November 16, 2009 -- This eye-opening documentary film illustrates the vulnerability of America's food supply to plant and animal diseases, how Americans are poorly protected from contaminations of food-borne pathogens like E. coli and salmonella and why some unhealthy foods are made far cheaper than healthy foods because of government subsidies. It also shows how family farms and some small agriculture-related businesses are being eliminated through strong-arm legal and business practices. All this is being done by huge agribusiness companies or through government subsidies, laws or policies which are being unduly influenced by those same companies.

According to the film, what seems like a vast variety of food in large supermarkets is actually contolled by just a few large corporations, and the vast majority of food sold there has two unlikely ingredients added, corn or soybean products. Through vast government subsidies, corn is sold for a price less than cost. The subsidies mean that huge amounts of corn (according to the film 30 percent of America's land base is devoted to growing corn) are grown each year and that corn is made into an incredible variety of products from sugery corn syrup to car fuel to additives used in batteries, charcoal briquettes, orange juice and a wide variety of other foods. American foods tend to be dominated by these subsidized crops, corn, wheat and soybeans.

Although the film doesn't mention this specifically, the reliance of the nation on a single crop is a recepie for disaster. A good example is the horrible loss of life, economic and cultural upheaval caused by the Irish potato famine. Similarly, a series of consolidations has caused the number of slaughterhouses in the U.S. to decline to just a few. These huge commercial meat plants are now too big to fail. They cannot be shut down. Recent court decisions make it so even the Federal Food and Drug Administration can't shut them down, even if they are producing contaminated meat on a regular basis. Big agribusiness likes it that way. The film also shows that some of these meat plants are using illegal immigrants as laborers. The film shows advertisements distributed in Mexico by a meat packer to attract Mexicans to America. According to the film, meat plants have come full circle. Where they once provided safe, well-paying union jobs, they now provide low-paying jobs in hazardous environments, like they did 100 years ago when Upton Sinclair wrote his muckraking novel The Jungle, exposing terrible practices in the meat-packing industry. Once, the federal Food and Drug Administration was a lot more active in its inspections of these plants. In recent years, the number of food safety inspections performed by the FDA were less than 2 percent of the number of inspections it performed in 1972, according to the film. The food industry is supposed to police itself. So is the financial industry, and we all know how that worked out.

The film argues that cattle are being fed corn, rather than grass. Cattle's stomachs are not adapted to digest corn, and this has resulted in new, dangerous strains of E. coli bacteria. Barbara Kowalcyk, whose young child Kevin died from eating hamburger contaminated by E. coli, has been fighting to change the law so the USDA can shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meats. Barbara and her mother, Patricia Buck, have pushed for the passage of “Kevin's Law” since 2002 without success. Barbara is quoted at length in the film, and so is Michael Pollan, author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto” and Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation.”

One shocking segment of the film follows the story of Moe Parr, a man in the business of harvesting, cleaning and selling seeds. He was sued by Monsanto corporation and forced out of the business he had been in for 25 years. Seed cleaning has been practiced by farmers for thousands of years, but it has become virtually illegal in some places due to Monsanto's ability to legally patent a certain genetically-engineered soybean seed. Monsanto owns patent rights on a popular soybean seed which is resistant to Monsanto's weed-killing chemical, called Roundup. Farmers who don't want to buy this seed, but prefer to grow other soybean varieties and save money by harvesting seeds from the current crop for next season's crop are finding this very difficult to do this in some cases. That is because of cross-pollinization with neighboring soybean crops patented by Monsanto. When the Monsanto soybeans cross-breed their way into neighboring crops, those farmers can be prosecuted for violating Monsanto's patents, even if it is by accident. Moe Parr was sued for harvesting and cleaning the seeds, because he was allegedly “inducing farmers to violate patents.” Actually, Parr and the farmers being sued may not be guilty of anything, but they don't have the money to fight the lawsuits, so they settle before they go broke. With legal muscle and marketing muscle, Monsanto owns 90 percent of the soybean seed market and farmers who use this seed are forbidden by law from harvesting seed from their own crops. They have to buy Monsanto's seed every year. Yet another fragile monoculture is being established.

The film argues that these monocultures, factory farming and meat processing being conducted by very few companies in very few meat packing plants, are making the nation's food supply very vulnerable. E. coli contamination can spread far and wide and it can be hard to track because of very wide food distribution from these few plants. According to the film the meat from as many as 50 different cattle can be found in a single hamburger. This makes tracing the contamination very difficult.

The film does not get into some tangential areas of interest to some food activists such as possible dangers from genetically-modified foods, but it does argue for labeling these and other ingredients, like added hormones and antibiotics. It addresses the issue of the use of added hormones and antibiotics in farm animals only indirectly. It sticks pretty close to the basic issues of food safety and nutritional value. Surprisingly, Wal-Mart comes off looking pretty good in this film. Wal-Mart is shown as being open to stocking organic products and it has stopped carrying milk containing growth hormone. It was noted in the film that given Wal-Mart's buying power, that could put an end to milk containing growth hormone all by itself. Also looking good in the film are organic farmers and stockmen and businesses like Stonyfield Farm, the third largest yogurt provider in the country. Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms in Virginia, has a lot to say in the film about the wisdom of letting cows browse on grass in open fields as in nature. According to Michael Pollan, “If you take feedlot cattle off their corn diet, give them grass for five days, they will shed eighty percent of the E. coli in their gut.”

The film also hits hard on the effect of current food industry products on the high rate of obesity and diabetes in this country. The argument is made that poor people have inadequate access to nutritional food. High-fat, high-calorie, sugar-rich foods are cheap and easy to find, while fruits and vegetables are more expensive and harder to find than fast food. This is one side of the health care debate that is missing from the current policy discussions in Washington. Much of what is in the film is not news to food activists and the exceptionally well-informed, but most people will find it very revealing and thought-provoking. This movie is made very professionally. It has very clever opening titles made up of supermarket-type signage and food labeling. The talking heads are eloquent and informative. There are even some undercover-type videos made with hidden cameras. This film rates a B.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in digital formats, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Robert Roten can be reached via e-mail at .