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Chumas
June 26, 2009 12:46 PM
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FFN freaked me out so much I stopped eating at McD's for all time. Wonder how bad this movie is going to be.

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mac-phisto
June 26, 2009 2:19 PM
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@Chumas: that scene at the end where they're walking the new hire thru the killing floor & processing plant was tough to watch. i actually stopped eating McD ~6 mos. before i saw it, so it just reinforced my decision.

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. :(

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HogwartsAlum
June 26, 2009 4:45 PM
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@mac-phisto:

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.

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balls187
June 26, 2009 4:59 PM
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@HogwartsAlum: Nothing wrong with enjoying a good burger. However, I'd say you at least know the *real* cost associated with that burger. Something that most people are completely unaware of.

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mac-phisto
June 26, 2009 5:05 PM
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@balls187: yes. & while i usually want to beat the pants off those PETA nutjobs (at least the very vocal, freegan, fruitarian types), one important thing i agree with is that our livestock should be treated humanely.

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.

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balls187
June 26, 2009 5:27 PM
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@mac-phisto: Now I must watch that documentary.

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

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RedwoodFlyer
June 27, 2009 4:08 AM
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@balls187: Sadly, I don't think it would. Remember back last year when they aired the downer cow getting the forklift forks stuck through him all over the news? No one seemed to mind one bit! Or when they had that video of Palin, with the turkey getting its head sliced open in the background? It's amazing how many people don't comprehend that farm animals are sentient...hell, pigs are smarter than dogs, yet we're quick to judge the Chinese for their McWoofWoof.

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!

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jaydez
June 26, 2009 1:47 PM
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@Chumas: Fast Food Nation made me hungry. I went to Wendy's after I watched it.

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smirkette
June 26, 2009 1:58 PM
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@jaydez: That's how my students reacted to \"Super Size Me\"

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Pibbs
June 26, 2009 12:54 PM
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After watching that trailer, it does seem like an interesting movie to watch, but it certainly seems like it has a very specific agenda. Pro-local food sources are certainly a great way to go, and organic may be one of the most healthy ways to eat. However, it would be very difficult to feed all the people in world, or even in our own country for that matter, if all we grew was local, organic food. I'm interested in watching this movie for sure.

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TechnoDestructo
June 26, 2009 7:28 PM
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@Pibbs:

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.

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Real Cheese Flavor
June 26, 2009 2:14 PM
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@takes_so_little: I don't think you need to see this movie to realize that while there are going to be some truths in there, it's mostly going to be fearmongering and blaming things on the ebil republicans.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 2:24 PM
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@Real Cheese Flavor: Sometimes the truth hurts, doesn't it?

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cete-of-badgers
June 26, 2009 2:24 PM
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@Real Cheese Flavor: So we've only had Republicans in both Congress and the White House for the last 50 years? Interesting. I don't think anybody is blameless. It's possible to have campaigned for Obama and protested Clinton for his deregulation practices. Is everything a two-sided issue for you?

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Real Cheese Flavor
June 26, 2009 2:45 PM
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@cete-of-badgers: I have no idea why my post wound up in this \"thread\" when I meant for it to be in a different one.

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.

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nucleotide
June 26, 2009 2:00 PM
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@Pibbs: If the US wasn't artificially lowering, via government subsidies, the prices of corn, wheat, etc. we export, poorer nation would be more likely to use their own land for agriculture. But third world farmers can't compete so the they end up as poor transients in urban areas and the farm land goes fallow. That leaves these poorer nations at risk of famine. Industrial agriculture causes more starvation than traditional farming and it is not sustainable over the long term.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
June 26, 2009 1:44 PM
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@Pibbs: There's this idea called \"carrying capacity,\" which basically says no region -- we'll make countries our regions for easy of discussion -- should be populated beyond what it can \"carry\" on its own natural resources, particularly food and water resources. It's not quite as harsh as it initially sounds. Let's imagine that country A (which shall be America!) has a carrying capacity w/r/t food of, oh, 800 million people. (We've got good cropland here; I'm sure it's actually much higher, even if we're growing organic -- there are new organic technologies that raise yields dramatically and reduce costs compared to corporate agriculture.)

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.

