Movie: Food, Inc.

Anyone watching “Food. Inc.” might never want to eat again, which probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Pigs, chicken, cattle, and corn all come under the camera/microscope of documentary producer/director Robert Kenner (“Two Days in October”) to show us how the food industry harms our bodies if not our souls.

A cadre of investigators and authors, most notably Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) and Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), join the filmmaker to preach to the choir viewing it. Of course, since no one representing most of our country’s largest food producers would appear on camera, we have to assume that everything these experts charge is true.

The government certainly plays a huge role in making us all sick – now, there’s a real surprise! – by working with food industrialists to hold farmers hostage when it comes to pricing, among some other conspiratorial nastiness. Kenner, after all, does offer a startling roll call of former food executives appointed to key positions in the USDA and FDA, that is, after they finished poisoning us at their old jobs.

Big business is one of the problems facing the quality of our food supply in "Food, Inc."

Real folks appear in this often-compelling documentary, too. The tale of an Indiana seed cleaner sued by Monsanto for allegedly violating the company’s patent rights on soybeans is very sad. The story of a heroic mother still fighting a seven-year battle for food safety after E. coli killed her 2-year-old is downright heartbreaking.

Through it all, animals and workers are being abused, which obviously is no way to run a big business, as Upton Sinclair wrote in “The Jungle,” let’s see now, how many decades ago?

While Kenner’s disembodied voices occasionally sound holier than thou over a few horrifying images, they often do present legitimately scary practices. Tomatoes being ripened by ethylene gas, freakazoid chickens being sent to our dinner tables, and the use of ammonia to kill bacteria during processing conjure up some particularly frightening possibilities.

A pig farmer gets the spotlight in "Food, Inc."

Hey, by the time the easily recognizable strains of Bruce Springsteen waft aboard with “This Land Is My Land,” some eyes viewing “Food, Inc.” even may be teary. Others, though, just may be glazed over from the film’s redundantly well-meaning obsessions.

Rated: PG
Stars (as themselves): Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser
Director: Robert Kenner

Studio/Official Site: http://www.FoodIncMovie.com/

[John M. Urbancich has been reviewing movies and writing film features and celebrity profiles at Cleveland's Sun Newspapers for 25 years. As a longtime member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, his work has been appearing on the Sun News website for more than a decade. John also regularly updates his own site at www.JMuvies.com ]