to big agra and biotech, I was told in no uncertain terms that my choice of Marion Nestlé for guest speaker at the food symposium we were doing that year would be wrong because she was a “muckraker.”
I was also told that the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the best law in the world. (Despite the fact that it just underwent a major overhaul.) Enforcement be damned—we got the best laws in the world!
Eight years—and a few kids' deaths from E.Coli—later, Pollan and Schlosser make this incredible film.
I defy you to watch Food Inc. without visceral and intense reactions of horror and compassion. One brief example: the one single chicken farmer who consented to be interviewed had to pull her operation, because she refused to implement the “upgrade” from Perdue. What was the upgrade? Raising chickens in pitch darkness, so they don't move. They were already being raised in half an inch of chicken poop and were unable to take more than a few steps without collapsing under their own weight. (You see footage.)
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