Food, Inc. Saturday, March 20, 2010

Finally saw Food, Inc. last night. The tour on which it takes you is riveting, though I'm more affected by the rounded shoulders of the economically-smothered chicken farmers as they clear their factories of the bodies of diseased chickens than by the fate of the chickens themselves.* Especially rotten is the portion doled out to the immigrant workforce, who are lured to America by BPI and then forcibly arrested and shipped back when their surplus labor starts to look a little too much like rabble.

Just to reiterate, in case you saw it last summer and forgot about it: the calculations it presents, like most calculations these days, are just short of apocalyptic. One in two minorities will develop early onset diabetes from eating genetically modified corn-starch derivatives. Agricultural subsidies are not just unequally and poorly distributed, but in fact disastrous for our NAFTA "partners" and indistinguishable from a declaration of war against the Americas. The risk of mass death from serious foodborne illness is not just potential but practically inevitable. So, what, says Food, Inc., is the solution? Declare Tyson, BPI, Purdue, Monsanto and all the rest of them radical terrorist states operating on American Soil and then declare war on them, like real American Teddy Roosevelt would have done?

Nope. Food, Inc. tells us instead to write Congress and politely ask them to tell the USDA to do the job they've failed to do since (at least) the Clinton administration. Then it tells us to buy our groceries at the Farmer's Market. It was nice feeling the aesthetic effect of outrage while it lasted.

*Having been around a few chickens I can say that if chickens weren't pin-headed automatons they'd be purely evil. They're like land-fish.