Group 4 Handout

The Omnivore’s Dilemma- Michael Pollan

Industrial Corn

Pollan argues that the American eating habit has been turned into a state of confusion and anxiety. We no longer know how to eat properly, how to look at food properly and how to look at the natural world around us properly. Our culture has been replaced with fad diets like the Atkins diet and sadly obesity. Pollan calls this problem the “American paradox- that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily” (3). Our country is obsessed with how to eat properly, which has led to this unhealthy relationship with food. We, the omnivores, are now stuck with a dilemma. How or what should we eat?! This dilemma or problem is only deepened with the fact that there is an abundance of food in our country especially corn. This abundance of corn has left our environment and our health at risk. This plant has become the key ingredient in almost everything that one can find at the grocery and it is the key ingredient that is destroying our health, economy and environment.

Pollan begins his first chapter “The Plant: Corns Conquest” by discussing our relationship with the supermarket. When one first walks into the supermarket it seems like a place filled with endless possibilities. “…your first impression is apt to be of its astounding biodiversity” (16). The supermarket seems to be filled with diverse and abundant products, but Pollan wants you to search deeper. He wants you to ask questions that should be the simplest ones to answer: “What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?” (17). However, as he goes on to prove in his book these questions are not at all easy to answer. When you actually try to figure out what you are eating or what is in your food you find out that there is a long and complex answer. You will also be quite surprised to find out what is actually in your food. Does anyone even know what xanthan gum is? Well it is an ingredient found in a lot of our salad dressings and frozen foods. As Pollan figured out our search will almost always lead to a cornfield in Iowa. We have become “the corn people” (19) because almost all of our food includes some sort of corn product from xanthan gum to high fructose corn syrup. When the white European came to the New World he discovered corn. As Pollan describes “Squanto had handed the white man precisely the tool he needed to dispossess the Indian” (26). What if the white European never found corn? Perhaps the white European would have returned to his country and the United States would not exist as it does today, but that is not what happened. The white European learned how to grow corn and how to grow it to be more abundant and useful than the Indian ever had. The white European turned the corn into a commodity, perhaps what would later lead to our dilemma today.

Chapter two takes Pollan to George Naylor’s farm in Greene County, Iowa. Iowa is home to “black gold” or an abundance of corn. Farms in the early 1900s grew an abundance of crops, but today they only grow corn. Why would these farmers only grow corn and create a farm that is essentially only a monoculture now? This is because in today’s modern society corn is gold. The big corporations only want corn from these Iowa farms. The corn will be broken down and processed so it can be fed to both people and livestock. The corn found in Iowa will be sent to people and animals all over the country. Corn has become an increasingly hot commodity to produce. So why is George Naylor and other Iowa farmers broke? Every farmer saw how hot of a commodity corn was and decided to only grow corn on his farm, which led to an abundance of corn and a falling price. Farmers cannot survive by only selling one product with an ever-decreasing price. When the government stepped in to help the poor farmer, the shift of power would go from the farmer to the government and big corporations. Richard Nixon’s second secretary of agriculture, Earl “Rusty” Butz “revolutionized American agriculture, helping to shift the food chain onto a foundation of cheap corn” (51). He advised farmers to create bigger farms to produce more food as he dismantled all the ideals of the New Deal plans. The farmers would no longer be supported by government loans, but would have a new system of direct payment to farmers. The competitiveness that grew out of the 1980s would lead to farmers degrading their land just so they could produce as much corn as possible. As Butz had pointed out the farmer must produce big yields and be as productive as possible or else the farm will collapse. This theory will lead to vast consequences for the environment and the economy.

Due to the abundance of corn that skyrocketed in the 1980s the government and the farmers had to figure out what to do. What does one do with an abundance of corn? Scientists figured out that the corn could be broken down into different molecules and substances to then be added to all different types of foods. Corn is no longer pure corn or maize anymore. There is also no direct relationship with corn anymore. A person shopping in the grocery store no longer knows where the ingredients in his/her food are coming from. We have lost the relationship to the land because now all of our food is processed in the factories. The farmers no longer need to care about the quality, just the quanity or the yield. The yield is now everything to the farmer. “I began to see what George Naylor was getting at when he’d told me whom it was he grew his corn for: ‘the military-industrial complex” (61). The farmer and the consumer no longer need to know each other anymore. The big corporations have become the middlemen and have thus destroyed the farmer/ consumer relationship.

