food inc.....go see it!

Food Inc.' puts the gross in 'groceries'

Updated Sat. Jun. 20 2009 7:05 AM ET

Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News

The images of chickens struggling to stand under overgrown breasts, and cow carcasses being forced through massive meat grinders may make viewers of "Food Inc." avert their eyes. But director Robert Kenner hopes his film is ultimately an eye-opener.

Kenner's thoughtful, if occasionally revolting, documentary bills itself as an exposure of the food industry's underbelly that will make you "never look at dinner the same way."

The questions the film raises have been asked before -- and in greater depth -- by Michael's Pollan's book "In Defense of Food," and Eric Schlosser's bestseller "Fast Food Nation." (The two authors in fact figure prominently in the film, providing much of its narration.)

Yet, what "Food Inc." does that those books couldn't is put faces to the problem. We meet chicken farmers who are guilt-laden by their own practices, and a mother whose son slowly haemorrhaged to death from E. coli in packaged hamburger.

In one heartbreaking scene, a low-income family's youngest daughter begs for a fresh pear at the supermarket, but is refused because a similarly-priced bag of chips and pop would fill her belly longer.

There's little doubt the industrialization of the food industry has brought us pesticides in our streams, massive food recalls, and the obesity crisis.

But we also now have the most efficient food production system ever known to mankind. As one representative of the National Chicken Council notes: "We can grow more chickens on less land. In half the time. For fewer dollars. What's wrong with that?"

Kenner says that's the kind of the other-side-of-the-story he hoped "Food Inc." would also convey.

"I think that's an important point of view to have in the film and that's what I would have wanted more of: industry's point of view," he told CTV.ca in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

But though he approached dozens of food companies and producers, almost none wanted to go on film to talk.

"I wasn't given any access, so that kept changing the film," he says. "Because I'm not Michael Moore. I didn't set out to have doors slammed in my face. I wasn't into that. I wanted to have a conversation, a debate. But it wasn't happening."

He adds, "I like to joke that I think I would have had greater access if I had been doing a film on nuclear terrorism."

Now that the film is in limited release in theatres with a huge media campaign behind it, those same food producers are launching their own counter-campaigns. Monsanto deconstructs the documentary's withering accusations in a section on its website, and a coalition of meat producers have set up their own website, SafeFoodInc.com.

Kenner finds it all a little amusing.

"First, they won't talk to me and now, they try to follow me on radio shows," he says with a laugh.

"But you know, ultimately, I don't think they really want you thinking about how your food is grown. They want to keep up this myth that it all comes from a small farm, when in reality, it's all produced by very few corporations that create this stuff in giant factories."

The film makes the case that our food supply is controlled by just a handful of corporations with a scary amount of influence in Washington. Kenner says that wasn't at all what he expected to uncover.

"At first, we thought it would be a film just about just fast food, but that had been done with 'Super Size Me' and I felt we had to move beyond that. So then it became about supermarket food, and then that led to look at the industrialization of the food industry. And then when we saw how corn was connected to all of it. And we started to connect the dots.

"We saw that food was getting centralized and these corporations grabbed more power. And we heard about "veggie libel laws" [laws passed in some U.S. states that make it easier for food industry interests to sue their critics for libel] -- all of those things were big surprises for me. I didn't know that any of that existed.

"And I didn't know how litigious it was. If I had, I might have done a different film," he half-jokes.

"When I stumbled into this stuff, I realized, 'Wow, it's more insidious that I thought. It's real-life "Michael Clayton".' We're in the middle of a thriller and I didn't realize it."

With images of Big Food dark forces who visit farmers at night to demand their silence, viewers might be reminded instead of "The Insider," Hollywood's take on the Big Tobacco cover-up.

"The tobacco analogy is a good one," says Kenner. "In both cases, it's rich, powerful corporations, with connections to government who are designing an addictive product, and spreading misleading information with questionable studies.

"I'm optimistic," he insists. "I think things are going to change. Low-cost food is just too expensive when you look at the costs on our health, on the environment, on the workers in the industry."