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Applekid
June 26, 2009 6:39 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I read this and think we need to start farming other planets. Like Independence Day, except that we're the aliens.

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.

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Robert Synnott
June 26, 2009 4:37 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): There's a minor error in reasoning here, in that the more prosperous a country becomes, the more its birthrate falls. Always. This always happens, except for a couple of weird cases where the Catholic church has been able to discourage contraceptives to a ridiculous extent. A few countries like Germany depend on immigration simply to maintain population numbers.

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.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
June 26, 2009 4:45 PM
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@Robert Synnott: That's absolutely true, but emergencies infusions of food to stop famine in very poor countries doesn't make a country more prosperous; it merely makes them able to sustain more people in poverty. As johnva notes, education (particularly for women) is the key factor in reducing birth rates and poverty (the cause/effect battle I leave to smarter people than I). Emergency food infusions -- enough food to \"feed the entire world\" -- doesn't contribute to that.

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.)

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Robert Synnott
June 26, 2009 4:51 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): A country, however, can not develop while it has a food shortage (or at least it becomes extremely difficult for it to do so).

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.

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floraposte
June 26, 2009 2:52 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I wonder if this isn't a genie-out-of-the-bottle thing, though. There's not much important in our economy that isn't dependent on international commerce. Absent a catastrophic event that makes us unable to trade internationally, I can't see a situation that requires the rich countries to forego cheaper/out of season/whatever goods from international trade even if they can support themselves.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
June 26, 2009 4:51 PM
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@floraposte: There isn't anything inherently wrong with international commerce, but one can easily imagine many catastrophic events that could make us unable to trade internationally -- a totally freeze in relations with China. A war. Terrorist attacks on trade infrastructure. (Terrorist attacks on international food chains.)

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.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 2:56 PM
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@floraposte: I didn't take her post to really be anti-trade. There is nothing wrong with trade that exploits a real comparative advantage (such as the ability to grow different crops or crops at different times of years). The problems start to come in when one country is importing tons more food than they export.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 2:40 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Well, there are a couple of different related issues there.

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.

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Robert Synnott
June 26, 2009 4:43 PM
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@johnva: To an extent, the dependency of the food industry on fossil fuel isn't a given. It is simply the cheapest, most convenient approach. And becoming less so; I wouldn't be surprised if we see electrification of things like combine harvesters soon; farm vehicles are ideally suited to this because they don't need range, and you can install charging infrastructure in the farm. A lot of mass transport can be handled by trains, which are increasingly electrified, and ships, which can be nuclear powered if necessary. The fertiliser is a problem, but there are ways to make it out of things other than fossil fuel; it just costs more.

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.

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 2:02 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): No no this is completely on point. If we stopped importing Chinese products of any type we would open up a war in which we might not win.

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

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Preyfar
June 26, 2009 1:11 PM
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@Pibbs: In an interview on Elliott in the Morning (WWDC 101), the director was very open that while the film did have an agenda it was more about educating consumers based on where their food is coming from, what's in it, the country of origin and health issues. Many consumers were unaware that much of the food they were eating came from China, overseas, had no idea what was in it, etc.

It was very interesting, actually.

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OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave
June 26, 2009 1:02 PM
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@Pibbs: Sadly, most of the organic food is produced by the same companies that produce non-organic food.

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PSUSkier
June 26, 2009 1:18 PM
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@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave: Agreed. And I still don't buy into the whole \"Organic is going to change your life.\" routine.

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Pibbs
June 26, 2009 1:13 PM
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@OMG!ToOMG!,ByMyPonies!_GitEmSteveDave: I saw Certified Organic Lays potato chips the other day. I lol'd.

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Skipweasel
June 26, 2009 1:01 PM
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\"In the thrall of agribusiness\", Shirley?

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GuinevereRucker
June 26, 2009 1:33 PM
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@Skipweasel: I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.

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Radi0logy
June 26, 2009 1:02 PM
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The problem is that no matter how good food gets, no matter how safe it becomes, no matter how much the world improves, there will be fear-mongering documentaries like this one to scare the sheep of the world into demanding that everything be \"improved\".