Where does all the corn go? One would be surprised to learn that farmers are in fact now feeding corn to cows; cows that are by nature grass eaters. A large portion of corn in fact goes to feeing livestock. Another shocking fact that Pollan discovered was that livestock are no longer living on farms and ranches, but in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). This allows all the livestock to be located in one area to be fed the abundance of corn that the government needs to get rid of. Along with the abundance of corn, CAFO’s “have produce more than their share of environmental and health problems: polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens” (67). By living in these large CAFO’s livestock are being adapted to live the way humans want them to live at the cost of their health and the lands health. The reason corporations want the cows to live in CAFO’s and eat corn is so they will grow faster and thus meat can become a cheap commodity that all households can afford. “Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet” (71). Corn allows cows to reach slaughter weight a lot faster even though their health and the health of the land is put at risk. Cows living in these CAFO’s are pumped with antibiotics to insure their health since these living environments are actually not healthy living environemtns for them. The use of antibiotics is greatly debated today since it could lead to further complications for the cow and for us. The antibiotics can be found in our food and if a bacterium resistant to the drug comes around what will we use to fight it? What we have also learned as of late is that corn fed cows are not healthy for us to eat. The corn fed meat contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than grass fed meat. So why are cows still fed corn and why are we still accepting this type of corn fed meat?

Chapter five and six devote itself to the evolution of corn into our diet. Corn has been turned into corn whiskey in the past and today it has been turned into high fructose corn syrup among other things. We have found ways to eat up the excess corn that we use to drink up in alcohol. Thanks to this “mountain of cheap corn” (103) the people of the United States is undergoing an epidemic of obesity. Since corn is cheap and the products it creates are cheap people will eat it up in vast quantities. Thanks to poverty and clever marketing people are eating up the corn rich diets at a detrimental cost to their health. Cheap food and clever marketing saw its greatest achievement in the super size movement. Thanks to Wallerstein people can now go to a fast food chain and super size their meals. People on a budget can now buy a lot of food at a fast food restaurant while not spending a lot of money. What a great idea, right? That cheap, super sized meal eaten on a regular basis will lead to obesity and/ or type II diabetes. That cheap food is now costing you a lot.

Pollan and his family have their first meal at McDonald’s and decide to eat it in the car. McDonald’s cleverly have adapted their menu to be eaten in the car with the exception of the salad. McDonald’s has recently added a full list of nutritional facts with its menu and what you find in almost all of the food at McDonald’s is corn. It has even found its way into the salads. The chicken nugget is basically filled with corn-based products and the hamburger is mostly all condiments and “grill seasoning”. Why do we accept this as a meal? “Part of the appeal of hamburgers and nuggets is that their boneless abstractions allow us to forget we’re eating animals” (114). We prefer not to know where our food came from because if we did we probably would not want to eat it anymore. Corn has redefined our culture, land and economy, but at what cost?

Pastoral: Grass

In this section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan introduces grass farming, as well as organic farming. He starts by introducing Polyface Farm (the farm of many faces), where Joel Salatin runs a sustainable farm in the Shenandoah Valley. He calls Salatin to get some quotes on organic farms, and also asks him to send him a steak. Joel responds with, “I don’t believe it’s sustainable—or ‘organic,’ if you will—to FedEx meat all around the country…you’re going to have to drive down here to Swoope to pick it up” (133). Before Pollan made his journey to Polyface Farm, he decided to research the “Big Organic” industry, after listening to Salatin rant about it. Pollan says, “Salatin was convinced that industrial organic was finally a contradiction in terms. I decided I had to find out if he was right” (133).

