Then again, we also performed invasive surgery on infants without anesthesia as recently as 40 years ago, because someone said that babies don't feel pain either.

@mac-phisto: Thank you! As someone who has no objection to meat consumption, but many objections to inhumane practices (i.e. battery cages for egg hens), PETA annoys me! When they do things like flip a lid over Obama killing a fly, they automatically make most people assume that anyone who wants better treatment for animals is a nutjob who should be ignored at all costs!

I shouldn't have to have a block plugin to avoid having things auto-play. My request was aimed more at the Consumerist people than a general request.

For the record, NoScript does the same thing (unless you've approved the source previously), but that still doesn't mean I want things autoplaying.

@balls187: Actually, the world has plently to eat. The problem is getting the food to the people that need it. Most countries that have starvation problems also have problems with infrastructure, wars, disease, etc. Ethiopia is a good example. They produce a lot of food, but don't have the roads to get the food to those in areas that can't produce as much. However, see the numerous facinating conversations above about carrying capacity, geopolitical factors, GMO, etc. It's not that simple.

Something nobody has brought up is what effect we had on creating super bacteria by feeding cattle antibiotics.

If that doesn't scare you maybe you should read some news articles about it.

While it may be true that you cannot get all the foods you would like to eat...or in some cases really should be eating...locally, you really should at least try to get what you can. And I assure you, no matter where you live, you can get SOME local produce.

Even in Alaska you can get local potatoes and carrots.

Let's fund it. Also, while I'm demanding funding, I'd also kind funding for creating cat girl hybrids, but just the tail and ears.

another thing they explore is why is it cheaper to eat bad then it is to eat good. i.e. fast food every day vs. going to the store and making it yourself.

the movie doesnt try to preach that all this agribusiness is bad but more of whats wrong, anti competitive and anti productive to business/society as a whole. i would defiantly watch this movie again and id recommend it to anyone even vaguely interested in it.

That was one thing that "The Story of Stuff" did right, at least if I'm remembering it correctly. I do not recall seeing actual photos of any President or Generic Corporate Person, they put a little cartoon thingy there instead so you didn't pigeonhole your focus away from the message.

I know it seems like the annual food production increases are done to combat starvation but its simply not true. Its just the excuse used to justify the increase at any cost.

The sad part about all this is if the american public were made aware of what was happening; it would stop immediately.

that's why that "death on a factory farm" documentary was so hard to watch. guy goes undercover & takes video of some pretty nasty practices at an ohio hog farm. very unsettling.

The world doesn't have enough to eat. There are a number of countries on this planet where people die of starvation on a daily basis.

We're having a bit of a local go-round over lead plumbing pipes. Some folks in the community have the attitude of, "Look, 100 years ago, before the lead plumbing, people died of cholera, and that doesn't happen any more, so I don't know why you're so set on preventing people from dying of lead poisoning!" As if the only two options are to turn back the clock 100 years and have everyone die of cholera, or to keep what we have now and have 5% of people get lead poisoning. Why aren't we allowed to move forward and KEEP improving? Less cholera AND less lead poisoning, please!

More energy can be produced if necessary, and I think people will opt for nuclear plants all over the place over a return to 19th century food production, where even the most developed nations had food shortages if not actual famines regularly.

CAN the US support itself, food-wise, if international trade were cut off? Some experts say yes, some say no. (Some say we produce plenty of CALORIES, but not much of those calories are FOOD without very large quantities of processing, and that's a problem.)

But my point is really that food safety and ability to produce adequate food "in-house" in the worse-case scenario is a key national security issue, and we don't typically treat it like one. ANYONE who is concerned about terrorism, national security, international relations, etc., should be DEEPLY concerned about agricultural policy. Most people in those areas don't know a damn thing about agricultural policy, and the average man on the street who has strong opinions on national security gives you a big "DUR?" if you ask them about agricultural policy.

If China said, "No more soy exports to you, America!" is this the kind of thing we can say, "Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on," to China about (probably; we grow a lot of soy) or is this the kind of thing where we have to go, "We'll do whatever you say, just don't take away our soy sauce!" Even in peace time, other nations' control over aspects of our food supply gives them powerful, powerful levers in negotiations with us.

