When I got an e-mail from a flack, er, fine PR professional inviting me to an advance screening of FOOD, INC., a new film by Robert Kenner, I thought she'd made a mistake. A quick look at this blog reveals that I'm very open about my skepticism regarding the whole local/organic/sustainable food movement. Moreover, Michael Pollan is featured prominently in the film and my low opinion of him is no secret. Seriously, did she think I was a candidate to write a favorable review?

But, free being one of my favorite words and flattered that someone thinks my opinion matters, I kept my mouth shut and accepted the invitation.

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. I expected Kenner to be a provocateur along the lines of Michael Moore. However, FOOD, INC., a couple of hidden camera sequences and some provocative editing aside, abstains from the worst excesses of the genre. There are no ambush interviews and the representatives of the large agribusiness establishment who appear on camera are treated with respect, not ridicule. Even Wal-Mart gets a surprising pat on the back.

Before I get to the movie as a movie, I'll examine a few of the issues it raises and stands it takes.

Monsanto and the patented Roundup Ready soybean. Roundup is an herbicide manufactured by Monsanto that is a very effective weed killer. Problem is, it can kill desirable plants too. So, Monsanto developed a genetically modified soybean that it calls Roundup Ready, allowing farmers to "spray Roundup agricultural herbicides in-crop from emergence through flowering for unsurpassed weed control, proven crop safety and maximum yield potential." The Roundup Ready soybean has become controversial for two reasons: 1) Monsanto patented the soybean leading to claims that living things should not be patentable and 2) Monsanto sells the seeds on no-reuse basis, i.e., farmers must agree by signing a technology license to not use beans from plants grown from Roundup Ready seeds as seeds for future crops. The impact of point 2) is that farmers must purchase new seeds from Monsanto year after year.

Coming from high-tech, I appreciate the value of intellectual property (in this case, the Roundup Ready seeds), believe that companies are well within their rights to protect their intellectual property and feel that companies should be free to license their intellectual property as they see fit, potential customers (farmers in this case) being free to choose to deal with another vendor if the licensing terms are not to their liking. Further, no-reuse of seeds is common in farming, not only because of licensing arrangements such as Monsanto's but also because many seeds are hybrids that are genetically incapable of reproducing after the first generation.

But, according to people interviewed in FOOD, INC., Monsanto takes things a couple of steps farther. If Monsanto suspects that a farmer is growing soybeans that contain the Roundup Ready genes in violation of the terms of company’s contract, they may aggressively sue for patent infringement. If Monsanto finds Roundup Ready genes in a farmer’s soybeans, the burden of proof is on the farmer to show that he didn’t violate Monsanto’s patents, even if the farmer claims the genes’ presence is due to contamination. And, Monsanto has aggressively sued seed cleaners, in some cases claiming that, by cleaning Roundup Ready soybeans seeds for future use, they are inducing farmers to infringe on Monsanto's patents. (Seed cleaning is required to use seeds from one year's harvest for future planting. Who knew?)

Monsanto declined to be interviewed for the film. However, via their corporate blog, Monsanto says, "We have nothing against seed cleaners," and claims that the "hypothetical case" of cross-pollination from a Roundup Ready field to another field "does not, and will not exist." The company also posted a response to FOOD, INC. on their web site.

Who's right? I don't have enough information to tell. However, my radar goes up any time a party with vast resources is the plaintiff in cases against parties with few resources. The advantages of resources plus the plaintiff's right of discovery often forces defendants with a strong case to cave because it's simply too expensive to fight.

Chicken Farming. I had assumed that large chicken packers such as Tyson and Perdue were vertically integrated, owing their own growing facilities. Not so, according to FOOD, INC. Large chicken packers rely on a network of contract chicken growers. These contractors must meet a range of unforgiving production requirements and are continually asked to invest in expensive, new equipment, all at risk of contract termination if they don’t comply. Because the average grower with two poultry houses has about $500,000 in loans outstanding, termination is very painful. For their trouble, chicken farmers on this scale make an average of $18,000 a year.