In the Big Organic section (chapter nine), Pollan takes us on a trip to Whole Foods, where he says, “Shopping at Whole Foods is a literary experience…It’s the evocative prose as much as anything else that makes this food really special” (134). He implies that the stories they put on organic foods, such as “cows graze green pastures all year long,” or “wild salmon caught by Native Americans in Yakutat, Alaska (population 833),” convince consumers to pay higher prices for this “sustainable” food (135). Pollan then decides to explore deeper, to find out if this food is really as sustainable as it sounds.

Pollan starts his exploration of organic foods from the very beginning. He gives us the history of organic farming, beginning with People’s Park in Berkley, California where hippies began organic gardening in the 1960s. They knew little about organic gardening, so communes in the country “served as organic agriculture’s ramshackle research stations, places where neophyte farmers could experiment with making compost and devising alternative methods of pest control” (144). Organic farming was very rough in the early days. Produce did not look that food, but the convinced farmers stuck with it. Gene Kahn of Cascadian Farms was one of these people. Pollan follows Kahn’s life from “hippie farmer” to “agribusiness-man.” When it comes down to it, at least in Kahn’s case, it is more practical to sellout to corporation, such as General Mills, than to run a large organic farm.

Throughout his history of organics, Pollan touches on the science of organics and what makes them really work. He uses Sir Albert Howard to “provide the philosophical foundations for organic agriculture” (145). Howard’s idea was “that we needed to treat ‘the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject” (145). When NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) were discovered to be the key nutrients plants needed to grow, many growers only focused on these three things. They paid no attention to feeding their live soil, and only gave plants these three nutrients. It was Howard who got farmers thinking about their soil and the complexity of it. “He claimed that the wholesale adoption of artificial manures would destroy the fertility of the soil, leave plants vulnerable to pests and disease, and damage the health of the animals and people eating those plants, for how could such plants be any more nutritious that the soil in which they grew?” (148). Howard was more about taking what nature did by itself and applying it to the farm.

The organic movement kept moving along. In 1990 the government began making organic regulations. However, organics meant different things to different people. The final regulations are farfetched from Howard’s ideas. They allow for additives and synthetics, “from ascorbic acid to xanthan gum” (156). There are also extremely vague regulations such as allowing livestock being able to have “access to pasture” (157). Pollan points out that he doesn’t “think migrant labor crews, combines the size of houses, mobile lettuce-packing factories marching across fields of romaine, twenty-thousand-broiler-chicken houses, or hundreds of acres of corn or broccoli or lettuce reaching clear to the horizon,” when he thinks of organic farming. But this is the reality of industrial organics today. “The organic movement, as it was once called, has come a remarkably long way in the last thirty years, to the point where it now looks considerably less like a movement than a big business” (138). Many of the organic cows are raised on factory farms where they are simply fed organic grain. There are organic TV dinners with as many ingredients in them as McNuggets. Pollan’s broiler chicken he picks up from Whole Foods (named Rosie) “lives in a shed with twenty thousand other Rosies, who, aside from their certified organic feed, live lives little different from that of any other industrial chicken… True, there’s a little door in the shed leading out to a narrow grassy yard. But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old… and the chickens are slaughtered only two weeks later.” (140). Yes, the stories on the packages are a great way to market these more pricey food items, but they are hardly different from the industrial, non-organic foods that line the grocery store aisles.

Joel Salatin’s farm looks a whole lot different from Big Organic farms. “Polyface Farm stands about as far from this industrialized sort of agriculture as it is possible to get without leaving the planet” (130). Salatin mimics Howard’s method of copying nature’s way of doing things. Pollan asks, “Why chickens?” because Salatin brings the chickens into the field after the cows are done grazing. Salatin responds, “Because that’s how it works in nature…Birds follow and clean up after herbivores” (126). Salatin sees himself as a grass farmer, because in reality, grass is what is keeping this whole farm going. The grass captures the energy from the sun, which in turn gives the cows energy. Cows can break down the energy in grasses, unlike humans, because they have a rumen which is a special stomach designed specifically for breaking down grasses. After the cows have eaten down the grass field, Salatin moves them to a new area of grass. He does not allow them to break the second bite rule because it could be fatal to his system. The cows graze long enough to do no damage to the land, and then move on. The chickens are brought in a couple days after the cows are done, when the fly larvae in the cow manure is nice and full from feasting. The chickens then pick the fly larvae out of the manure and they essentially break down the manure so it serves as fertilizer to the grass. “Joel is able to use his cattle’s waste to ‘grow’ large quantities of high-protein chicken feed for free; he says this trims his cost of producing eggs by twenty-five cents per dozen” (211). Salatin is using nature to help him be more economically efficient. He says that the animals do most of the work on the farm; “I’m just the orchestra conductor, making sure everybody’s in the right place at the right time” (212).

Polyface Farm has a lot of grassland, but Pollan did not think the wooded land played much part in this grass farming idea. Salatin broke it down for him, assuring him that every part of this farm served its purpose. The forests “hold moisture and prevent erosion,” the “deciduous trees work like an air conditioner. That reduces the stress on the animals in summer,” the pigs prefer to have a savanna-type area in the forest where it stays cooler and they could scratch their backs on trees, the forest brings more biodiversity to the farm (“more birds means fewer insects…[the forest] also helps control predators”), and the forest also provides firewood, as well as compost to feed the farm (223-224). Salatin has no zero-sum deals on his farm, where “the gain of the one entails the loss of the other” (225). Free lunch is a very real and alive idea on this farm.
Pollan also takes part in the weekly slaughtering of the chickens. He states, “It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, which I was then and still am, that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends” (231). Salatin slaughters his chickens outside in the open air, which the USDA frowns upon. Salatin responds, “The problem with current food-safety regulations…is that they are one-size-fits-all rules designed to regulate giant slaughterhouses that are mindlessly applied to small farmers in such a way that ‘before I can sell my neighbor a T-bone steak I’ve got to wrap it up in a million dollar’ worth of quintuple-permitted processing plant.’ For example, federal rules stipulate that every processing facility have a bathroom for the exclusive use of the USDA inspector” (229). This seems insane, especially for a small farm. Salatin keeps emphasizing that the way he slaughters a chicken is an extension of his world views. So he does it outside, in the clean open air, and even invites his customers to come watch their meat being killed. He gets away with slaughtering outdoors because he does not sell processed food, but rather a live chicken that he has killed, de-feathered, and gutted for the customer’s convenience.

Salatin’s way of farming makes so much more ecological and economical sense. The problem with it is it cannot be produced on a massively corporate scale. McDonald’s, even Whole Foods, does not want to buy from ten, one-hundred acre farms, but rather one, thousand acre farm. If Salatin expanded it would become too difficult to produce his annual yield so sustainably.

Some questions:

• In what ways could organic regulations make "organics" more sustainable?What have we lost from the organic movement in the 60s to the organic movement today? Who and what has changed the way we think about organics?
• Pollan uses many references about food and the way we look at it from other writers, including Emerson ("You have just dined, and however scrupulosly the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." p.226-27), Wendell Berry ("Whose head is the farmer using? Whose head is using the farmer?" p. 220), and others. What effect does this have?
• How does Pollan use language to articulate the realities of the food industry?

Part 1

Opening Credits
The opening credits of the movie begins with pictures of agrarian farms and supermarkets but quickly shifts to images of industrial agriculture to emphasis the way our food system has changed in America. Schlosser, who narrates this segment, says, “The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years then in the previous ten thousand”. The industrial images at the beginning are compelling because they capture some of the inhumane aspects of our new food system such as a chicken assembly line. The viewer is able to see how we have learned to apply the industrial principles of business to the processing of our food. The combination of these agrarian images ,which eventually fade into the grotesque industrial farmland, are very powerful in the sense that the viewer quickly realizes that they have no idea where their food comes from. Schlosser continues to argue that these multinational corporations, who control the whole food system, are deliberately hiding their tactics in developing the food we eat. By leaving Americans in the dark these corporations can continue to produce cheap, unhealthy food.