When we were in grade school, a popular thing to do was take the kids on field trips to local industries. We visited a broom factory (got a little tiny broom), a dairy (got an ice cream on a stick), the local furniture factory (got nothing - cheapskates!) and the local slaughterhouse, courtesy of the parents of a kid in my class, who owned the place.

Most of us were okay; even watching them completely skin and gut a huge steer wasn't a big deal for a lot of the country kids. But when we got to the area where the cattle were held, and they began explaining how the bolt gun worked ("It's very humane - they don't feel a thing") quite a few of the kids began to cry.

All we got out of that were nightmares. :P I'm sorry to add that I still enjoy a good burger.

As for artificial fertilizers dramatically increasing our carrying capacity (which they did), there's a whole second debate around how long that can go on, because creating nitrogen fertilizers requires absurd quantities of energy -- virtual all from fossil fuels. Any American farmer will tell you how high his input costs have risen in the last five years due to increases in nitrogen fertilizer costs, and those increases are staggering. (Another reason pursuing "organic" or "green" methods -- that use more traditional fertilizers or at least reduce commercial fertilizer inputs -- makes economic sense for many farmers.)

As for argriculture in the developing world, responsible applications of genetic engineering have already made positive contributions (golden rice, etc.), though certain GE technology is problematic here, especially seeds which require a patented trigger substance to grow, etc. Countries like India were able to greatly increase their food production through advanced (at the time) techniques in the 60s. I don't think it's a given that developing-world countries can't handle modern agricultural technology.

However, to get the whole world to this state, it is important to keep production (not just of food, all industrial production) as high as possible. Simply giving up and saying 'oh, well, that's how many people the world can support' is problematic; before the invention of cheap chemical fertilizer the world's maximum food production was thought to cover about 2 billion people, and it was significantly less than that before the invention of the railway.

Corporate Farming is the reason the world has enough to eat, plus some. The US could EASILY feed it's own population from local farms and no huge business farms. We product wayyyy more food than we eat, but a LOT.

We COULD scale back production if we wanted, get food that tastes better and is healthier for us while being also more mindful of the animals we use for production, IF WE WANTED TO.

But there is no money there...

@cromartie: Exactly. Michael Moore doesn't make movies assuming all the Ann Coulter fans are going to flock to his viewpoint. He plays to his base and then hopes to grab a few that are on the fence. THe problem is that we've become so polarized that if Michael Moore said the sky was blue, Fox would go nuts and talk all about how since he was biased, he can't be right. Or, that 10 years ago, he got some minute fact wrong and now we can't believe anything he says. Sometimes, the other side is right.

@dbshaw: Most common form of that myth is "OMG organic food will make people STARVE and destroy more rainforests because it doesn't produce as much per acre!". In actuality, there is more than enough food already, and issues like deforestation have more to do with poverty and associated poor-quality farming techniques than anything else.

@johnva:

I took issue with the meta value of this coverage given the low overall death rate for foodborne illnesses compared to other "consumer" concerns. There are tons of "food issues" but allocation of the supply isn't really the issue put forth by my commentary - that's more of an environmentalist concern.

@johnva:

I agree, and I practice a lifestyle where I don't consumer red meat or predatory-based meats, but that isn't really related to what I was talking about.

And no, no one is blameless but when in the trailer they splash up pictures of folks from the previous administration it sure makes it seem like it's a two-sided issue for some people at least.

@rpm773: Possibly, but this idea that we must be "balanced" even when someone is obviously more at fault than others is one of my problems with journalism today.

GWB did not personally crap in your baked beans (to borrow from another poster). However, he did cut the budget and authority of the FDA. He promoted business interests over health interests and environmental interests, he continued harmful subsidies and tariffs, etc. So, he bears some responsiblity. Fox News has sucessfully created this canned response to any criticism of Bush, "you're biased and a Bush hater." No, sometimes people f*ck things up. It's not bias or hate, it's because that's what they did.