Which leads to the question, why did these people get into the business in the first place? I know that there are economically depressed areas of the country where making $18,000 a year while running your own business might be attractive. But, at the price of assuming the huge financial risk of a half-a-million dollar debt??? And agreeing to the onerous terms of the packers’ contracts??? It seems like there may be more to the story. Of the two contract chicken farmers interviewed in the movie, one seemed to be happy (although he was pressured by the packer for whom he worked to not allow cameras inside of his growing house) while the other was clearly disillusioned with the business.

Veggie libel laws. I really should have known about these because of the Oprah mad cow lawsuit but I didn't put two and two together until I saw FOOD, INC. It turns out that 13 states have food libel laws that make it easier for food companies to sue their critics for libel. See, for example, the Oklahoma veggie libel law.

The impetus for the laws was the 1989 Alar scare promulgated by 60 Minutes. Veggie libel supporters claim that producers of perishables should be entitled to special protection because of time constraints. Opponents, predictably, have First Amendment concerns.

While I'm sympathetic to the plight of farmers who might see produce or meat rot in storage while some unsubstantiated controversy is resolved, governments' obligations to public health and safety outweigh protecting the interests of business, especially in light of the free speech concerns. A higher standard, such as the actual malice standard used in cases involving public figures, should be required to ensure that concerns about food safety get public scrutiny while protecting producers from unwarranted attacks.

Cheeseburger bills. FOOD, INC. also clued me in to cheeseburger bills. While veggie libel laws make it easier for the food industry to sue its critics, cheeseburger bills have the vice versa effect — they make it harder for critics to sue the food industry. In particular, cheeseburger bills bar people from seeking damages in court from food companies for weight gain and associated medical conditions, including heart disease and diabetes. 

I have no problem with cheeseburger bills, even if they protect large corporations from lawsuits. I'm a glutton, I know I'm a glutton, it's my choice to be a glutton and I have an ample mid-section to show for it. That's no one's fault but my own. As far as I know, nobody's ever been forced to eat a Big Mac at gunpoint. Critics will point out that advertising and the proliferation of fast-food outlets in poor neighborhoods stack the deck against some people, diminishing their ability to exercise personal responsibility. While that may be true, society should pay that price to avoid becoming a nanny state.

The tragic case of Kevin Kowalcyk. Without doubt, the saddest part of FOOD, INC. is the story of Kevin Kowalcyk. In 2001, shortly after returning home from a family vacation, two-and-a-half-year-old Kevin became ill and died. The cause: infection by E. coli O157:H7. The loss of her son turned Kevin's mother, Barbara Kowalcyk into an food safety activist, pushing for passage of Kevin's Law which would require the USDA to identify the pathogens that threaten human health, require the USDA to establish performance standards to reduce the presence of these pathogens in meat and poultry and confirm that the USDA has the authority to enforce its own standards by shutting down plants that continually breach basic health standards—authority that processors have repeatedly challenged in court.

FOOD, INC. features Kevin’s mother, who pins the source of Kevin's infection on hamburgers that he and other family members consumed shortly before he became ill. She states that there was a contemporaneous recall of ground beef due to E. coli O157:H7, implying that this tainted beef was the source of Kevin's infection. The beef producer in question was not named, presumably due to the aforementioned veggie libel laws.

Research by the Kowalcyk family's attorneys, however, tells a different story: "After three years, the investigation had reached a dead end. Bill Marler had to tell Barbara and Michael Kowalcyk the dreaded news that they would never be able to conclusively prove the source of Kevin's illness."

Certainly, not being able to trace a food-borne illness to its source is a frightening prospect from a public health perspective. However, it is an entirely different issue that knowing the source of a food-borne illness and not being able to do anything about it.

Federal agricultural policy. One point where FOOD, INC. and I are in complete agreement is that U.S. federal agricultural policy is an unmitigated disaster. However, we diverge on why and what to do about it.

FOOD, INC. repeatedly states that U.S. agricultural subsidies have lowered the market price of corn to below corn's production cost. This leads to a host of evils, including cheap fast-food burgers that make people fat and clog their arteries, cheap HFCS for sodas that can lead to diabetes and cheap corn exports that drive farmers in countries such as Mexico out of business.

