Buy Local!
Be In The World
what you want to
See In The World
Janet and I went to watch the movie "Food Inc" at Cinema 21. I went along to be a good sport. I am generally disinclined to attend revivals... preaching to the saved and all that. I got most of the way through the book "Omnivore's Dilemma", we are buying from local farms, etc. So I went along, braced for bombardment but not expecting to learn much new. In a way this is what occurred. But there was more. The producers of Food Inc did a masterful job of assembling bits and pieces into a compelling story. The evil machine of factory farming was a key player in this story. So were the farmers, the seed cleaner who was put out of business by the predatory practices of Monsanto, the workers - managed out of the same values as those that prescribe how the animals are treated, families like yours and mine... and, of course, the cows, pigs and chickens.
The movie is a scathing review of an industry that is allowed to exist because of huge subsidies by taxpayers. It is an industry fueled by corn. This is a story of incredible human ingenuity gone awry. But the movie is also a message of hope. That message is simple: Do what you can. It's true: You are either a part of the solution or you're a part of the problem. Being in the business of buying several hundred pounds of groceries each week, Janet and I decided we want to be a bigger part of the solution.
Big Bad Baloney
Just because it is corporate, just because it is huge or successful, just because it is Walmart - doesn't make it bad. The movie really drives this point home by featuring Gary Hirshberg, Founder of Stonyfield, the third largest producer of yogurt in the U.S. Stonyfield sells to Walmart big time and Hirshberg tells about the derision that is heaped on him for doing business with the devil, that being Walmart. He has at his disposal an array of facts and figures as to how many tons and tons of chemicals and fertilizers that were not dumped into animals and onto the earth because they have been able to achieve economies of scale necessary to distribute goods through the largest company in the world at competitive prices.
The movie manages to include ruddy, round-cheeked, doofus-looking suits from Walmart in the picture in a way that makes it very clear that, to the extent that evil has become institutionalized into the food chain, it has only been able to exist because we the consumers ask for it, pay for it and pretend that we are powerless. Walmart's job is to give us what we want. It is difficult to fault the company because its customers are indifferent, lazy and self-disempowered.
Fictitious Labeling
Out of laziness we too readily form judgments without actually knowing the truth or directly observing the complete facts. It is one of the great sins of our time and it is the reason the world is chock-full of meaningless words and phrases. The very language we use is dying beneath us as we enable those who use facts to tell us lies. All-natural meat processors soak and pump their goods with brine that is "seasoned" with celery root and sea salt, knowing full well that these two ingredients combine to "naturally" produce nitrates. They call them "natural nitrates". How nice. Let them toast their creativity with a cup of the natural carcinogenic nitrites that cannot be calculated or measured due to the "natural" process by which they are produced. I'm thinking that good old saltpeter might not be so bad after all. Actually, I'm thinking that maybe my meat doesn't need to be kept artificially pink, so we corn our own beef... but we turn a blind eye to the ham. ;-)