[OKC] FW: [ok-sus] Whoever controls your food, controls YOU - An interview with Robert Kenner

Thu Jul 2 08:46:13 PDT 2009

Fyi .

From: ok-sus-bounces at lists.oksustainability.org
[mailto:ok-sus-bounces at lists.oksustainability.org] On Behalf Of Harlan
Hentges
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 7:18 AM
To: 'Sustainability Issues in Oklahoma'
Subject: [ok-sus] examiner.com: Whoever controls your food, controls YOU -
An interview with Robert Kenner

In Oklahoma, the latest pressure from Big Ag is for Oklahoma wheat farmers
to grow GMO wheat.

Monsanto owns the seeds.  The first question below explains how that fits
into the big picture of Big Ag.  

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Whoever controls your food, controls YOU

July 1, 10:11 AM . Mark Reinoso - State of the World Examiner 

An interview <http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-26-food-inc-kenner/>
with Robert Kenner, my thoughts afterwards.

'Robert Kenner never set out to make a terrifying film when he started Food,
Inc. But along the way, he found the food industry to be stunningly
secretive-and what it's hiding to be downright scary. The film shines a
bright light on the handful of corporations that, behind a cloak of glitzy
marketing campaigns, do the dirty work of putting cheap food on our plates.
As Variety put
<http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117938322.html?categoryid=31&cs=1>  it,
the film "does for the supermarket what Jaws did for the beach." Not long
after the film opened
<http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-22-food-inc-kristof>  nationwide, I
caught up with Kenner by phone from his Los Angeles home.

------------

Kinge: As I watched your depicton of conventional farmers in the film, the
word I kept thinking of was "sharecropper." For example, individual farmers
no longer legally own their own seeds; they must purchase them from biotech
giants like Monsanto, and essentially they remain in debt. 

Kenner: You know, I don't even talk about in the film whether GMOs are good
for us or bad for us. But what I find so amazing is Monsanto saying we can't
feed the world without [their genetically modified seeds], but then they'll
do everything possible to stop you from knowing they're in your food.. [and]
if your seeds are so good, why do you have to put seed cleaners out of
business? Why can't we have a free market? Why do these farmers have to be
sued? Shouldn't your product speak for itself? And it's the power of this
corporation to sort of attempt to both patent and dominate this industry
that I find of concern. What we tried to do in this film was to create a
dialogue about how we eat. And these corporations that didn't want to talk
to me in the film, many of them, like Monsanto, go to great lengths to get
their message out, but I feel their response is a misleading response. But
I'm heartened that there are a number of other companies who have said, "we
recognize the great success of this film and we think there should be a
conversation."...Troy Roush is sort of an industry farmer, who uses Monsanto
products and will defend them on certain levels, though he's also been sued
by them, and from his point of view for no cause whatsoever, and it cost him
almost half a million dollars to defend himself. Troy was saying that he
thinks 95% of farmers in America would like the film and agree with it, but
they just need to see it.

There seem to be a lot of similarities between the historic cloaking of
information by the tobacco industry and the cloaking of information by the
agribusiness industry today.

You know what it is? It's that the world has been transformed without us
knowing about it and these companies don't want you to thinking about this
food. They want that Orwellian myth that it comes from a small farm with a
white picket fence and a red barn when in reality our food comes from giant
factories. It's become industrialized, but it's not only the chicken and the
cow, it's the tomato and the lettuce. We're basically eating food with far
fewer nutrients, and it's not healthy. But it's more than that. We're also
being denied the right to know what's in it, so it's connecting the dots to
the system. And ultimately, I'm optimistic, and when we learned about
tobacco ... a few very powerful corporations that had great connections to
government and they were financing studies about how their product was not
bad for you, and then when we finally found out that this was a total
falsehood. And I think when we start to find out about this food is doing to
us, we're going to change how the food industry works as well.If we live in
a free society and we want to make choices, choice has to be made based on
information, and what lengths they'll go to stop you from having that
information.So we don't know if there's cloned meat, we don't know if
there's GMOs, we don't know if there's rBST. I'm not even saying whether
[genetic modification] is good or bad. I'm just saying, if it is good, why
wouldn't you want to advertise it?

With the new federal regulation of tobacco, there is expected to be a lot
more transparency around the tobacco industry, but the federal government
has always regulated agriculture and yet, as evidenced in your film, there
has been little transparency thus far around how food is produced. Do you
expect that to change under Obama?

Well, one thing [happening] is that it looks like this year the FDA will
pass regulation that will [remove] food that sits on the shelf that makes us
sick - that has E Coli 0157:H7. So unfortunately a lot of these acts still
are in favor of large business. On one hand they'll help protect us, on the
other hand they keep regulating in favor of large corporations. So I would
just say to consumers, whenever possible, get to farmer's markets, support
local farmers, I would also say eat organic. Even if we change just one meal
a day, we're going to start to improve the system. We're going to vote three
times a day with breakfast lunch and dinner but we also have to vote with
out votes. Unfortunately right now we're subsidizing food that makes us
sick, and if we can create enough of a movement, I think we can change the
farm bill to the food bill.

