Keep the Food, Inc. Conversation Going (and Win a DVD!)

When we set out to make Food, Inc. I was hoping to create a film that would raise questions, open eyes and prompt people around the country to think about how our food system operates.

Industrial food companies don't want us thinking about how our food is produced. They spend billions of dollars maintaining the myth of small family farms with white picket fences and cows on green pastures. In reality our food is produced on massive factory farms.

This system has been transformed more in the last 40 years than the previous 10,000. We are spending less money on food than at any other time in history but there are high costs to this inexpensive food that we don't see at the checkout counter. This food system is making us sick. One-third of Americans born after the year 2000 will develop early-onset diabetes, our water and land are contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer, animals are abused, and the workers (most of whom are illegal immigrants) who grow and process our food are subject to inhumane conditions.

Now that the public is becoming aware of the realities and consequences of industrial food production, there is a growing movement for change. And the food companies are starting to take notice. Since Food, Inc. opened in theaters, I've been invited to sit down with the very same companies that once refused to appear on camera.

Food, Inc. was released on DVD this week and I hope this conversation continues in living rooms, classrooms, community centers and dining rooms around the country. So tell your family, tell a friend to see Food, Inc. - keep the conversation going. Let's work to change our food system...one meal at a time.

To celebrate the release, we are giving away 10 Food, Inc DVDs right here on HuffPost. Here is what you need to do: Tweet your most creative thoughts about Food, Inc (how it changed your life, a new favorite recipe, what you learned from the film or why you want to see it.) Be sure to include #HPGFoodInc in your tweet and are following @HuffPostGreen so we can DM you if you're the winner. Send them by 5pm EST on Monday November 9th . (If you prefer, you can also leave a 140 character comment in the comment section below.) We'll choose our favorite 10 tweets and send you a DVD.

 

Comments

[Avalo2]

Well, after seeing Food, Inc, I went to the USDA web site and found their search engine for the whole of the USDA. So, I typed in Monsanto and, OMG, page after page of titles to articles, rules, regulations, opinions, etc that were written by or with Monsanto for the USDA. These pages included just the titles. The articles had the USDA representatives thanking and capitulating to the PhD's from Monsanto.

So, who runs our government?

[BlackWidowPilot]

Monsanto's despicable practices in using their genetically modified soybeans to contaminate neighboring farmers' soy crops, then sue the independent farmers for "violating Monsato's patent" as a means of coercing farmers to submit to Monsanto's terms and use their GMO soy seeds, or be driven into bankruptcy.

This is nothing less than legalized racketeering, done with the collusion of elected officials in congress that have taken lobbyist's "campaign contributions" to pass laws enabling Monsanto to do to America's soybean production what the insurance company racketeers have done to our nation's healthcare system.

Enough is enough!

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

One of the 47 Million Declared "...not profitable enough!"

[wolfguide]

Robert,
Readers in New York should support New York Assembly Bill 8163. The bill bans hen battery cages, veal crates and pig gestation crates in New York beginning in 2015. Get more information at http://www.ab8163.com. It is similar to Proposition 2 that passed last year in California. Now it's New York's turn (or opportunity).

New Yorkers need to reach out to their assemblypersons and ask them to support the bill. It is hung up in the Agriculture Committee where the Chair of the Committee is dedicated to supporting the agenda of big agriculture and New York's CAFOs. Chair William Magee is loyal to the New York Farm Bureau and its agenda to support factory farming at the expense of small family farms.

Rick Tannenbaum
The Hiltop Initiative
www.ab8163.com

[greengalz]

After I took a good friend to see Food Inc, who always questioned why I buy Organic, he called to see where to buy Organic Peanut butter! :)

[tarowig]

Food Inc is an excellent film, I'm recommending to almost everyone I know

[Gene Baur]

Yes, very good idea to keep the discussion spurred by Food, Inc. going. People need to think about where their food comes from and make informed and sensible choices. More information about factory farming is online at www.factoryfarming.com.

[jer9848]

I think we need to feed cows other cows so our beef is more beefy. :P

[JoDeeVa]

I hope you're being sarcastic and that you understand it's already happening when cows are fed MBM, containing the remains of other cattle. If not, will you feel the same way, when those 'more beefy cows' transmit BSE (mad cow disease) to your brain and cause neurodegeneration? And, you won't even know it for years, maybe decades...

[Karen J]

I am the organizer of the Northwest Connecticut Vegan Outreach group on meetup.com. We are a new non-profit group, with a focus on educating the "general public" about the benefits ( environmental, animal, and health) of a vegan lifestyle. As our first big project, we have purchased the rights to show the movie Food, Inc. at our public library in New Milford, Ct. on Dec. 2. We chose this movie because of the entire message it sends! It is ALL important!
We would love to have a copy of the movie, as our plan is to show it to as many people as possible in our entire county, by continuing to show it at public libraries and other public venues. There is one other thing you could do to help us show this movie as much as we can... that is to give us some type of a general movie right because the $100 fee every time we want to show it is WAY too steep for a small non-profit group. We purchased the rights with our personal money! And we truly believe that this is a movie that EVERYONE should see. Help us to do that!

[xtina8o4]

Food Inc. helps us see that we are greedy, mindless consumers so detached from the lifestyle nature intended that our transgressions manifest in disease.

[joebaggadonuts]

We are starving for lack of knowledge of how poorly the factory system feeds us. Food Inc. finally satisfies our hunger for truth. See it for life.

[AwakeNow]

Truly so glad to see this being brought to light. This is a subject that I have been interested in for years only being able to pick up bits and pieces of information. The first time was an article in a yoga magazine about bio-engineered food. A few weeks ago I caught another film that dealt quite alot with the subject of the Monsanto company. They are really ....... I'm at a lose for words. I hope to see Food Inc. It is a very important message to get out there. I encourage everyone also to think about contacting their Reps. in gov. and letting them know that we need to subsidize small independent farmers with tax subsidies as much as we do big food corps. Keep up the good work Robert Kenner.

[Jeff Oeth]

Food, Inc. taught me that grass-fed meat is waaaaaayy healthier than corn-fed meat.

[kkdc]

I learned that Monsanto patented soy "seed" after they GMO'd it, and now use the fact that their soy is patented to drive small neighboring farmers out of business, by suing them for "stealing" their patented seed when it cross pollinates with the neighbor's seed through no fault of his own. Those small farmer's cannot afford to fight the lawsuits by Monsanto and lose everything. Didn't know Purdue's chickens' have been designed with distorted huge breasts, which make it impossible to live even short normal lives because they fall over. Also, that male chicks are sorted out on an assembly line and thrown live into a grinder. I am now more motivated than ever to consume locally sustainably grown seasonal fresh food, and if I choose to eat higher on the food chain, I am concious of the carbon footprint caused by buying beef, if it is not from my local grass/range fed beef producers, local lamb growers etc. We have great farmer's markets, so it is easier where I live, Central Coast of California. I continue to check labels and am amazed at how much corn is in everything we eat, as a "natural" sweetner, etc.

[Deborah Knuckey]

Not perfect, but trying. Post Food Inc, I mostly say NO: NO factory meat, NO corn syrup, and KNOW thy local farmer. Bonus: I lost 15lbs.

[epistemological]

I switched to a plant biased diet, and lost 35lbs in a few months and it has never come back. Not only is it way better to eat whole non processed foods its more fun too. it truly amazes me when people cannot even identify 80% of the ingredients in there food.

[CoconutLime]

I saw this movie when it was in the theater. It made both my wife and I very queasy in our stomachs. Got the DVD two days ago and let my father- and mother-in-law watch it. They felt the same...