Robert Kenner’s documentary Film, Food, Inc. (2008) was not only disturbing to me, but it greatly affected my opinion of the food industry. I was stunned by the evidence of where our meat comes from, and shocked to learn that one hamburger is composed of many different cows. I knew that McDonald’s hamburgers were not entirely fresh, but the film opened my eyes to the harsh reality. Cows are slaughtered with manure still on them, which ends up in our meat. After discovering this, I started to think of how much meat I eat on a weekly basis. For a brief moment I wanted to become a vegetarian.
The way animals are treated as they grow is inhumane. Hundreds and hundreds of chickens are kept in dark, confined houses and are mistreated until the day they are slaughtered. Chickens have been injected with hormones so that their breasts will be triple the normal size, and produce more of the preferred white breast meat. Cows and pigs are left to stand in their own manure and handled so roughly by machines that their limbs break. The meat companies hire workers and have no concern with how they treat the animals as they are grown. The movie showed clips from a hidden camera of these workers grabbing these animals by their neck and throwing them into trucks like garbage. It was also scary to discover that the number of slaughterhouses in the country used to be hundreds and now only 13 slaughterhouses exist in the entire US, thanks to preservatives.
Farmers have been manipulated and forced to purchase and grow seeds from larger companies that contaminate their seeds. They are no longer in control of growing their own seeds. The job of farming has changed drastically over the past decade, and what used to be a prominent life-long job, is now one that is overlooked and controlled by larger corporations. The food industry is not concerned with the quality of their product or what goes in it, but rather making food that is cheap and available in the blink of an eye. It pays no attention to the health factors that affect consumers. And yet, what amazes me is that it has continued to expand and has not made any change.
The story involving the little boy Kevin was something that affected me more than I thought. This innocent family ate hamburgers on their vacation and 12 days later, their two year old son was dead from an E. coli O157:H7 infection. I had no idea that the meat we consume could be harmful enough to cause death. It was even more shocking to witness the frustrating process of trying to pass “Kevin’s Law” that would shut down any factories that do not pass certain tests. To make matters worse, after the DNA of the E.coli was found to match a meat recall from 2001, the lawsuit was dropped because they were not able to prove that the infection was caused by this meat.
Today, thousands of people are affected by the food industry and the meat that is being produced. It is scary to consider what might happen in the future if this pattern continues. Food Inc. forms a negative opinion about the food industry, rightly so, and they are clearly gathering their information from credible sources as they show the audience hard core proof.
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