By Kamran Nayeri, April 22, 2012
The
Context
There
has been increased interest in the public health and political economy of food
in the United States over the past decade. Robert Kenner’s Emmy award winner
Food Inc. (2008, 1 hour and 34 minutes, PG rated) uses Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma
as springboard to further investigate industrial farming practices that produce
the bulk of “food items” on the grocery store’s shelves.
There
are already many good reviews of Food Inc. However, they typically do not
situate the documentary in its proper political economy context and none that I
have read deals with its ethical implication.
Human
life requires eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things
commonly referred to as basic needs. Thus, production of such means of
consumption has been the building block of human societies since the Agrarian
Revolution about ten thousand years ago.
As Engel’s Law (proposed by the nineteenth
century German statistician Ernest Engels) has it, mass consumption evolves
with the transformational growth of industrial economies. In early stages
of capitalist development, when per capita income is low, most of workers’
income is spent on food and other subsistence goods. When
industrialization takes off and per capita income rises working people’s
consumption pattern expands to include manufactured good such as household
appliances. In mature (“advanced”) capitalist economies with high
per capita income, the service sector expands and services become part of
working people’s consumption basket as well.
The
value of labor power (approximated by money wage) is the value of a basket of
goods and services that is necessary for its reproduction. The value of labor
power is historically determined. The accumulation process that results
in competition among capitalists and between, capitalists and workers, and
among worerks requires progressive decline of the value of labor power.
That is, it requires the cheapening of the products and services included in
the average worker’s consumption basket. Cheapening the value of food is
historically and analytically primary for advancing capitalist accumulation
process.
Thus,
in the United States government support for agriculture began in the first
decade of the twentieth century and was solidified in the 1930s (depression)
and 1940s (war) and a program of subsidies continues to this date. Nothing
similar has happened in manufacturing and services (the energy industry, a key
sector to capitalist production, being an exception).
However,
mass production in the food industry had to wait for the experience in
manufacturing industry to mature. As Food Inc. remarks, McDonald’s
spearheaded fast food and mass production in the food industry, including
industrial farming.
Historical
data show that the inflation-adjusted price of food has declined with the
development capitalism, especially since the introduction of industrial farming
over the past half a century. Take for example the price of a hamburger
at McDonalds: 15 cents in 1955, 15 cents in 1964, 18 cents in 1968, 30 cents in
1974, 50 cents in 1984, 59 cents in 1991, 85 cents in 1995, 89 cents in 2000,
and 89 cents in 2007 (these prices are not adjusted for inflation).
It is sufficiently clear that the secular real price of a hamburger has
declined over time. The same pattern is observed in other mass consumed
food items.[i]
Thus,
industrial farming has contributed to the post-World War II expansion of world
capitalism through a process of division of labor, mechanization, use of mass
production techniques, and economies of scale and scope.
The
Movie
Now,
let us return to Food Inc. Author and co-producer Eric Schlosser explains
that a majority of colorful and variegated food items on supermarket shelves
come from only five corporations that as a group control 80 percent of the
market. Yet, every attempt is made to make the consumer feel that the
food item is produced on an idyllic farm.
In
fact, the industrial farming companies make every attempt to keep their labor
processes hidden from public view. And they can count on the government for
help. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) that are supposed to protect the public are actually
complicit in allowing corporations to put their profit ahead of consumer
health, working farmers interest, worker’s wellbeing, animal welfare, and the
environment.
Food
related epidemics, from mad cow to E. Coli and Salmonella are routinely
reported with sometimes massive recall of related products. Just last week, a
new study found that
48% of packaged raw chicken products bought at grocery stores across the
country were contaminated with the bacteria E. coli (a spokesperson for the
government discounted this finding by insisting that there is no public health
concern if the consumer cooks the chicken well). The industry is allowed to add
chemicals to their products. For example, pink slime can constitutes up to 15% of
lean ground beef bought in stores. A number of environmental hazards, such as
manure runoffs, are part of industrial farming labor processes. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports: “workers
in food manufacturing are more likely to be fatally injured and experience
nonfatal injuries and illnesses than workers in private industry as a whole.”
An interview in Food Inc. notes how small farms that sign contracts with giant
food companies are often enslaved to them and the banks.
Kenner
throws some light on the genesis and dynamics of industrial
farming. As Schlosser puts it, the food industry has changed more
in the last fifty years than in the last ten thousand years before it. But Food
Inc. does not link its emergence and development and power to the dynamics of
the capitalist system.
The
viewer can see the assembly lining of food production by ever-increasing
division of labor and using labor saving technologies. Chicken are
altered to gain more weight twice as fast as they have for millions of years,
with their breast far out-weighting the rest of their body. As a result their
legs cannot handle their weight so they cannot move more than a few feet
without falling down. Combined with their jammed-together existence, they are
drowning in their own manure. Some die. Most suffer the entire short life and
their flesh become infected with E. coli. In pursuit of higher profit,
corporate managers and their staff scientists and engineers aim to drive the
unit cost as low as they possibly can. The miserable farm animals are mere
“products” destined for the marketplace where their corpses are sold by the
pound. The viewer can get a glimpse of the same grueling process in the
beef and pork industries.