Fast Food to All Food
This segment opens with a scene featuring Eric Schlosser. Schlosser is at a small diner and orders and cheeseburger. He claims his favorite meal to this day is still a hamburger and french fries. This is a very critical scene in the movie because it depicts Schlosser as an everyday American who really just wants to know where his food comes from. There is something very blue collar and American about this scene. He does not seem like a raging environmentalist/vegetarian who wants everyone to stop eating meat, but instead comes off as simply an honest and curious every day American. He admits that all he wants to do as an investigative journalist is to find out where his food comes from and that his findings would reflect the ethics of these huge corporations.

He continues by talking about McDonald’s, emphasizing how the McDonald Brothers were able to bring the factory system to the kitchen. The scene consists of workers doing individual tasks repeatedly. This industrial concept results into the workers being replaceable and in turn, reducing their worth to the corporation. Schlosser continues saying, “That the mentality of uniformity, conformity, and cheapness, applied widely and on a large scale, has all kind of unintended consequences”. What he is saying is that when one corporation wants their food to taste exactly alike then something about the way we process our food has to change. Schlosser also notes that McDonalds is the largest consumer of ground beef in the United States and if they want their meat to taste exactly the same around the country, then the way we process our food will have to change drastically. This is the same with potatoes, pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce and apples. Now only a handful of companies control the food system. These incredibly large and powerful corporations, like Tyson, have got to the point where they genetically modify animals in order to get the most possible yield out of them. This idea of uniformity, conformity and cheapness will change the face of our modern food system.

The next scene takes us to Kentucky, where a Tyson grower, named Vince Edwards, farms chicken. The first time we see Vince he simply rolls down his window and says, “Smells like money”. As Vince drives down the road he points out the numerous chicken houses in the area. Vince is very grateful that Tyson came into his community as it has brought money to the area. It is clear Vince backs this industrial business and he sees no wrong in any of it. He offers to show the inside of his chicken houses but Tyson would have no part of that as they demand he not let the film crews in. Vince is important to have in the film because he represents one side of the argument. He is happy that he has a job and steady income. He has no problem with the way he makes his living and does not mind the grip that Tyson possess over “his” farm. This scene gives the movie so more credibility because like the Schlosser scene, it portrays another side of the argument.

In the proceeding scene we are introduced to Carole Morison, a Perdue grower who is sick of being controlled by these corporate juggernauts. She takes us into her chicken house where you can see the large amount of chickens. The scene is very overcrowded with dust and feces in the air. Some chickens cannot walk due to the genetic modifications on their bodies causing them to become too large for their legs to carry them. Carole walks through the house and picks up numerous dead chickens and tosses them out, claiming that this is a normal thing. She goes on about the ethics of these corporations and comments on how we have illegal immigrants working for these corporations simply because they will not complain. Carole says that after her initial investment with the company, they are constantly returning and demanding that she have her houses upgraded. Threatened by a loss of contract, the farmer has no choice and the debt keeps mounting up. Carole compares it to being a slave to the company. Eventually she had her farm shut down due to not upgrading. The scene closes by stating that a typical grower with two chicken houses has borrowed over $500,000 and earns about $18,000 a year. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the documentary because it really shows how worn down these corporations can make people feel.

A Cornucopia of Choices
This scene opens with Pollan pondering the origins of his food but keeps coming back to a cornfield in Iowa. Pollan remarks, “So much of our industrial food system turns out to be cleaver rearrangements of corn”. As the camera shoots over massive corn fields, he discusses the evolution of corn and how it has become the crop it is today. Troy Roush, the Vice President of American Corn Growers Association, explains how corn is being overproduced because it is below the cost of production. He explains how companies lobby for food bills, which really is a main driving force behind the food economy. Roush continues, stating that farmers are encouraged to produce as much corn as possible and are equally subsidized by the bushel. Due to the surplus of corn we are forced to make alternate use for it.

This brings us to a lab, where a scientist demonstrates the process of making high fructose corn syrup and later claims that 90% of supermarket items have a corn or soybean ingredient in the make-up. This just goes to show how much corn we are actually consuming in our diet. As long as there is science then there will be new ways of using corn. And as long as we have a surplus of corn then we are going to be forced to consume it.

