Food, Inc.

The irony is not lost on me that I've pulled into a Walmart parking lot to chat with Elise Pearlstein, one-half of the producing team responsible for the documentary Food, Inc.

I was headed north on Highway 85 when my phone rang and the superstore in St. Jacob's was the quickest place to park and pull out my laptop so the two of us could discuss the film, which takes a critical (and rather scary) look at the way America's food system works (and opens for a six night run at Waterloo's Princess Cinema tonight).

Adding to the Walmart irony is the notion that the St. Jacob's store is a stone's throw from a very popular, well-established farmers' market in a community largely populated by Mennonites, who have a reputation for embracing simple living.

I try explaining the concept to Pearlstein, who lives in L.A., including the part about how the Mennonites themselves patronize the WalMart. She has a good laugh, but she's not surprised. Nothing about North American consumption surprises her these days.

The idea for Food, Inc. came about when Robert Kenner, her producing partner and the film's director, read Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and initially thought of doing a film version.

Ideas evolved as funding came together and, says Pearlstein, "Rob realized that all food had really become fast food. Shlosser talked specifically about the fast food industry but the same suppliers that got huge from fast food are supplying most of the food in supermarkets."

In the end, Food, Inc. uncovers the seedy side of America's corporate food industry, complete with plenty of scary facts:

- The average American eats over 200 pounds of meat annually.

- America's top four beef packers control more than 80 per cent of the market.

- Thirty per cent of the U.S. land base is devoted to growing corn, an ingredient that can be found in everything from ketchup and salad dressing to batteries and diapers.

- Thirteen slaughterhouses handle the majority of beef in the U.S. (though there were thousands in the 1970s) and the largest slaughterhouse in the world, in Tar Heel, North Carolina, kills 32,000 hogs per day.

- Genetically modified ingredients can be found in 70 per cent of processed foods.

It was a daunting film to make, said Pearlstein, because they found the industry completely shrouded in secrecy. Though they aimed to look at all different sides of the issue, the big food corporations were completely unwilling to participate. Farmers, especially those contracted to these companies, were also fearful of going on the record.

"There's a very tight grip," explains Pearlstein of the corporations' power over the farmers (who, the film says, invest $500,000 in their farms on average only to make $18,000 annually).

"I thought, 'God. I'm in America? In the Midwest?' Just to think there is that fear, and seeing how extensive corporate power translates into threat against freedom of speech. That's not specific to food, really, it's just a cautionary tale of what happens when companies become too powerful."

Farmers weren't the only ones who needed to be careful about what they said. Pearlstein said the production team had to work extensively with a first amendment attorney in order to avoid future litigation.(Remember the Oprah/Texas beef industry lawsuit in the late '90s?)

"I've never had that feeling in 15 years of documentary making," Pearlstein said. "And it's not nuclear weapons or government secrets we're talking about. It's food! The combination of the litigious nature of the industry and the subject you're talking about just doesn't really compute."

The film does offer some hope. Organics are the fastest growing sector of the food industry, jumping 20 per cent annually. And people are beginning to ask questions.

"For a variety of reasons, I feel like there's a resurgence of interest in farming and awareness of where our food comes from," Pearlstein told me, adding that Food, Inc. premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival late last summer in the midst of Maple Leaf Foods' listeria outbreak.

"Food-born illness doesn't discriminate. Obesity is everywhere. This is becoming a mainstream interest. And it's a non-partisan issue. It's not something that you can deny is a problem."

Food, Inc. premieres at The Princess tonight at 7 p.m. and plays nightly through Thursday with an additional afternoon screening on Sunday. See www.princesscinemas.com for more details.

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