Others are to blame: previous administrations for their farm policies and whittling of FDA authority, the US supreme court for their unrealistic interpretation of what can be patented, etc.

Your tune will change real fast.

Food production - How much food can we produce, and at what cost (environmental, social, land, cost in non-renewable resources such as oil, etc)? Can we sustain the current food production levels? Given that much of our current industrial agriculture depends on fossil fuels for inputs, machinery, and transportation of the product that question is dependent on a lot of complex geopolitical issues.

Organic vs. non-organic farming: a good bit of evidence shows that organic farming techniques might actually be a BETTER, more productive farming method for farmers in poorer countries. Many of those people can't afford all the advanced technology that is used in the U.S. and don't have the know-how about how to use it anyway. So they end up using lower quality conventional methods that quickly destroy their land and force more deforestation, etc. It might be better to just teach them organic farming techniques so that they wouldn't have that problem as much. Plus they would get a higher-priced product for export, etc.

Population - the root cause of many of our world problems. This is tied heavily to the so-called "demographic-economic paradox": it is our biological nature to actually have MORE children when we can least afford it. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense: there is a biological imperative to ensure more potential replacements in an environment where more of them are likely to die. And things like education, opportunity, and respect for women's rights are very necessary for people to rise above a simple subsistence existence. So actually, the best, most humane to cut down on population growth is to bring as much of the world as possible out of poverty.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!):

I said "from a death perspective." Health issues are treated as these dire emergencies where we're slaughtering pigs, eschewing peanut butter, and burning spinach leaves. The stomachaches and basic discomfort caused by foodborne illness aren't all that consequential, in my view - there are something like 38 million cases of illnesses with a high likelihood of food transmission, but most of them are trivial.

The CDC tracks these stats:

[www.cdc.gov]

Approximately 5,000 people die from foodborne illnesses in America every year.

DOT tracks car fatalities:

[www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov]

Approximately 42,000 people are offed by cars every year. That's almost an order of magnitude.

"i don't think ecoil was something people worried about in the 1920's popping up in their produce"

Why? Do you actually think the food supply back then was safer than it is now?

[newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org]

The population increases because of increases in standard of living. This is not primarily because of food supply, but because of medical care. After a while, once people realize they don't need to have twelve kids to ensure the family continues, they slow down on the baby making and have one or two. The food supply still needs to keep up, though.

Because he/she's right. By every conceivable empirical measure, human health and longevity have increased even while the EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL "processed" food had all that "crap thrown in it."

this weekend, i saw "death on a factory farm" (hbo documentary). i don't think i want to eat bacon anymore now - & that's pretty much like heroin to me. :(

Great film.

science-fiction-sounding "breakthroughs" such as insecticide-resistant soybean seeds

If you're going to fear-monger, you should know what you're talking about first. Round-Up Ready soybeans are resistant to the herbicide Round-Up. Insecticides kill insects. This was in fact a huge breakthrough, not just because it means we have to do less plowing and spraying to get rid of weeds. Also because this trait can be packaged with other traits, such as insect resistance, so that you can see which plants got the genes inserted properly simply by spraying.

First world farmers provide the fuel for third world population growth

The ethical problem becomes simpler if you say foreign policy is to not get involved and simply let what happens happens.

This isn't just a hippie issue. It's a national security issue, an oil issue, a food-cost issue, an environmental issue, a farmer issue. (Also a "total failure to understand the economics of farming" issue on a grand scale, since half the people involved in agricultural economics appear to fail to understand that supply is influence BY NATURE and nature doesn't get your freaking memo about how much rain you want this year.) I'm on the board at my local county extension, and agribusiness hurts farmers. Even the big ones. "High-yield" GMO crops don't provide notably higher yields than modern farming methods with non-GMO crops, but they DO cost hella more and (typically) exhaust the soil faster. Agribusiness encourages practices we scientifically know are BAD or contraindicated, in the pursuit of short-term profit (wreck your soil there, Bob, and you ain't growin' nothin').

