A
Time for Change
by
Howard Schumann
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated
that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000
hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. For
the mother of two-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk who died in 2001 after eating
a hamburger contaminated with E. coli, however, statistics do not tell
the story of crushing personal loss. The tragedy of Kevin’s premature
death spurred legislation (known as Kevin’s Law) introduced by
Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, that would give the U.S. Department
of Agriculture the power to close down plants that produce contaminated
meat, but it has failed repeatedly to pass the U.S. Congress because
of opposition from the meat industry.
E-Coli outbreaks
and other food-safety related issues are discussed in the outstanding
documentary Food, Inc., directed by Robert
Kenner, a film, graphic in part, that may leave you with a severe case
of indigestion. Kenner is an unabashed advocate for greater food quality
and safety, and his film, which features commentary by Eric Schlosser
(Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma).attempts
to convince the public of the shortsightedness of the mega-corporations
that dominate the food industry and their "faster, fatter, bigger,
cheaper," method of increasing profits, often at the expense of
public safety.
Representatives from food-producing giants such as Monsanto,
Smithfield, Tyson and Perdue that control our food supply were invited
to be interviewed for the film but declined or did not respond to Kenner’s
request. According to Schlosser, "The industry doesn't want you
to know the truth about what you're eating - because if you knew, you
might not want to eat it."
Interviewing
farmers and ranchers, Kenner learned that they are mostly at the mercy
of mega-corporations like Monsanto which have increased their share
of the soybean market from 2% to 90% in the last decade. Monsanto developed
their own custom gene for soybeans and now threaten their customers
with lawsuits for patent infringement if they save their own seeds to
use the next year. The film observes that part of the reason why the
food industry is so hard to regulate is that many of the government
officials currently assigned to watchdog roles were once employed by
the companies they now monitor, and notes that FDA food inspections
have plummeted from 50,000 in 1972 to 9,200 in 2006.
Other subjects covered are the treatment of cows that are forced to
eat corn instead of grass; the use of corn for every processed food
under the sun including Coke, diapers, decongestants, and batteries;
and the dreadful conditions of chickens that are herded into darkened
cages before they are slaughtered. On that subject, Kenner interviews
Carole Morrison, who was unwilling to jam her chickens into cages without
sunlight and, as a result, had her contract canceled by a giant chicken
conglomerate who refused to have any further business dealings with
her. Also discussed are the growing rates of diabetes in young people,
the soaring incidence of obesity, and the use of low paying illegal
immigrants to work in the food processing industry.
In spite of the
horror stories, however, Food, Inc. is not depressing, and
Kenner seems more interested in educating the public than frightening
them. He shows that people can make a difference by citing the tobacco
industry as well as the efforts of an entrepreneur from Stonyfield Farms
who sold his line of organic products to Wal-Mart and a Virginia farmer
who insists on raising animals with dignity and respect. To the strain
of Bruce Springsteen singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land
is Your Land,” advice on how individuals can make a difference
include – buy locally, shop in farmer’s markets where possible,
seek out quality and organic products even if they cost a bit more,
and be sure to read the labeling to learn where a product comes from
and the ingredients it contains.
Food, Inc. by itself may not be the catalyst that will preserve
our health and well being and make food taste the way it did fifty years
ago, but it is an important start and should be seen by anyone who eats,
which means all of us. As the director puts it, “I think we're
beginning to see the dangers of this inexpensive food that these big
agribusinesses are producing. And the more we can see the cracks in
this system, the faster it’s going to fall apart. I'm hoping that
this film can help people to start to think about it…People are
becoming much more conscious of their food, and the more we think about
it, the more good food we’re going to get.” I’ll vote
for that.
*
Dedicated
to his friend Brad Will who was killed while filming protests against
the State repression of a teacher’s strike in Oaxaca, Mexico,
Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper’s Fierce Light:
When Spirit Meets Action is a celebration of those willing
to take action in support of their spiritual beliefs. The film is the
second installment of a trilogy on spiritual activism of which the 2004
award-winning film Scared Sacred was the first. As to the motivation
for Fierce Light, Ripper says, “I began to look around
and realize that my spirituality and my activism had been so separated,
it was almost a schizophrenia in my life, so I felt the need to bring
that together.”
After the opening segment in Oaxaca when Brad is tragically killed and
Ripper’s life is endangered by State Police, the film explores
Mahatma Gandhi’s “soul force” and Martin Luther King’s
“love in action” as the guiding principle behind the American
civil rights movement of the 1960s. The film shows the walk from Selma,
Alabama to Montgomery and the violence and tear gas the marchers encountered
along the way.
Civil rights
activist, now congressman, John Lewis, says even after being beaten
and left for dead on the Bloody Sunday March of 1965 in Selma Alabama,
hatred and violence were never an option. Lewis recalls Martin Luther
King saying to him, “we just gotta love the hell out of them.”
Ripper talks about the civil rights struggle in these terms, “What
struck me most was that this was a movement rooted solidly in love.
Not the Hallmark love that we have come identify with the word, but
a fierce love, a love of unrelenting compassion, of unwavering nonviolence.”
Ripper’s
camera also takes us to India to visit the Dalit community formerly
known as “untouchables,” to Nobel Prize winner Archbishop
Desmond Tutu in South Africa; to the farmers in South Central Los Angeles
and the protestors like actress Daryl Hannah and tree sitter Julia Butterfly
Hill who sat in trees and marched and sang to defend the farmers right
to grow their crops on a piece of land slated for development; and to
visit with Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn as he leads
the movement for reconciliation in Vietnam. There is also a segment
on Buddhist teacher, author and counselor Noah Levine whose book Dharma
Punx describes his awakening to compassion after a youth spent
with drugs and violence.
Ripper interviews spiritual activist and author bell hooks and has
this to say about the meeting, “Fierce Light for her is awareness,
fierce compassion, fierce love, opening to that which is, fully. The
sacred is to be found in every moment, not in an isolated context, not
in some distant enlightenment. It is in the flash of a red cardinal
across the sky, in the new blooms of a lily in her garden.”
The focal point
of the film, however, is the struggle by the South Central Farmers of
Los Angeles to protect their 14-acre community farm in an industrial
area in south Los Angeles from developers. In that farm, 300 families,
mostly Latino, grew more than 100 varieties of fresh food and healing
herbs for their community from 1994 until 2006. Ripper shows the protests
of singers Joan Baez and Willie Nelson, Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio,
Danny Glover, and Daryl Hannah, and politicians such as Ralph Nader
and Dennis Kucinich against the order to vacate the land and the tears
that flowed freely when the bulldozers came.
While showing examples of people who put their bodies on the line for
a cause, the director makes it clear there is not a single standard
for activism. “When I talk about activism in the film and spirituality
in the film”, he says, “it doesn’t have to be in any
way, shape, or form the more visible forms of activism. It can be just
the way we live our lives, how we relate to people, coming from a place
of compassion.” Fierce Light can become a bit cloying
at times but it has a cumulative power that makes real the possibilities
for our planet. While there will always be risk involved in taking action
for one’s beliefs, in the words of Anais Nin, “And the time
came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than
the risk it took to blossom.” That time is now.
©2009 Howard Schumann
CineScene