Another way we are indirectly eating a lot of corn is through our animals. The high yield of corn has lowered the price of meat because it is below the price of production. This allows cow farmers to buy corn at a fraction of the price of other types of feed. The problem with this is that cows have evolved to eat grass, not corn. Corn has the ability to make the cows fat quickly but there is nothing natural about the process. Disease begins set in and some cows cannot live a healthy life based on a corn diet.
The movie continues by showing pictures of cows up to their knees in feces which is a very unpleasant sight. Pollan begins talking about disease such as e-coli and salmonella and insists they are products of the diet and living conditions of the cows. As the cows are processed their hide is caked in manure and e-coli that was in their feces is now in our food. This is unsettling considering the meat of one cow is routinely combined with the meat of numerous other cows.

Unintended Consequences
E-coli is everywhere. This scene begins with several news broadcasts delivering urgent messages about nationwide recalls on food infected with e-coli. This disease is no longer only in meat but also in foods such as spinach due to the way we process food. Schlosser speaks on how the regulatory agencies are failing in their attempts to keep the American public healthy. The massive production plants have become more and more contaminated over the years, which is due to over-expansion and simply put, lack of care.

We are next taken to Washington D.C. where we meet a food safety advocate named Barbara Kowalcyk . Barbara tells a heartbreaking story about how her son, Kevin, who fell sick with e-coli from eating bad meat and died ten days later. She is working for the USDA to be more strict with their contamination inspections and to not refrain from shutting a plant down based on constant failure or contamination. Barbara explains a new law in response to her son’s death. The law, Kevin’s Law, would give back to the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meat. This sounds like common sense but the fact is that Barbara cannot get this law passed due to the politics behind the corrupt industry. Barbara has been fighting for this law for the last six years but can’t help but feel that the food industry is more important than Kevin’s life.

We are then taken to Beef Products INC. in Nebraska where we meet Eldon Roth, founder of BPI. He asserts that they are ahead of everybody in terms of food safety and can reduce the cases of e-coli in their meat. One processing toll used is ammonia, which kills the bacteria in the meat. Pollan states, “If you feed cows grass for five days then they will lose 80% of the e-coli in their systems”, but instead these companies want to be as cost and time efficient as possible. This results in turning to chemicals like ammonia in order to cleanse the meat. This does not sound very healthy and sounds bad in principle. Grass is a natural and healthy alternative. Why not use it?

The Dollar Menu
In this scene we are introduced to a hard working family who must count every penny when it comes to eating expenditures. The Gonzalez family works long hours for low wages which directly affects their decision of what to have for dinner. Many times this circumstance results in an unhealthy meal off the dollar menu. The dollar menu is time and cost efficient, all while filling the stomachs of the Gonzalez family, but unfortunately the cost to their health is something that needs to be considered. Later in the scene, the family is seen in the supermarket attempting to make the best possible financial decisions when it comes to what to eat. The family and Pollan question why the bad foods are cheap and the good foods expensive. The reason being because the calories we are subsidizing are the ones in our snack food. Pollan claims that salt, fat, and sugar, which are very rare in nature, have been hard-wired into our evolutionary make-up. Not only are these things no longer rare but they are available in enormous quantities. These high concentrations can wear down our genetic make-up and eventually break down the way our bodies have evolved to metabolize sugar. Thus resulting into many more diabetic individuals. This surplus food is directly affecting how much items cost and how affordable they should be.

In the next scene we are taken to a health advisory group where you can really see the affects of diabetes and other food related diseases on the youth of our nation. A large majority of the kids know someone with diabetes. The film claims that one in three Americans born after 2000 with contract early onset diabetes. It was previously thought that type two diabetes would only affect adults but that is no longer the case. These disease are very really and becoming more and more prevalent. This scene is crucial because it can really open the eyes of the viewer when it comes to every day American families