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

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CFinWV
June 26, 2009 6:05 PM
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@Radi0logy: I'm not sure how you can compare advances in medical science to the nutritional value of the food supply. Yes we're living longer but I haven't exactly seen anything to say that we're healthier. We've eradicated some common illnesses with drugs, basic medical practice has improved, we can slow disease and death with other treatments. Are we really healthier? But still, that isn't the focus of this documentary. This is about the food supply. Obesity is rising as is medical conditions that are directly related. That goes hand in hand with food, not with medicine.

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Gokuhouse
June 26, 2009 2:58 PM
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@Radi0logy: Our food is less nutritious now then it was 100 years ago. When you feed your animals strictly to make them fat and grow faster you aren't going to get meat or eggs that's better. You get worse food. So, we have more food now but it's not as good for you. Now, there is a balance being tried today to make as much food as possible on as little space as possible. This balance is between how healthy our food is against how much food(money) they can make. Usually money outweighs most health concerns so the weight is being put on the amount of food that can be made. You can't tell me that a steak with perfect marbling is as healthy as a lean cut from a cow grown on grass. That fat wouldn't have been in that meat if they weren't fed to fatten them up. It might taste better(a lot better), but it's not as nutritious. So, just because we have freezers now and can keep our food safer longer it doesn't mean the process of which we grow and prepare our foods in manufacturing have gotten safer. Do you think it's safer to butcher 20,000 hogs and mix the meat in one vat to make sausage or is butchering 100 hogs and mixing them together safer? Obviously the less unique chances of danger is better because the source can be very small. If you get 1 diseased hog into the vat with 20,000 others it's all bad. And that's too much money to throw away. They make bad decisions when it comes to health because of this. Now throwing away 100 hogs because you found one of them to be diseased is a lot more probable. They aren't going to worry about as much money being lost because so many less are bad. So, I would say these large manufacturing plants are not nearly as safe as they can be. This kind of film needs to come out to show people who don't have the chance to see the process of how their food is made.

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takes_so_little
June 26, 2009 1:47 PM
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@Radi0logy: You're painting with an awfully broad brush, and panning a movie you haven't even seen.

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carlos_the_dwarf
June 26, 2009 2:22 PM
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@takes_so_little:

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.\"

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Inglix_the_Mad
June 26, 2009 2:58 PM
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@carlos_the_dwarf: There are limitations however. While I'm not as worried about food as I would be in Upton Sinclair's time, there is still this underlying mentality of if you can get away with it, do it. That's just human nature.

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floraposte
June 26, 2009 2:42 PM
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@carlos_the_dwarf: Agreed. (I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's read The Jungle.) But I think much of America has the luxury of improving further; ironically, the luxury of finding ways to circumvent the consequences of our luxurious food access. Take the advantage of the latter-day manufacturing scale, technology such as refrigerators and freezers, and hygiene knowledge while seeking some of the benefits of the pre-industrial lower-impact, fresher access patterns.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
June 26, 2009 4:54 PM
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@floraposte: Yeah, this attitude of \"things sucked way worse 100 years ago, SO STOP TRYING TO IMPROVE THEM\" is bizarre to me.

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!

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 1:26 PM
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@Radi0logy: Yes and no.

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.

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Featherstonehaugh
June 26, 2009 1:09 PM
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I love how Bush is somehow to blame for... what exactly? Talk about non sequitur.

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.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
June 26, 2009 1:54 PM
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@Featherstonehaugh: \"Antiquated\" family farmers might not be able to sustain the US today, but non-industrial farming methods have improved considerably.

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.

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GuinevereRucker
June 26, 2009 1:34 PM
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@Featherstonehaugh: True that. Any recent documentary that feels the need to put clips of President Bush in there and blame him for anything and everything makes me highly suspicious.

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takes_so_little
June 26, 2009 1:48 PM
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@GuinevereRucker: Yes, people should realize that nothing is his fault. Except the good things, like invading Iraq.

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doctor_cos wants you to remain calm
June 26, 2009 1:24 PM
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@Featherstonehaugh: So you have no problem with agribusiness overlords who decide how many chemicals are in what you eat, without regard #1 for whether or not said chemicals might be harmful to humans?

