«Τροφή,Α.Ε.» ...
Τι τρώμε και πώς παράγεται;
Μια αποκαλυπτική ματιά στις πρακτικές των αμερικανικών εταιρειών που ελέγχουν τη βιομηχανία τροφίμων.
Τρόφιμα Α.Ε. από tvxorissinora
Το ντοκιμαντέρ «Τροφή, Α.Ε.» (Food, Inc. - 2008) από τον βραβευμένο με Emmy σκηνοθέτη Ρόμπερτ Κένερ, αποτελεί μια καταγραφή της νομικής και οικονομικής ισχύος που έχουν στην οικονομία της Αμερικής οι μεγαλύτερες εταιρείες τροφίμων, καθώς και μια μαρτυρία για την επιβλαβή επίδρασή τους στην υγεία όσων εργάζονται στο στάδιο παραγωγής κι όσων τρέφονται από τα προϊόντα τους. Η ποικιλία στα σούπερ μάρκετ είναι απατηλή καθώς όλα σχεδόν τα τρόφιμα ελέγχονται, παράγονται και διακινούνται από πολύ λίγες πολυεθνικές. Πολύ περισσότερο απατηλή, αποδεικνύεται η εικόνα της φάρμας στην εξοχή όπου σε συνθήκες υγιεινής καλλιεργούνται και παράγονται τα γεωργικά, γαλακτοκομικά και κτηνοτροφικά προϊόντα. Στο ντοκιμαντέρ καταγράφεται επίσης το βαθύ πλέγμα της διαπλοκής: μια μητέρα χάνει το τριών ετών υγιέστατο παιδί της μετά από μόλυνση από το μεταλλαγμένο βακτηρίδιο e-coli, μέσα σε 12 μέρες, αλλά παρά τους αγώνες της μέχρι σήμερα δεν έχει δημιουργηθεί νόμος που να επιτρέπει στο αρμόδιο υπουργείο το κλείσιμο μονάδων όπου εμφανίζονται επανειλημμένα κρούσματα μολυσμένων ζώων. Αποδεικνύεται όμως ότι στις διευθυντικές θέσεις των ελεγκτικών υπηρεσιών της κυβέρνησης βρίσκονται πρώην στελέχη των ίδιων, προς έλεγχο, πολυεθνικών. Παράλληλα, σε μια επίσης ανησυχητική εξέλιξη, ο νόμος Veggie Libel απαγορεύει μέχρι και λεκτικές διατυπώσεις που μπορεί να θεωρηθούν δυσφημιστικές για την βιομηχανία τροφίμων. Ενδεικτικό της πιστής εφαρμογής της νομοθεσίας το γεγονός ότι η γνωστή παρουσιάστρια της αμερικανικής τηλεόρασης Όπρα Γουίνφρεϊ ανέφερε σε μια εκπομπή της τη φράση «δε θα ξαναφάω χάμπουργκερ μετά από αυτά που άκουσα» για να μπει σε μια δικαστική περιπέτεια που κράτησε 6 χρόνια. Όπως ήταν αναμενόμενο, το ντοκιμαντέρ δέχθηκε τα πυρά των μεγάλων πολυεθνικών στον τομέα τροφίμων, καμία από οποίες δε δέχθηκε να παραχωρήσει συνέντευξη στους δημιουργούς του.
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tvxs.gr
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ
'' Food Inc''
Wikipedia-Robert_Kenner
Google -Εικόνες για το ''Food, Inc''
'' Food, Inc.'' (2008)
(1)
''The current method of raw food production is largely a response to the growth of the fast food industry since the 1950s. The production of food overall has more drastically changed since that time than the several thousand years prior. Controlled primarily by a handful of multinational corporations, the global food production business - with an emphasis on the business - has as its unwritten goals production of large quantities of food at low direct inputs (most often subsidized) resulting in enormous profits, which in turn results in greater control of the global supply of food sources within these few companies. Health and safety (of the food itself, of the animals produced themselves, of the workers on the assembly lines, and of the consumers actually eating the food) are often overlooked by the companies, and are often overlooked by government in an effort to provide cheap food regardless of these negative consequences...''.
(2)
(...)