Food, Inc. Part Two

Food Inc. sends a message to the consumers of “fast food” conveying what they are purchasing without knowing. The film reinforces and connects with The Omnivores Dilemma by visual imagery and voice. The second half of Food, Inc. concentrates on grass. It discusses and contrasts the concepts of grass feed versus corn feed. Joel Salatin is a key voice in this segment and shows his way of running a farm compared to the ‘industrial’ way. His introduction to Food, Inc. Begins with him saying “Everything we’ve done in modern industrial agriculture is to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.” It’s the truth what Salatin says, we all know it but don’t want to see it. He is a realist and knows exactly what is going on, but unlike most he has a solution. It doesn’t make sense to feed the cows or hogs corn when grass can be used. The cow fertilizes the grass and harvests it at the same time making a perfect system. Greed and power are the only reasons why corn is used to such an extent. It’s a cheap, fast, and easy way to create a large amount of feed to be used on the animals we eat. If the animals are becoming sick and treated under poor conditions, then that transfers over to us. Like the saying goes, “you are what you eat”.

Another man we are introduced to is Hirshberg, who is the CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt. He agrees with the problem of the food industry, but also realizes that some changes are inevitable. Logic and basic understanding of the business world is what Hirshberg knows and deals with. He says at one point in the film, “For me, when a Wal-Mart enters the organic space, I’m thrilled. It’s absolutely one of the most exciting things”. Some people look down on this because Wal-Mart is such a large corporation. It goes against the buy local tactics and gives the consumers money to the large corporation. But Hirsberg's whole point is that it’s a step in the right direction for the public. Supplying Wal-Mart makes him a boat load of money and helps bring more organic product to the table. He discusses how much pesticides are avoided by selling these organic products and it really is a step in the right direction.

We then move on to meet another man named Troy Roush, the vice president of the American Corn Growers Association. He also recognizes the problem of our food industry, but can’t do anything about it. The entire process won’t change until the corporation changes its ways. Monsanto is introduced because of their involvement with corn and the soybean. They have a team of investigators who look into the famers who possibly save their own seed. The control and power of this company is scary when thinking it is all revolved around the food we eat. They created round-up and genetically modified their soybeans to be able to survive the spraying of these harmful chemicals. No one company or person should be able to ‘own’ a crop or plant, it isn’t feasible, but it happens.
The famers of today are controlled by the large business corporations and can’t do anything about it. Pollan says “When you genetically modify a crop, you own it. We’ve never had this in agriculture”. We have never had this before because it’s morally wrong to take the rights of food away from the people and the growers. When Monsanto is talked about in further detail we learn about the politics and the people behind the entire operation. The close ties to the Bush administration and Clinton administration show that our government has been dominated by the food industries instead of regulating. Pollan talks about this in the film and its impact on the consumers.

Oprah Winfrey was sued by the meat industry for simply speaking her mind on national television. She went on to win the case, but spent over a million dollars in doing so.

The main problem with how our food is produced deals directly with the ‘top guys’ of the company. They are interested in one thing, making money. It’s strictly business for them and this affects everyone who purchases their food. The employees are shown to be treated poorly and lack respect. A worker from the large corporation talks about how the employees are treated just as the hogs are. The fact that hidden cameras are used to show what really goes on makes one wonder. The extreme privacy that these large companies use sets a tone of curiosity when watching and learning the film. How can they not get a single interview with the men from the large corporation? What message does that send the audience?

The most terrifying aspect of this film is the fact that even after knowing what goes on, people will go out and eat the same. I believe this is not the consumers fault, but rather the producer who secretly controls the food we eat. Being blinded from all these processes and ‘ingredients’ gone into the food we eat really is disturbing and unfair.

The meatpacking companies’ relationships with their employees are discussed in grave detail. Workers for these companies are being arrested while the companies sit back and do nothing. They are giving no respect or credit to the illegal immigrants that came over based on the advertisements. The companies get away with luring them over the border, but the employees are getting arrested. These meatpacking industries are bringing in billions of dollars, but why can’t they spend some of that to protect their employees.

Food, Inc. is a powerful film that everyone must be exposed to. It brings up the issue of real problems dealing with food and what we know. After watching the film it makes me want to change my eating and buying habits of food. The problem is that it’s not as easy as it sounds. When a person has a busy schedule and no time for a real lunch, what should they do? A quick meal is the only solution. We need to take a stand against these large corporations by buying locally and knowing what we are buying. The public is blind on these matters which is exactly what the large meatpacking and food related businesses want.