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.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 1:21 PM
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@Featherstonehaugh: Corporate farming is why we have too many people. Its also why we have enough bad food to eat. Take into account the damage it does to the environment and agribusiness most certainly evil.

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AbsurdHero
June 26, 2009 1:54 PM
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@dbshaw: I'd like to be with you on this, but how is corporate farming responsible for overpopulation? I would think the exploding birth rate in undeveloped countries, where corporate farming takes food out of hungry mouths and many people are subsistence farmers, is chiefly responsible.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 2:06 PM
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@AbsurdHero: People are made of food. When you were born you were tiny, now you're whatever size you are. Where did that mass come from? It comes from food. No population explosion is possible without the availability of food. Its basic biology, as well as basic physics.

First world farmers provide the fuel for third world population growth

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Robert Synnott
June 26, 2009 4:47 PM
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@dbshaw: Please note that population is generally not growing in highly developed countries, though. For that matter, it isn't growing at all as quickly as it used to in rapidly developing countries.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 5:54 PM
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@Robert Synnott: I'll note it, but whats your point? Whats relevant is that globally food production is increased annually and globally the human population rises annually. Population growth is impossible without food availability. Also growing food is a pointless response to starvation, its just too slow. It would be akin to trying to build a boat to stop drowning.

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.

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HIV 2 Elway
June 26, 2009 1:35 PM
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@dbshaw: Feeding people is certainly evil.

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Unsolicited Advice
June 26, 2009 1:33 PM
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@dbshaw:


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

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cromartie
June 26, 2009 2:43 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: Leave your house sometime. Spend a few months in India or China. Take a look at the nearly exhausted water supply in Atlanta. Take a drive, if you can, around Los Angeles.

Your tune will change real fast.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 2:48 PM
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@cromartie: Water is going to be one of our next huge resource crises in America. We've gotten used to an endless supply, but it's not limitless.

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 1:45 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: so you are in disagreement with idea that we are overpopulated?

you should get out more.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 1:41 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: You misunderstand. Not to worry though, its a common misunderstanding. Most people think food production is increased to feed an expanding population. In fact the reason people believe this is because it is in the interest of people who profit on a global scale from selling food to promote this belief. It is however false. In actuality the population grows to meet an expanded available food supply.

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Robert Synnott
June 26, 2009 4:46 PM
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@dbshaw: Food production has generally, historically, expanded to meet _starvation_. This inevitably leads to population growth at first, but when a country reaches a certain level of development its population tends to stabilise.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 5:48 PM
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@Robert Synnott: The starvation you say food production is generated to meet was in fact created by expanded food production to begin with. It is impossible for there to be population growth in the absence of food. Also I'm not talking about the population of countries, I'm talking about the population of humans.

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 1:27 PM
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@dbshaw: we need to go back to local farmers only and stop developments from their continued destruction of forests and old farm lands.

build up not out.

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larrymac thinks testing should have occurred
June 26, 2009 1:14 PM
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Auto starting videos are the debbil.

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StruckBySmoothCriminal_GitEmSteveDave
June 26, 2009 1:28 PM
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@larrymac: No, the debbil is the Metric System.

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

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 1:27 PM
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@larrymac: Flashblock addin for Firefox is the angil.

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Matthew Broder
June 26, 2009 1:26 PM
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You are being naive. Agribusiness is just that...a BUSINESS. Companies like Monsanto and Cargill are not making widgets or pushing papers, they are producing food for their fellow humans to ingest. That commitment should come with a higher sense of responsibility, one greater than the bottom line. GMO crops, inhumane treatment of animals, easing of government regulations etc. are all actions that are motivated by greed. The small independent farmers featured in this film are not only motivated by money, although they are running a business. Turning a profit is not the only thing they care about. Before passing judgment on this people who put this film together do some research into what motivated them to make the movie.

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 1:34 PM
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@Matthew Broder: wow you're pretty naive you should wake up and smell the rat feces in your coco puffs.

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Unsolicited Advice
June 26, 2009 1:37 PM
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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.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 2:46 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: The food supply is already far bigger than is necessary to feed all the people on earth. We just use a lot of it wastefully (ie, as feed products to raise a ridiculous amount of meat for rich countries) and we don't distribute it very equally. I'm not a vegan activist or anything, but it's ridiculous how much meat some Americans eat. I like a good steak every once in a while, but I don't eat meat every day. Even just cutting meat consumption down to a few times a week would have an enormous impact if everyone did it.

