In "Food, Inc.," documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner takes a close look at big agribusiness, investigating practices in the food industry normally hidden from public view. And the results are grim, indeed. Kenner finds a nation's food supply concentrated in the hands of a few giant corporations whose profit-driven business practices have dramatically reduced levels of food safety. Supermarkets have become danger zones. The human population is regularly bombarded by new strains of e coli bacteria. Diabetes is an epidemic. Obesity is commonplace.
"Some of these chicken houses have 27,000 chickens stuffed in a room without light," Kenner says in an interview in Sunday's issue of the New York Times magazine. In an effort to make the biggest chicken breast, the birds are "designed to grow as rapidly as possible, and their bones cannot keep up with the growth. Some of them are too heavy to stand." The film premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival and features fellow food provocateurs Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation") and Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma"). It feeds the growing interest in not only what we have for lunch, but exactly how it got there. And what does Kenner eat these days? "I've become a vegetarian for the last two weeks," he says. "I'm a flexitarian."
GET INFORMED
- Read "Questions for Robert Kenner: Where's the Beef?" (New York Times, October 12, 2008)
- Read more about "Food, Inc." on the Participant Media Web site
- Tell a friend about Prop 2, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, a landmark initiative in California that would ease the suffering of millions of animals confined in small crates on factory farms
- Donate to the Humane Society of the United States Vote Yes to Prop 2 Campaign
- Sign a petition to boycott Kentucky Fried Chicken for animal torture until they adopt a comprehensive animal welfare plan
0 comments:
Post a Comment