1334 - Food Inc.

First off - kudos to the CBC for putting this up for free on their website for everyone to be able to watch. Now there's absolutely no excuse. Classy move. So if you click on this link, you'll be directed right to it. There's always a danger of just preaching to the choir with this sort of thing, so hopefully making it easily available will at least reach the people that are on the fence.
I'll state my bias up front. I've been a vegetarian going on three years now. When I first met Emily she was a vegetarian, and she never once pressured me into following her choice. I decided on my own to stop eating meat, and it wasn't about the animals (although I'm not a big fan of animal abuse either), but what really shook me to my core was learning a little about food production and the industry. It scared the fuck out of me.
I can't imagine that this is an easy film to try and present a balanced argument with. But what they do is they explain the history of the industry - how it all began (with McDonald's essentially), and how it went wrong. It at least helps you to understand the machine, why it works and how. And it makes sense. It's hard to blame them. Like one of the farmer's says - who wants a chicken that takes 74 days to grow, when you get one twice the size in half the time. It's simple economics. And just the bullying that goes on in the food industry is probably the saddest part of it.
Schlosser, at one point mentions that titans of industry have been taken down before - the tobacco industry has fallen far from it's former glory. He says this is a good template for how to take down the evils of the food industry. I'm not sure about his logic. Absolutely no one needs to smoke. It's actually one of the few, and perhaps the only, product that actually has no purpose whatsoever. But absolutely everyone needs to eat. And as the film points out, it's easier for poor people to eat fast food than it is for them to buy healthy groceries and make a decent meal. So how do you overcome that? The film does offer some legitimate solutions, and argues that lowly, as people become better educated, the tide will turn, and people will simply demand better. Let's hope so.
As the film ends it lists tips on what you can do, it felt good to know that we're already doing the majority of them most of the time, and the rest all the time. My son is a year old, and we're raising him with the same food values that we have. When he's older, and he wants to eat meat I won't stop him. But I'll make damn sure we know where it comes from, and that he's making an informed decision.
I don't think there is anyone who can't benefit from checking this film out, regardless of how ignorant or educated you are to the topic. Enjoy.