Environmental Policy Class 2: Food

Environmental PolicyClass 2: Food P. Brian Fisher CofC Fall 2010

Food, Inc. Robby Kenner, Director of Food, Inc.: It’s not just about food, but about threats to 1st A, and desire of powerful corps to suppress the truth. Schlosser agrees…both of us, while investigating America’s industrialized food system, were struck by the corrupting influence of centralized power. Whenever power is concentrated and unaccountable—whether it’s corporate power, governmental power, or religious power—it inevitably leads to abuses.” Ch 1: Convo with Eric Schlosser, “Fast Food Nation”

Food, Inc. Food, Inc. “became a movie that is mainly about power—about how a few companies have managed, in the last forty-years, to take over a major segment of American society and now are doing everything they can to maintain and extend that power, including controlling our access to information about their activities.” (p38) Ch 2: Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way We Eat

Food, Inc. Robert Kenner: “I felt as if I’d stumbled into an Orwellian world of behind-the-scenes wire-pullers controlling a fundamental aspect of our lives—the food we eat—which operates in near-total secrecy thanks to the fear it instills in people who know about it. The food companies have a vested interest in controlling what we know—or think we know—about the foods we eat. They desperately want to sustain the myth that our food still comes from a pristine farm with a red barn and a white picket fence rather than a factory farm that really produces it. So the less we think about the reality of our food system, the better for them.” (p37) Ch 2: Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way We Eat

A Step Back Excerpt • Excerpt

Food, Inc. Complexities & built-in paradoxes of the industrial food supply “A system that makes affordable, abundant food more readily available than ever before in history. On the other hand, this seems to contribute to a society in which poor nutrition, obesity, and diseases related to poor diet are rampant.” (p33) “This same system has produced enormous wealth for agribusiness, food processors, and the chemical and technology companies that design our foods, while relying on the work of disenfranchised, low-paid migrant laborers to bring in the harvest and fill with abundance the tables of the affluent.” (p33) Ch 2: Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way We Eat

Food, Inc. Robert Kenner: “The entire food system, I was discovering had been affected by the same forces of efficiency, uniformity and conformity as the fast-food industry, and most people didn’t realize it.” (p30) Schlosser: Heinz Harber, involved in Nazi medical experiments on concentration camp victims was one of Disney’s principal scientific advisers. Disney heavily influenced how McDonald’s marketed its food to children. This irony was not lost, and seemed “relevant. It made sense, when you’re talking about systems that worship uniformity, conformity, and centralized control.” (p10). Ch 2: Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way We Eat

Food Consequences Antibiotics Mad Cow Disease E coli Fat Hormones Disease Contamination Animal Treatment/Welfare Think about for Survey

Environmental Policy Class 2: Food