'Food, Inc.' chews up Monsanto

[Guest guest]

http://snipurl.com/kz1ls [st. Louis Today]'Food, Inc.' chews up MonsantoBy Georgina GustinST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCHFriday, Jun. 26 2009Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms with his grass-fed herd in "Food, Inc." (Magnolia Pictures/P-D)The movie "Food, Inc." begins in the aisles of a grocery store, then eventually makes its way through Southern chicken coops, western feedlots and Indiana cornfields. The film ventures into hog slaughterhouses, through the hallways of Congress and to a celebrated farm in Virginia, exploring how food makes its way to American dining tables and skewering the industrialized food system along the way.It's not a scenic drive. The documentary attempts to demonstrate that the food Americans eat is largely controlled by a handful of corporations — and all at the expense of the environment, human health and the economic well-being of farmers. Today, the movie makes its debut in the St. Louis area, home to one of the film's primary targets — Creve Coeur-based Monsanto.And the world's largest seed company isn't happy. Monsanto is portrayed as a Goliath that owns American crop farmers. Since the movie began a limited release, the company has been quick to defend itself. It launched a section of its website dedicated to the film, saying it demonizes American farmers and contains factual errors."We realized we needed to respond," said Brad Mitchell, the company's director of public affairs. "It's a selective portrayal of information."The filmmakers say they set out to lift the veil on our nation's food industry, and the movie is a fair and accurate depiction. Critics around the country have raved. The New York Times called the film "one of the scariest movies of the year.""Our food is fundamentally different than it used to be," Robert Kenner, the film's director, told the Post-Dispatch this week. "But there's this illusion that it comes from a farm with a white picket fence and red barn."Monsanto officials did not appear in the film. Kenner and the film's producer, Elise Pearlstein, said this week that they repeatedly tried to get company officials to participate, but they declined. "We questioned their objectivity," Mitchell said. "Would we do it on their terms? No."Instead, Monsanto invited the filmmakers to interview company officials at a trade show run by commodity groups. Kenner said they were denied press credentials by the show's operators. When contacted this week, the show's operators said they don't have records on rejected press requests.Many farmers likely haven't seen the film yet because it hasn't made its way out of larger cities. But the documentary has incited some farmers, who, along with food activists, have filled blogs and social media sites with debate and rancor."The thing the film does is attempt to pit everyone against the agribusiness sector," said Trent Loos, a cattle and goat rancher in central Nebraska, who runs a nonprofit organization called Faces of Ag. "Farmers understand we have to work in conjunction with agribusiness."Loos said he had not seen the film and was basing his opinions on the movie's trailer and a television interview with Kenner, as well as one of the films primary voices, the author Michael Pollan."Basically they're implying we need to go back 80 years," Loos said. "Kenner thinks he's siding with farmers and he's not. He's ignoring the farmers' willingness in implementing the science and technology in today's food system."The film suggests that farmers have been victimized by Monsanto, which has aggressively pursued violators of its patented seed. Monsanto officials emphasized that farmers sign contracts when they plant the company's seeds and that reusing them is illegal. Mitchell notes that the film focuses only on farmers who have had "unpleasant legal dealings" with Monsanto."We have 250,000 farmer customers in the U.S.," Mitchell said. "We've filed lawsuits 129 times in the last 10 years, and we've settled all with the exception of nine cases, and we've prevailed in all of those."Kenner and Pearlstein said that the movie is entirely accurate and that Monsanto has not pursued them for any inaccuracies. "We tried to treat everybody as fairly as possible, and we would've done that with Monsanto," Kenner said, adding that Monsanto's website disputes points the movie doesn't try to make.Kenner said he hopes that farmers will see the film and decide whether, indeed, they are being unfairly demonized as Monsanto suggests."I appeal to all farmers who think we've done them wrong to see the film."«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»§ - PULSE ON 21st CENTURY ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE! §Subscribe send email to: - «¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»