Food, Inc: Hungry For Change

Beware! Your food is being patented!! Genetically modified foods (GM) are not 'owned' by Mother Nature, but by filthy multinationals like the Monsanto Company who use their 'copyright' to pulverize and bully local producers. They're after a complete monopoly and will settle for nothing less.

Food, Inc is a recent documentary that exposes how 75% of the US food industry has become centralized and controlled by only a few players like the Monsanto Company, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and Perdue Farms. The consequences, the film contends, have made people sicker, fatter, and poorer. Director Robert Kenner has said he's not interested in attacking these companies: "All we want is transparency and a good conversation..."

The scary thing is these multinationals had the support of the Bush/Cheney administraiton for eight years and were able to pass "food libel laws" that have made any form of transparency a potential legal hazard. Kenner had to spend much of the film's budget protecting himself against lawsuits.

Yuko and I are both semi-vegetarians - we eat seafood and dairy, but no meat (alright, sometimes we cheat when there's no choice). I started over twenty-years ago after returning from a season tree planting where I'd been stuffed morning, noon and night with the worst type of meat-junk known to woman & man. I also read Diet For A New America and that pushed me into making my final break with the stuff. Since we met, Yuko and I have shared an interest in delicious food & vegetarianism...

Ten years ago we saw Cow At My Table, a Canadian doc with a similar angle and enjoyed reading Ruth Ozeki's excellent My Year Of Meats. Food, Inc. is a powerful reminder of how we have a right and a responsibility to know what's going on in the kitchen...