'' ...'Food, Inc.' is a populist and practical film that speaks with the voices of farmers, advocates, and journalists, and focuses on food, what's wrong with it, and what we can do about it. Kenner offers lots of practical information and appeals to everyday people. The film goes back to the Fifties to show how the rise of fast food contributed to centralized, less diverse American food production. MacDonald's now much of the chicken, beef, potatoes, and many other foods produced in the country. The film explains that only a handful of companies control not only most of the beef, pork, chicken, and corn produced in the US but most other food products as well. Moreover not only is corn the major feed given to food animals, but a surprising amount of the tens of thousands of products sold at today's supermarket -- that packaged junk racked in the center of the store that Atkins and now Pollen have told us to avoid, are also derived from corn. Because of the way certain food products have government support, hamburgers are cheaper than fresh vegetables. Kenner focuses on a low-income Orozcos who both work and feel forced to rely on fast food meals because they fill them and their kids more economically than fresh produce bought at the market.
The new industry has developed chickens that grow bigger faster with more breast meat. They're kept in closed dark pens. The story is the same for all these poor mass produced critters, crammed together in great numbers, filled with antibiotics, deformed, suffering, ankle deep in their own excrement, brutally killed. The film has good footage of the big southern meat producer, Smithfield, showing how the new mega-food industry feeds off of exploited low-wage illegal immigrants who it treats as expendable, just like the animals.
An important spokesman in 'Food, Inc.' is an organic farmer (you could just say a stubbornly old-fashioned one) called Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, who's also an author, though the movie doesn't mention his books. His cattle are grass-fed and watching them, we realize that's the way nature meant them to be. They roams free, living a healthy life, trimming back the grass while fertilizing it so it will grow back. Cattle weren't meant to live on corn, and doing so has led to infection. The industry solution to such problems is not to change back to earlier methods, but to add more chemicals. They're doing crazy things like adding bleach to hamburger filler to keep the burgers from being poison."
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''Στο FOOD Inc, ο σκηνοθέτης Robert Kenner σηκώνει το πέπλο για τη βιομηχανία τροφίμων της Αμερικής, εκθέτοντας την τεράστια εκβιομηχάνιση που έχει κρυφτεί από τον Αμερικανό καταναλωτή και δεν συμβαδίζει με τους ρυθμιστικούς οργανισμούς USDA και FDA.
Ο εφοδιασμός των τροφίμων του έθνους τώρα ελέγχεται από μια χούφτα εταιριών που θέτουν συχνά κέρδος πάνω από την υγεία των καταναλωτών, την ποιότητα ζωής του γεωργού, την ασφάλεια των εργαζομένων και του περιβάλλοντός μας. Έχουμε κοτόπουλα με μεγαλύτερο στήθος, την τέλεια χοιρινή μπριζόλα, ζιζανιοκτονοανθεκτικούς σπόρους σόγιας, ακόμη και ντομάτες που δεν σαπίζουν γρήγορα, αλλά από την άλλη έχουμε και νέα στελέχη της Ε. Coli, τα επιβλαβή βακτήρια που προκαλούν ασθένειες σε περίπου 73.000 Αμερικανούς κάθε χρόνο .
Έχουμε την πιο διαδεδομένη παχυσαρκία, ιδιαίτερα για τα παιδιά, και ένα επίπεδο επιδημίας του διαβήτη στους ενήλικες.
Περιέχει συνεντεύξεις με τους εν λόγω εμπειρογνώμονες, όπως ο Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) μαζί με προοδευτικής σκέψης κοινωνικούς επιχειρηματίες, όπως ο Gary Stonyfield της Hirshberg και Joel Polyface Farms Salatin, Το FOOD, Inc . αποκαλύπτει συγκλονιστικές αλήθειες, σχετικά με το τι τρώμε, πώς έχει παραχθεί, που έχουμε γίνει ως έθνος και πού πηγαίνουμε από εδώ....''
Big Food will do everything to stop you talking about this
Filmmaker Robert Kenner's documentary Food Inc has shocked audiences across the US with its stark portrayal of industrial agriculture.
And that's just the bits the lawyers let you see...
This is not a film about food:it's a film about rights
Laura Sevier: What inspired you to make the film about the food industry?
Robert Kenner: I had read Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. I realised I knew so little about where food comes from and how much our food systems had been changed.
The illusion is that food comes from a farm with a white picket fence and barns but it's not. It's from huge mega factories where tens of thousands of animals are confined in one space. Waste used to be fertiliser - now it's a pollutant. The pieces of the system no longer make sense.
LS: Did you set out to listen to all sides of the story - from organic farmers to Monsanto?
RK: I thought it would be interesting to talk to everyone - food companies, industrial and organic farmers and have a conversation about how we can feed the world.