Agribusiness does a lot of exciting and important research, it's true, but their motive is not the good of farmers, the health of your food supply, the health of your soil, or the safety and long-term sustainability of your nation. Their goal is PROFIT for that company and for shareholders, and in pursuit of that goal they pursue a lot of strategies that are contrary to farmers' interests, our environmental interests, and our long-term national interests.

Aw screw it.

The people who made this movie are naive commie hippie fuckheads!

-or-

This movie proves GWB personally took a huge shit in each and every batch of poptart frosting.

I'll come back and delete whichever opinion I end up disagreeing with using the edit feature.

@Chumas: Fast Food Nation made me hungry. I went to Wendy's after I watched it.

you should get out more.

Now country B will somewhere with poor agricultural land that has a carrying capacity of 20 million w/r/t food. Country B is at 25 million, a famine hits, and what does Country A (with only 400 million of its 800 million people limit) do? Send food. So Country B's 25 million people survive, and do what people do, which is procreate, and get up to 30 million, and then another famine hits. What does Country A do? Send food. And so on and so on, every time helping Country B sustain a population well above its carrying capacity and that population KEEPS INCREASING, so that at some point when Country A can't or won't intervene, instead of 5 million dying in the initial famine, Country B will be looking at the deaths of 20 million people or 30 million or 40 million; the higher the population is above carrying capacity, the more catastrophic this "final famine" will be.

(Which is an ethical problem I don't have a good answer for -- I think it makes you a special kind of bad person when you look at starving children and say, "Look, I can't give you food because in the future, you'll just starve MORE" ... but it's also pretty horrific to "help" people just so they can suffer more in the future, and in a lot of poor countries the kinds of society-wide solutions that would be necessary can't take hold because there's too much corruption, turmoil, weak governments, etc.)

Anyway, people might not be advocating feeding all the people in the world. You can fairly ethically come down on either side of the question. And local food chains (regardless of how we're defining local, as long as it's "sub-national") turn out to be a pretty important part of national security, since the more stretched out and international your food chain is, the more vulnerable it is to attack; but your nation also becomes more economically vulnerable and more vulnerable to political pressure and to turmoil in other parts of the world. Producing food for the US *in* the US not only creates jobs and all that good stuff, but makes the US less vulnerable to international pressure. And the more local the food chains are, the less-pressured they are by things like transit costs.

Um, I think I strayed somewhat off my point there. Which was -- oh yeah. Feeding the entire world might not be the goal.

A balance needs to be struck between the need to feed an ever-growing population and safety standards.

Despite recent spates of health warnings, I have yet to worry at the grocery store. The amount of foodborne-illness-related deaths in this country are miniscule, and are not growing more quickly than the population. Consumerist's campaign of harping on agribusiness companies has always seemed overstated to me. If those stories are taking resources away from more worthy targets (from a death/pop. perspective) like unsafe cars and medications it's a shame.

@dbshaw: Feeding people is certainly evil.

@dbshaw:

Too many people? Amateur eugenics are not welcome. It's not your little private planet.

The Angel, however, is Firefox and the NoScript add-on.

build up not out.

I bet some of the conditions were worse however, they did not have the same amount of crap thrown in it. Not everything I eat needs growth hormones and HFCS in it.

Problem is we created the FDA and over the years each president removed it's power little by little and the ones left scrambled to make money by collecting payola to keep a blind eye to conditions around them

My issue is foreign food, no need for it in this country. Stop the use of hormones and foreign imports and you'll see vastly improved food.

btw bush is not to blame for our FDA and current food conditions even slightly.

And gubbamint subsidies and protections for the same agribusinesses (i.e. to keep the price of sugar in the US higher than the rest of the world and block imports of sugar)?

Just curious.

It was very interesting, actually.

Corporate farming is the reason why we have enough to eat. I'd love to see the antiquated family farmers sustain the entire country. Welcome to the 21st century. Agribusiness is not evil.

You think it was better 100 years ago? Heh. Yeah, wish you could go back in time and test THAT theory.