"Food, Inc." A hearty recommendation!

Last Friday night, I was slightly disappointed that we did not have a local Evolver Spore established yet to discuss Thursday's mighty topic, "Thought for Food." It seemed like such an accessible, foundational topic to host a discussion around, especially in the food-centric town I live in.

Nonetheless, my fiancee and I finally got to see the movie we've been looking forward to since we learned of it via the Internet, a rather long time ago now (by internet time standards).

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

We seem to spend a good deal of time and money in our household gathering and preparing food. We consider ourselves knowledgeable about food issues like chemical and pharmaceutical additives, animal cruelty, GMOs, and we loathe the necessity of purchasing "cheap" food from major commercial outlets. And although we often have few choices for affordable organics, we strive to choose wisely. We thought we knew a good deal about the tactics and legislatory influence of agribusiness. We found out that we knew very little about the abject machine-like cruelty which is being applied to many food industry laborers with cooperation from the full spectrum of authorities.

This film elevated the context of our understanding to a whole new level. The depth and scope of the food industry's efforts to maintain a veil of secrecy are revealed with a clarity and delicacy that is rare in the genre of "truth out" films that relatively few Americans dare to watch (I think there were eight people at the screening with us, including the operator). But remarkably, this film also succeeds where others in the genre so often fail. It provides a bridge to a positive vision for the future of food. It also provides ten clear and simple steps to facilitate change, and a website that is quite a production and resource in it's own right. One of my favorite speakers in the film, Joe Salatin, is pictured in the photo above (credit: 'Food, Inc.' website).

I don't care for spoilers, and my goal is simply to emphasize awareness of this film, so I'll stop here.

Watching this film underscored our commitment to permacultural home food production in bold strokes. The following morning, we enjoyed the noblest trip to the Farmer's market we've ever made, and we gathered more information on local farmer's networks with a new sense of urgency. I'll be on the phone with some of them this week.

One word of caution: If you live in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, or Texas, don't disparage any of your 'Name-brand©' food products in public, lest you be prosecuted to the fullest extent for libel based on the 'Food Disparagement Laws!'