Little did I know how off-limits the food world would become and how much industry does not want you talking about this subject. I went from one company to the other - in the film you only see ten or so but actually there were dozens that did not want to talk to us.
I realised the system was off limits. Ultimately in the US food products have started to have more rights than we as individuals. There are laws in place to protect companies - known as 'veggie libel' laws - that stop you from insulting a product or endangering profits of a corporation. [Food libel laws or food disparagement laws exist in 13 US states]
LS: Can you tell me about the legal challenges you faced with this film?
RK: The irony is that it's more frightening to talk about it here than in the States. I didn't realise what we faced until we talked to Barbara Kowalcyck, a food safety advocate whose son died having contracted E-coli from a tainted hamburger. She mentioned what happened to Oprah Winfrey who, on a program about BSE in 1996, expressed concern about the safety of eating hamburgers. [Texas ranchers sued Winfrey under a food libel law, although in 1998 the jurors rejected the $11 million dollar defamation lawsuit.]
I ended up spending more legal fees on this film than the past 15 films combined - times three! The world of corporate food is a very litigious world. They will do everything to stop you from getting people to think about this subject. It made my life very frightening. If I'd known all this before I started out, I might have had second thoughts about making this film.
We went through the film and thoroughly fact-checked every single statement.
I took things out of Food Inc that I thought were true but [over which] I didn't want to spend time in court.
LS: Did legal opposition from various companies force you to edit out parts of the film?
RK: No-one forced me to but there was always the inherent threat. In our attempt to reach companies we'd call and say, 'We're talking about so and so. Don't you want to comment?'
With Carole Morison, the chicken farmer who worked for Perdue Farms - she said she's immune to antibiotics and that she had been feeding her chickens a feed additive made from arsenic (as requested by Perdue). We spoke to Perdue who said: 'we stopped doing that [arsenic] a day or two ago so Carole is incorrect.' They defended the practice in the recent past! I took out that bit from the film to err on the side of caution.
LS: What was the most shocking aspect of making the film?
RK: There were two things. One was early on when we went to a hearing about whether to label cloned meat. A representative from the meat industry said it would be 'too confusing for the consumer'. I realised I had entered an Orwellian world where people are being 'protected' by not being told.
Then when I asked food safety advocate Barbara Kowalcyck what food she eats and she couldn't answer me or she'd be sued. I realised it was not a film about food: it was a film about rights. Seeing how food products now have more rights than individuals - that was more frightening than seeing how the food was produced.
LS: In the film there is a focus on the food system in the US - does the situation apply to the rest of the world?
RK: This is not a film about the US. I thought of filming in other countries and you could have been told the exact same story. It might have started in the US, but it is spreading. It's starting to happen here and it happens in Asia.
LS: How was Food Inc received in the US when it was released last year in June?
RK: It became one of the most successful documentaries of all time. The amount of press we got was really incredible. For a while we were the number one selling DVD on Amazon ahead of all the Hollywood movies.
It's very gratifying to see how much it played into growing food movements and how passionate people are and how it cuts across ideological lines. There is something about food that does cut across ideological lines - we all have to eat!
LS: In the film you tell people to 'vote with their fork'. Is consumer power enough to change this system? Obviously it's a matter for the regulatory agencies too but as Food Inc reveals, the FDA and USDA are somewhat toothless...
RK: It's a two-pronged battle. Consumers do have the power to vote three times a day. But you've also got to create a level playing field. Unfortunately if you're subsidising food that's not good for us it means that poor people are having to buy cheaper calories and these cheaper calories are making us sick. It also takes consumer consciousness to infringe this group. It's never going to change unless we have a movement to help us change it.
As a common movement gains strength it's able to put pressure on governments all over the world. Entrenched corporate power is only concerned with the very short term, in looking after its own bottom line. You can still make money selling healthy food too. We need to know how to put pressure on and pay the real costs of food. We all love cheap food - but we're beginning to see the hidden cost of it.
LS: What do you hope people will take away from the film?
RK: That the system is unsustainable. We've created a world where we're using up our natural resources and, in doing so, robbing our children and our grandchildren. We have to think about growing and producing food in a fairer way.
We have to return the balance of power towards individuals and away from the corporations. The film does show Walmart in a good light for helping to ban a growth hormone given to cattle to produce more milk.
We also need to figure out how to create another system. The current food system is all based on oil. If you believe in peak oil we're going to run out at some point. We need to think about how to feed the world and what's sustainable. People should have the right to know the consequences and the cost of the industrial food system.
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