You screened the film for Tom Vilsack, the secretary of the US Department of
Agriculture. He's been a supporter of genetically modified foods. How did he
respond?

Well, he's a governor from the biggest corn state in the country and he
basically was a Democrat from a Republican state. But ya' know I can only
quote Michael Pollan in this, saying that Vilsack turned out to be much more
open to hearing and listening. So I do think he's sincere, but I also think,
as he says that if this movement keeps growing, he will have to listen, if
it doesn't nothing's going to change. Certain things will change because you
can't have healthcare reform in this country without changing the food
system, so they are going to be forced to change things, whether they like
it or not. But hopefully as a food movement, we can help force it to change
faster.

In the film you show that several FDA officials have strong ties to
agribusiness giants, calling it a sort of "revolving door" between
government and corporate agriculture.

Well, to begin with, we're not opposed to people going from industry to
government. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for people who know
an industry to go into government to help regulate it. The problem is when
they start to rule on things that they have done in industry and then they
go back to industry with big raises. There seems to be a certain level of
conflict. And it's a pattern that's taken over Washington. I think these
things die hard and all I would say is I think we have to start supporting
and doing everything we can for small farmers. It's much easier to try to
put in legislation for safe foods, but basically it's designed for big
corporations, and sometimes it makes it harder for the small farmers, and I
think it's going to better for us and our communities and our health if we
can support the smaller farmers. And that's not going to be the first
instinct in Washington because that's not the way it works. But I think it's
that we as consumers have to start to flex our muscles.to help level the
playing field so that we support food that's good for us.

A good portion of the film focuses on the dichotomy of cheap food versus
expensive healthcare: subsidized crops make certain foods dirt-cheap at the
check-out counter or fast food window but wreak havoc on human health and
put families into debt.

[That subsidized corn and soy not only goes into hundreds of food products,
but it also acts as cheap feed for livestock]. So basically you now bring
this artificially inexpensive corn to these feedlots. And when [a small
farmer] grows corn on their own property and is not getting a government
subsidy you can't then feed his food to these animals and be in competition
to these mega-corporations. So we're subsidizing food that ultimately turns
into sugar in our bodies, and all of a sudden, we're getting massive amounts
of sugar, because of the corn and soy, and that sugar is making us fat.

The film very briefly touches on herbicide and pesticide chemical runoff
finding its way into waterways and also mentions that increased cattle
grazing has led to deforestation in, for example, the Amazon. But it leaves
it at that. Was it a conscious choice to keep the environmental impacts
brief?

We could have gone on about the environment. Ultimately, food accounts for a
little over 20-25% of our carbon footprint. Like health reform, you can't
have environmental reform without changing the system and what I realized in
making this film - perhaps it's obvious but for me it really hit me - is
that this is an unsustainable system. It's a brand new system. We've had
agricultural for ten thousand years. This system is about 40, 50 years old.
And it's not working for two giant reasons. It's based on gasoline, which is
a diminishing [resource] and as it starts to run out and as its prices start
to get up to those historic highs, we're going to have very expensive food.
It takes so much gasoline to grow and transport this food. Also, there is so
much pollution involved with this system; we're depleting, poisoning the
soil, the riverways, the oceans. So there are many things we don't hit on
entirely in the film, but basically what the film is about is connecting the
dots to show you that this industrial system is not working.' 

In the last 60 years, we have turned our backs on the way humans have lived
for 6,000 years. The idea that you can get grapefruit from Tampa, lamb from
New Zealand, cherries from Washington State and apples from Chile on the
same day still boggles my mind.

Even scarier is the fact that most of our food and seeds are controlled by
giant corporations that don't have our best interests in mind. They are huge
corporations, and so their main focus is their bottom line, not the health
of their customers. Corporate greed is mal-nourishing and killing the
population, and we wonder why we are sicker than ever before.

There is much talk about nationalization of the banks and the private sector
being taken over by government, and with good reason. What most people
aren't seeing is that all areas of our lives are being controlled. Not only
do corporations control our invested monies, but now corporations have
already consolidated their hold on our food supply.

As I wrote in the article
<http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-6012-State-of-the-World-Examiner~y2009m4
d2-Grow-a-garden-lose-your-home> "Grow a garden, lose your home?", food
corporations are protecting their interests by putting small farmers out of
business.  Henry Kissinger once said "If you control oil, you control
nations. If you control food, you control people..

There are many ways to reduce a population, from the Holocaust to Hiroshima.
Population reduction by attrition is more insidious, but no less evil. 

Author

http://image.examiner.com/images/blog/author/tiny/mreinoso_49731_2009-03-18%
2015-24-06.406.JPG

Mark Reinoso is an Examiner from the National Edition. You can see Mark's
articles at: "http://www.Examiner.com/x-6012-State-of-the-World-Examiner" 

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