Southern Bread

My wife and I watched the new documentary called Food, Inc. last night. To say it was eye opening would be an understatement. Of course, it’s full of the typical hard left evangelizing, but dismissing it because of that would be the wrong thing to do. Getting a glimpse of what exactly goes into getting a piece of beef or chicken to your dinner plate was insane. I had no idea of some of the stuff that goes on. Did you know that your chicken has been through an ammonia bath to kill E. Coli? Nasty.

Here are some of the things I took away from the movie, with commentary to follow for each:

• Big agriculture is in bed with the government way more than I thought. And I thought a lot.
• Modern technology has made food cheaper, but at a great cost to our health.
• Government subsidies have skewed the agricultural market way out of wack toward corn and soybean.
• Monsanto has sold it’s soul to the government for short term gain.
• Patents are just as evil as I thought.
• Organic products aren’t silly, leftist propaganda.  They are actually a good idea.
• If everyone could see where their meat comes from they would freak.

It’s become almost a given in our current system that big business is in bed with big government.  Indeed, the phrase “big business loves big government” couldn’t be more true when it comes to agriculture.  To be fair, it’s not all one-sided.  Government induces business to “play ball” just as much as business goes looking for government favors.  It’s all just disgusting.  The big agricultural conglomerates and meat processing companies have used the big hand of government to crush it’s competition through patents, increased regulations, land manipulation, etc.  Smaller producers – even the ones that are really good at what they do – can’t compete, because they don’t have the capital to fight the big boys in court.

This consolidation of companies has led to an ever increasing dependence on technology in order to keep up with demand.  It’s not like the old type of huge company, such as Standard Oil or U.S. Steel, that just flat out beat the competition by being better at what they did.  No, today it’s “win first through legislation and corruption and then figure out how to meet demand.”  So, meat processors do insane things like grow cows and poultry on so-called CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).  The animal’s natural food, like grass for cows, is not present.  They are fed corn as they stand knee-deep in their own feces.  It’s been known for a long time that when cows aren’t fed grass, they become very susceptible to disease, as well as skewing the bacteriological nature of their milk.  Basically, they turn into a petrie dish of all sorts of microscopic bad guys.  Combine that with the constant contact with their own feces and these CAFO’s become cess-pools for new strains of E.Coli and other acid-resistant bacteria.  That’s where your beef comes from folks.  Big Mac anyone?

I’ll follow up more tommorrow.  Netflix has this movie.  I encourage you to watch it.  As I said, you’ll have to ignore the green religion balogne and hard left government worship which is in most documentaries these days.  I also don’t agree with the strain of “government can solve all our problems” rhetoric that underlies much of the commentary, but that doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real ones.  It just means, as is always the case, that the government should get it’s nose out of producer/consumer interactions.  All in all, it’s simply a good idea to see where the stuff you put in your mouth comes from.