This characterization is at odds with articles published during 2007 and 2008, which stated that federal ethanol subsidies were responsible for raising prices for corn and other grains.

A couple of things are certain: 1) U.S. agricultural policy transfers tremendous wealth from the American taxpayer to agribusiness interests and 2) these payments distort the markets for agricultural products. Unless and until government payments to farmers end, we will not fully know the effect of these payments on the market.

Curiously, for as much time as FOOD, INC. spends complaining about them, no one featured in the film explicitly calls for an end to U.S. agricultural subsidies. Calls for policy changes advocate more, not less intervention in agricultural markets, e.g., Kevin's Law and Teddy Roosevelt-style trust-busting of large agribusiness firms.

Illegal immigrants working in the food industry. FOOD, INC. connects the dots between U.S. agricultural policy, U.S. agribusiness and illegal immigrants. As previously mentioned, corn subsidies, which the film says lowers the price of U.S. corn in the Mexican market, drive Mexican corn growers out of business, causing unemployment. Some U.S. agribusiness companies have advertised for labor in Mexico, going so far as to bus prospective workers from Mexico to the U.S. Immediately after making this point, the film cuts to a discussion of the state of illegal immigrants in the U.S. food industry.

While the movie never says so explicitly, the implication is clear to me – U.S. agribusiness knowingly recruits illegal immigrants from Mexico, perhaps even providing their transportation to the U.S.

IMO, one would have to be terribly naive to not believe that many of the low-paying jobs in agribusiness are filled by illegal immigrants. Do companies knowingly recruit illegal immigrants? I don't know but I'd guess that they don't shed any tears if recruiting efforts aimed at legal immigrants net some employees who don't enter the country legally, And, I suspect that companies may not check workers' documentation very carefully. Do they bus illegal immigrants into the U.S.? It seem doubtful that a company would knowingly do this because of the probability and consequences of being caught. My sense is that is a case of provocative editing that paints a possibly misleading impression, albeit in a way that the filmmaker can plausibly say, "Hey, that's not what we said."


Now, to the film itself.

Director Kenner wants to "[lift] the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer." I'm not so sure that anything's been hidden. It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that our food chain is dominated by large agribusiness companies and that food production has been mechanized. However, the film illuminated some interesting and unexpected details, such as that the size and weight of chickens must be carefully controlled so that their carcasses fit properly into the processing equipment. This makes the concept of "factory farming" seem more like real factories rather than simply farming writ large. Is it hidden? Yes, through word and images, agribusiness paints a farm-fresh images for many products but that's marketing. By trade, I'm a marketing guy and would make no apology for presenting products in such a manner.

From a technical perspective, I thought the movie to be very well done. It features beautiful cinematography, excellent sound during all interviews (often a weak point in documentaries) and a clever opening credits sequence. The parts of the film showing animals being slaughtered and raw meat being processed may turn sensitive stomachs. I found the scene of a cow with a porthole in its side so a researcher could reach into one of its stomachs to be particularly cringe-worthy. True to Hollywood, the film has an uplifting ending, as far as a documentary on this subject can. Even though the run time is only 93 minutes, I felt the movie to be a bit long as it was a struggle for me to stay engaged near the end.

I found the interplay between the movie and the audience to be interesting. Both seemed to think it awful that a company would try to bias things in its favor and horrified that law enforcement would arrest and deport illegal immigrants. C'mon, peeps, y'all didn't just fall off of a turnip truck!

A brief panel discussion followed the screening. One of the panelists claimed that had all of the money that various parties had spent in legal fees suing Monsanto been used to buy Monsanto stock, the suing parties would now be the majority shareholder in the company. I don't know if this factoid is actually true but it points the way to the kind of activism I like — engaging business though the capital markets as well as the product markets.

Go to see FOOD, INC. Do it with an open mind. That means acknowledging that the filmmaker may have a point AND that the film may be wrong about those it criticizes. This is the start of a debate, not the end of one.