Food, Inc

1. I don’t eat meat – but would be happy to if it’s local and farm reared

Not long after watching No Impact Man watched Food, Inc at a free screening for Green Wednesdays (which is a fantastic London based film screening group who show ethical, green-minded films). I was ready to learn more about where food comes from, more specifically meat. I tried being a vegetarian when I younger but my dalliance ground to a halt when mum cooked roast chicken. This short-lived stint was based on sympathy for the animals. However, unless I carried around a picture of a cute pig, I couldn’t continue with this motivation for long. I lost the sadness and guilt for eating cute animals as I grew up. As mum always said, humans have always been meat eaters. But she would say that, she hates cooking vegetarian meals. “What do you cook for vegetarians?! Everything has meat in.” is a popular complaint in our house at Christmas when my vegetarian, UFO obsessed uncle comes round. It’s a complaint that gets louder and more populated with swear words as the day gets nearer. He now brings his own food. Last year it had 9 carat gold in. In food! Anyway, I digress.

The film was fantastic. If anyone is curious about how food is mass produced – and I don’t just mean meat, then they should watch this. But be aware that you will probably end up changing you eating habits in some form afterwards. It is by no means a film to encourage you to give up the meat. In fact if anything, eating local, farm reared meat is a more constructive alternative, sending a clear message to factory farmers everywhere that their processed, hormone ridden meat isn’t wanted. The statistics were shocking. I knew that meat production creates more carbon than the transport industry but I wasn’t 100% on why. The answer is corn. Pesticide ridden, genetically modified corn. Corn is fed to the animals in the factories. How much corn? An area the size of Europe is needed to feed all the animals in factories in the USA. This needs to be sewn, watered, harvested and delivered to the factories. That’s a lot of water and a hell of a lot of fuel to farm it. These photos from The Guardian show just how drastic the destruction to our natural environments is thanks to the vast amounts of corn and soy we need to grow to satisify ourselves and these factory farms. Before Food, Inc I had no idea just how many products contains corn (About a quarter of all products contain corn in some form). And even if I had, I wouldn’t have realised just what that means for our environment.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a cow on a farm. But cows eat grass. Not corn. When cows eat corn they become ill. They are then treated with antibiotics. These antibiotics stay in the meat so they clean them out…using chemicals such as ammonia. Which get consumed by you. The end result didn’t even look like meat. The beef burger meat was a grey, dried, powdery substance, slotted into a cardboard box like a brick. Sound appetising?

(Image credit: The Guardian)  Soy fields in Paraguay cutting into forests and threatening wildlife and some of the worlds last uncontacted peoples.

The film threw out fact after fact after fact. When I got home I talked to my boyfriend non-stop for over an hour about what I’d just seen. The film shows you the lives of the factory workers, the corn farmers and the rich and powerful American men and women who are in charge of this business. It shows you the lives that have been ruined by these super-farms, the real people that are affected. It’s little wonder nothing is being done to stop this cycle of shoddy food and poor working conditions when many of the big names are also White House workers and leading lawyers. Its corruption after corruption. The film affected me in a big way. I haven’t given up meat because lambs are cute. I’ve given it up because I wanted to help make a stand. And because I don’t want to eat those chemicals. The film ends, asking you to help by making a choice. It’s a choice you make when you pick something up in the supermarket. The best way to make your voice heard is with money. If you don’t buy their products, they can’t keep producing them.