Cinematic Hot Potato

It begins today.

The following article has been circulating on pro-dairy
Internet groups. I received my copy on Wednesday, June
10, 2009. They call it: "Cinematic Hot Potato". This is
the worst nightmare of milk and meat farmers. I could
not have written it any better.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The new documentary "Food, Inc." begins
with idyllic scenes of American farmland, panning from
golden fields of hay to a solitary cowboy rounding up a
herd of cattle. Then the camera zooms in on a grocery
cart overflowing with packaged food and rolling down
the aisles of a gaudily lit supermarket.

Eerie, horror movie-style music swells in the background.
It's meant to signal the audience that the pastoral fantasy
of agrarian America on everything from packages of breakfast
sausage to cereal boxes is not what it seems, that great
danger lurks behind the cheery images of 1930s-era red
barns and white picket fences.

Director Robert Kenner is bent on showing us a far grimmer
reality. He tells of dust-choked poultry houses where chickens
never see the light of day and are pumped so full of chemicals
they produce more meat than their organs can support.
Eventually they collapse under the weight of their abnormally
large breasts and die before reaching the slaughterhouse.

He shows us industrial feed lots where cows are fattened on
chemical-enhanced feed and forced to spend their days standing
ankle-deep in manure.

Kenner relates the heart-wrenching story of Republican-turned-
activist Barbara Kowalcyk, who prowls the halls of Congress
with her mother to try to force lawmakers to enact food safety
legislation that she believes could have saved the life of her
2 1/2-year-old son Kevin, who died of E. coli poisoning 12
days after eating contaminated hamburgers.

Kenner is hoping his film will raise awareness of the
enormous price in health and safety that he says Americans
pay to gorge themselves on the relatively cheap calories
that stock supermarket shelves courtesy of a handful of
multinational corporations.

Just as the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient
Truth" helped galvanize the fight against global warming,
Kenner and his partners want to spur legions of activists
to rise up and take aim at lawmakers and government
regulators they believe have been corrupted by lobbyists
for agribusiness.

An alliance of trade associations that represent the
nation's meat and poultry producers have set up a Web
site to counter virtually every claim in the documentary,
from the contention that E. coli contamination could be
reduced by feeding cattle grass instead of grain, to
charges that federal inspection agencies are understaffed
and ineffective, and food borne illnesses are on the rise.

The food industry says the film has "an astonishing
number of half-truths, errors and omissions" and that
scrapping current production methods in favor of locally
grown, seasonal organic food would result in a dramatic
increase in food prices and fewer fruits and vegetables
year-round.

Janet M. Riley, senior vice president at the American
Meat Institute, says that contrary to the menacing image
presented in the film, the industry — comprised of
"ordinary, hardworking people" — provides "the safest,
most affordable, most abundant food supply in the world."
She also says it would be foolhardy to abandon modern
food production methods during a global recession, when
people are starving in parts of the world.

"Why would we want to turn the clock back to a less
efficient way to produce food?" she says.

Kenner's arguments will be familiar to readers of "The
Omnivore's Dilemma" author Michael Pollan, whose numerous
books and articles have decried the physical and even
moral hazard of the industrial food system. Pollan is
featured in the film, as is "Fast Food Nation" author
Eric Schlosser, who wrote the best-selling 2001 expose
of the fast food industry that was later turned into
a movie.

Pollan, who has criticized industrial agriculture for
a decade, calls Kenner's documentary "the most important
and powerful film about our food system in a generation."

He says the director has broken new ground with his
reporting on such things as a new, high-tech system of
meat processing that bathes beef filler in ammonia to
kill harmful bacteria.

Even though alternative agriculture represents just a
small part of the U.S. food industry, Pollan says he
is "full of hope" about the future. He cites the
booming demand for organic food and the growing
popularity of farmers markets.

According to the USDA, sales of organics have more
than quintupled, increasing from $3.6 billion in
1997 to $21.1 billion in 2008.

Kenner, too, is optimistic, ending the film on an
uplifting note. He sees a hopeful model in the fight
against Big Tobacco, which also seemed invulnerable
to attack by health and safety advocates — until it
wasn't.

Like Pollan, Kenner is heartened by what he's seen
so far from the Obama administration.

Pollan, in particular, applauded Michelle Obama's
decision to plant an organic garden on the South
Lawn of the White House. Kenner says the president
won't be able to tackle his other priorities of
reforming health care and halting global warming
without changing the way Americans produce and
consume food.

So what do Kenner and Pollan believe the average
person should do if they want to shun the agribusiness
model?

Says Kenner: "Go to a farmers market whenever you
can. Eat a little less meat. Read labels when you go
into a store. Shop the outer rows of the supermarket.
Cook at home. Buy less processed food."

And Pollan? All of that, and also this: "Get involved
in your school lunch program. Get junk food out of
the whole school. Sign up with a Listserv for one
of the many groups that's tracking this. Your
congressman/woman needs to hear from you."

Still, Lowell Catlett, dean of the School of
Agriculture at New Mexico State University, says
U.S. consumers actually have a pretty good deal.
Before World War II, a quarter of a million
Americans died every year from a combination of
unsanitary food and water and inadequate sewage
facilities. "Overall, we have a safer food
system," he said.

The film opens June 12 in New York, Los Angeles
and San Francisco, with wider distribution
beginning June 19.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press.

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Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com