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Unsolicited Advice
June 26, 2009 2:52 PM
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@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.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 3:00 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: It's completely related. If we weren't wasting so much of our food production (by using it to feed people inefficiently by turning it into meat first) there wouldn't be any issue with inadequate food supply.

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Unsolicited Advice
June 26, 2009 3:05 PM
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@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.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 3:14 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: I was just responding to the first sentence in your post. Food safety is a different issue, albeit one that is also related.

@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.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 3:04 PM
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@johnva: As you've already noted, there isn't an issue with an inadequate food supply. Its a myth used to justify production at any cost.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
June 26, 2009 1:56 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: It's actually hard to imagine a BIGGER problem that has more effect on the average American -- in terms of food health and safety (including death from lifestyle diseases), in terms of wasted tax dollars, in terms of environmental impact, and in terms of long-term national security and economic sustainability -- than agricultural policy and practices in this country today.

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Unsolicited Advice
June 26, 2009 2:34 PM
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@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.

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cwlodarczyk
June 26, 2009 2:15 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Your comments are always among the most lucid and cogent on this whole site. I just want to say thanks. =)

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 1:50 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: i don't think ecoil was something people worried about in the 1920's popping up in their produce...... I would love some numbers between food born illnesses and deaths of today compared to the 1980s or anytime period in the last 50 years.

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carlos_the_dwarf
June 26, 2009 2:27 PM
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@Skankingmike:

\"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?

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Skankingmike
June 26, 2009 10:36 PM
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@carlos_the_dwarf: we won't ever know will we?

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.

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unpolloloco
June 26, 2009 2:22 PM
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@Skankingmike: People in the 1920's didn't really know what bacteria was (at least to the extent we do now), so e-coli was not a concern. I bet food-borne illnesses were actually significantly higher due to improper food storage.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 1:49 PM
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@Unsolicited Advice: The food supply is not expanded to meet a growing population. The population grows to meet an expanded food supply.

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Shadowfire
June 26, 2009 2:26 PM
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@dbshaw: What? No.

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.

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 2:30 PM
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@Shadowfire: People are made of food. It is physically impossible to have population growth without the availability of food.

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takes_so_little
June 26, 2009 1:52 PM
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Am I the only one here who wants to actually SEE THIS MOVIE before praising or criticizing it?

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.

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CFinWV
June 26, 2009 6:14 PM
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@GuinevereRucker: I almost wish they would just put a generic figurehead of government in these documentaries so as not to allow alarmists to be distracted by \"OMG!! THEY'RE BLAMING BUSH!!!\"

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.

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rpm773
June 26, 2009 1:58 PM
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These are heavy political times. When your trailer implies that 3 members of the previous administration are responsible for the evil your documentary attempts to expose, I think you undermine the gravity of your message and possibly sabotage your box office returns.

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cromartie
June 26, 2009 2:46 PM
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@rpm773: Or you're effectively playing to the prejudices of your intended target audience.

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ARP
June 26, 2009 3:56 PM
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@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.

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rpm773
June 26, 2009 5:37 PM
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@ARP: I don't know. I think it's like a gratuitous topless scene in an otherwise respectable movie; it will turn off the prudes, titillate the sophmores, but ultimately not do much for the content of the movie or the message it's taking up.

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ARP
June 26, 2009 2:44 PM
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@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.

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Entomologista
June 26, 2009 2:12 PM
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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.

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johnva
June 26, 2009 2:27 PM
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@Entomologista: It also makes farmers dependent on Monsanto. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is, because it centralizes control of our food supply further.

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Entomologista
June 26, 2009 3:32 PM
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@johnva: I realize that Monsanto gets the most attention, but it is far from the only company that produces seeds. And really, farmers will always be dependent upon somebody else for new cultivars whether it's companies, the government, or universities. Food doesn't spring forth from the earth fully formed and delicious. It has to grow, and it has to be defended from all the other things that want to eat it. We're in competition for our food.

