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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif";
color:blue'>Fyi …<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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color:blue'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>
ok-sus-bounces@lists.oksustainability.org
[mailto:ok-sus-bounces@lists.oksustainability.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Harlan
Hentges<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, July 02, 2009 7:18 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> 'Sustainability Issues in Oklahoma'<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [ok-sus] examiner.com: Whoever controls your food, controls YOU
- An interview with Robert Kenner<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>In Oklahoma, the latest pressure from Big Ag is for Oklahoma
wheat farmers to grow GMO wheat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Monsanto owns the seeds. The first question below
explains how that fits into the big picture of Big Ag. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<h1>Whoever controls your food, controls YOU<o:p></o:p></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal>July 1, 10:11 AM · Mark Reinoso - State of the World
Examiner <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>An <a
href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-26-food-inc-kenner/" target="_blank">interview</a>
with Robert Kenner, my thoughts afterwards.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>‘Robert Kenner never set out to make a terrifying film when he
started<em> Food, Inc.</em> 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 <em>Variety</em> <a
href="http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117938322.html?categoryid=31&cs=1">put
it,</a> the film “does for the supermarket what Jaws did for the beach.” Not
long after the film<a
href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-22-food-inc-kristof"> opened
nationwide</a>, I caught up with Kenner by phone from his Los Angeles home.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>———————————-</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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. </span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><em><span lang=EN>Kenner:</span></em><span lang=EN> 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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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.</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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?</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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?</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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?</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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.</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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.</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>[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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><strong><span lang=EN>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?</span></strong><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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.’</span> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>Even scarier is the fact that most of our food and seeds are
controlled by <b>giant corporations that don’t have our best interests in mind</b>.
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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>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.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>As I wrote in the article <a
href="http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-6012-State-of-the-World-Examiner~y2009m4d2-Grow-a-garden-lose-your-home"
target="_blank">“Grow a garden, lose your home?”, </a>food corporations are
protecting their interests by putting small farmers out of business.
Henry Kissinger once said “</span><b><span style='color:black'>If you control
oil</span></b><span style='color:black'>, <b>you control nations. If you
control food, you control people……</b></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span lang=EN>There are many ways to reduce a population, from the Holocaust
to Hiroshima. Population reduction by attrition is more insidious, but no less
evil. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:8.5pt'>Copyright 2009
Examiner.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten or redistributed.</span></i> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b>Author<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><img border=0 width=30 height=25 id="Picture_x005f_x0020_3"
src="cid:image003.jpg@01C9FA92.989D3AA0"
alt="http://image.examiner.com/images/blog/author/tiny/mreinoso_49731_2009-03-18%2015-24-06.406.JPG"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Mark Reinoso is an Examiner from the National Edition. You
can see Mark's articles at: "<a
href="http://www.examiner.com/x-6012-State-of-the-World-Examiner">http://www.Examiner.com/x-6012-State-of-the-World-Examiner"</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>
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