There
are feedback mechanisms at work as well. With the help of government
subsidies, corn production has soared and prices have come down. Thus,
the beef industry uses corn as cattle feed (which is not the natural food for
cattle that normally eat grass). This has resulted in massive increase in E.
coli bacteria in the cattle’s guts. Thus, the E. coli epidemics.
Michael
Pollan notes that E. coli in cattle guts is reduced by 80% by feeding
cattle grass for five days. However, the industry has opted for a
“hi-tech solution.” Eldon Roth, a supplier, demonstrates how his new E. coli
killing meat mix-in, “a tasty blend of ammonia and ammonia hydroxide,” works.
The
documentary also gives some attention to the workers and small farmers.
While the industry has lobbied to pass state laws prohibiting workers from
taking photos or videos of their workplaces, Kenner manages to include some
footage of how workers enter and work in factory farms and of the conditions
inside. The first problem facing factory farm workers is the stench—they
have to get as mush of it out and some fresh air in before being able to enter
the facility where the animals are kept. For obvious reasons, there are
no images of the “kill floor” but there are scenes of assembly line cleaning
the corpses of chicken, etc.
Kenner
introduces us to an impoverished immigrant family of four--the father is
diabetic--struggling with the baffling reality that fast-food hamburgers are
cheaper than a head of broccoli. And a brave chicken farmer lets Kenner's
cameras see her operation, only to subsequently lose her contract with Perdue.
Kenner
also gives some attention to Monsanto, manufacturer of DDT and Agent Orange
that patented a gene that's in 90 percent of the nation's soybean seeds. You'll
be driven out of business if you re-use them, as farmers have for thousands of
years. You'll even be sued if some of the seed blows onto your land and you
wind up with Monsanto-patented soy.
Food
Inc. ends on what it commonly thought to be an alternative to industrial
farming. Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farms makes the case that every food purchase
we make is a political act. Wal-Mart sells his organic products because people want to
buy them, not because it's morally enlightened.
Kenner
shows what appears to be an idyllic farm. Cows are roaming free eating
grass and chicken running around scratching the ground. They all look healthy
and happy. Except at the end of the sequence we see how the chicken are
slaughtered—the chicken is garbed and forced down a funnel so its head sticks
down and its throat sliced with a sharp knife. The innovation is that you do
not see the chicken’s headless body bounce around on the ground—a scene that
can make you think twice about current food habit that repeats this atrocity
billions of times each year!
Basing
himself on U.S. Department of Agriculture's late 1990s data, Gary Francione writes: “[In the
United States of late 1990s] we kill more than 8 billion animals a year for
food; every day, we slaughter approximately 23 million animals, or more than
950,000 per hour, or almost 16,000 per minute, or more that 260 every second.”
Even if we could raise this many farm animals for food without resorting to
factory farming, would it be ethical to kill them for food when healthier vegan
alternatives are available that save billions of lives and are environmentally
friendly?
However,
as James E. McWilliam reminds us the idea
of feeding over 313 million U.S. inhabitants pasture raised or otherwise
non-industrially raised farm animals is a myth. He writes: “For all the
strengths of these alternatives, however, they’re ultimately a poor substitute
for industrial production. Although these smaller systems appear to be
environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.” His
concerns include global warming and deforestation.
Shortcomings
As a
documentary, Food Inc. has three major shortcomings. Although it shows
graphic scenes of farm animal brutality it remains silent about the ethics of raising
and slaughtering animals for food. Second, it gives its audience the
impression that small farm food production alternatives can fill in for
industrial farming in terms of meeting the current demand for meat and animal
products. This is simply not true. The rise of factory farming is part
and parcel of the rise of industrial capitalist economy and given the
capitalist market small-scale farm animal production will not be economically
feasible and environmentally superior. Finally, any documentary about the
future of food needs to address the vegan alternative (a vegetarian diet will keep
demands for animal products such as eggs. Industrial egg production is also a
filthy business; see, for example, Nicholas D. Kristof's piece). Veganism
is a healthier (see, for example, my review of Forks Over Knives), sustainable, and ethical alternative not just to factory
farming but also to all food production systems since the rise of the
Agricultural Revolution.
Still,
Food Inc. is an important documentary about where our food comes from and how
it is produced. Everyone will benefit from viewing it.
Related Links:
[i]
During the past decade cost of production of food has gone up due to increases
in the cost of energy. This is because industrial farming is highly
energy-dependent.
2 comments:
"Except at the end of the sequence we see how the chicken are slaughtered"
So??? What's wrong??? Should we eat them alive? Anaesthetise them first?
Man has always eaten meat, and eating meat moderately is healthy, specially for growing children. There is no other source of protein that can replace fish, poultry or beef.
Vegetarianism is no more than an unhealthy fashion.
Food Inc made me realize that EVERY FOOD PURCHASE YOU MAKE HAS AN IMPLICATION for the rest of the country and the world.
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