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vliam
June 26, 2009 2:17 PM
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It looks interesting but I feel like I've already seen this film. It was called The Future of Food. It's available on Hulu,
[www.hulu.com]

Great film.

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cromartie
June 26, 2009 2:47 PM
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@vliam: Seconded. Future of food was terrific, and heartbreaking at the same time. Produced by Jerry Garcia's widow, as I recall.

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tgrwillki
June 26, 2009 2:27 PM
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This is probably just the Economics major in me talking, but as it has been demonstrated, quality of goods has a lot to do with things. One solution to see a change in the way things work is to make the markets freer, just to provide a couple of examples, say we were to eliminate all quotas and subsidies on food products. The result would be that there would be a flood of goods coming to the market, as a result, one of two things would happen, either prices would fall dramatically(not likely), or quality would improve (along with manufacturing efficiencies) as companies worked to differentiate their good from their new foreign competitors. This actually happened in New Zealand several years ago, and led to some major changes, with surprisingly good results...

[newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org]

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jaya9581
June 26, 2009 2:34 PM
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Is it possible to not have that trailer auto-play when this page loads? There is nothing more annoying, especially when I'm on my wireless connection. I'd like to make my own choice whether or not I want to watch that video. :)

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dbshaw
June 26, 2009 2:53 PM
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@jaya9581: Firefox plugin: Flashblock. It makes the web sane. Or at least a little saner.

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jaya9581
June 27, 2009 3:37 AM
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@dbshaw:

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.

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grapedog
June 26, 2009 4:10 PM
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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...

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balls187
June 26, 2009 5:01 PM
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@grapedog: I get what you are saying, but I think you're very wrong.

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.

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ARP
June 26, 2009 10:42 PM
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@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.

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Trai_Dep
June 26, 2009 4:47 PM
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I'm wryly amused when some extoll what a great job the free market Big Agra producers do, when they receive, literally, billions of dollars of corporate welfare a year. And, as a recent Consumerist story pointed out, collude to drive the prices of their product up to stratospheric levels by slaughtering their milk cows, biting the taxpayer hand that so lavishly feeds them.

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takes_so_little
June 26, 2009 6:08 PM
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I'll go ahead and say what we're all thinking: people who are against processed food are Bad Americans, most likely without a legitimate birth certificate.

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David Toffling
June 26, 2009 6:27 PM
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i saw this movie during the boston indie film fest, [www.iffboston.org]
it was very eye opening and the point it tries to get across is what all the agribusiness means to consumers and to farmers. a good example is the \"round up resistant\" soy bean. its one companies intellectual property so if your a soy bean farmer and you use their beans you cant clean and replant them next year. you have to buy them all over again. so you'd say ok well that just business but what about the farmers that dont use those beans, they can just clean their beans and replant, right? nope. because the company that makes the round up resistant soy beans has prosecuted people for seed cleaning so much that its almost nonexistent. plus if the farm next to you uses those round up seeds and you dont they get in your crops anyway due to pollination. then monsanto, the company behind the seeds, will come after you for using their seeds with out paying.....
that's a perfect issue that isnt organic/local vs. not.

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.

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badgeman46
June 27, 2009 1:48 PM
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I saw it, it is basically propaganda for the eco crowd. It is full of deceptive and/or false facts. One example that sticks out in my mind is \"there are only 13 slaughterhouses in the US\" Where I live within a half hour of three slaughterhouses. These are the same groups that lobbied for a replacement for that \"evil lard\" and brought you the more evil trans-fat soybean oil. It bears mentioning that our agricultural system in the US means that going hungry for the most part is not a problem. For the average joe, this means he spends more on Cable than he does on food. I have tried to figure out the agenda of the eco-crowd, and the only thing I can think of is they wont be happy until we are all poor and crapping in a pit in the woods. But we won't be able to gather around the fire, too much carbon after all.

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ricklesgibson
June 27, 2009 4:36 PM
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This stuff just makes me angry. It's easy to tell people what to eat when you're not starving. We have plenty of food and it's not making us sick. And as far as vegetables v. burgers, that's a specious argument. Lettuce is high at $1/pound or a dollar per head. Beef up to twice that for ground chuck. The thing is, veggies are cheap of dirt because, & this may be shocking, they're made of dirt.

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