Food, Inc.

I got around to watching Food, Inc. yesterday. The movie did a good job of showing the problems with cattle and the factory farmed system where the meat can get ecoli into it. And how the USA's food system -what with food subsidies for corn - worsens this. The cows are much more likely to have ecoli problems with being fed corn instead of eating grass as they evolved to do. They don't digest the corn properly.

Other problems essentially the fault of the government is that they have stopped regulating and inspecting meat processing plants and that they have restricted speech on problems associated with food. Speech needs to be freed and inspectors need to get serious. Also - the revolving door whereby industry people, such as Monsanto execs, getting the jobs that inhibit inspections, free speech, and subsidies.

The movie showed how chicken farmers get into massive debt what with investing in the chicken houses and then can't get out of the deal, farm the way they want - because they have to maintain their contract to maintain their income.

Some of the examples of problems included young people dying from eating hamburgers (and ecoli spreading to spinach and other vegetables from the factory farms), and MERSA infecting people who work at factory farms - what with the antibiotic resistance and such.

While the movie suggested the solution of voting with your dollars and food choices - it seems a lot of people won't make the change from buying pop (empty calories) to buying organic milk from grass-fed cows and from buying processed meals to locally raised meat.