An open letter to Paula Crossfield at Civil Eats.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 06/12/2009 - 5:18pm.
Hello, Ms Crossfield.
I read your review of the movie, Food, Inc., which I gather is a Michael Moore-style documentary of the food industry. Which, to me, means it's a gloves-off representation of the film producer's point of view. I haven't seen the movie, and maybe my characterization is incorrect. And maybe the film is thoroughly accurate and unslanted. That's what a good documentary should be, I think. Like The Parrots of Telegraph Hill. That's a documentary worth watching.
(Ms Crossfield is managing editor of Civil Eats, a website about food issues.)
In your review you say that the movie has Big Ag "shuddering," and I'm curious about something. How do you define "Big Ag?" And how do they shudder?
I write for Lancaster Farming newspaper, and blog daily on their website (click AgScene for the blog). Lancaster Farming is a weekly publication with some 55,000 mostly farmer readers.
I have a feeling that 90 percent plus of our readers would fall into your Big Ag category. Including some of our Amish readers. And probably close to 100 percent of them depend on Big Ag companies (Sauder's Eggs, Pennfield Feeds, P.L. Rohrer & Brothers, Inc., Messick's Equipment, to name a few local examples), to produce and market crops and livestock.
I've never farmed, but in several decades of dealing with farmers, their suppliers, marketers, support people, I have yet to meet a truly evil person, whether that person worked for Monsanto, or was someone selling strawberries from a table by the road.
The criticism I've been reading lately of the way our food system works - and it was the sense I got from your review - is that the system is evil, and that it's dominated by evil people with evil intentions whose only purpose in life is to rake in mind-numbing profits. Damn the consumers. Damn the environment. Animals? Nothing but vegetables with legs. Damn the animals. Damn the people who don't like us. Show me the money. SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Maybe that's the way it really is. Maybe Food, Inc. makes a compelling case for its point of view. From your review, I'm pretty sure you were convinced.
I plan to keep an eye out for the movie and will watch it as soon as I can.
I'll be looking for evil.
Not that I'm in the habit of watching dirty movies.
Food, Inc., hits movie theaters this week, I think, and it is said to be a withering indictment of the way Americans produce, market and consume their daily bread with all its bug parts, fecal matter and cancer-causing chemical contaminants. I want to see the movie, but I couldn't find it playing this week or next in an area around my home of 1,256 square miles. Yes, I really do want to see the movie, and yes, I will try to go in and come out with an open mind. When its out on DVD - which may be about 30 seconds after its general release - I'll put it into my DVD player, pop some toxic popcorn, eat a hunk of hormonally loaded cheese and try not to breathe the air, because we've got a farmer out back and who knows what he's up to. If the movie's showing near you, go see it. Meantime, you can read a couple of stories about it in this week's edition of Lancaster Farming.
I'll let you know when my review's ready.
This guy needs to work on a rap routine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQHLbiFUVWU
