Who Decides What We Eat: a look at our food industry

In the movie “Food, Inc.” Michael Pollan, the author of “Fast Food Nation” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” said in a very matter-of-factly fashion that the nation’s food industry is a “world deliberately hidden from us.” His statement hit the very core of the business ethics of our food industry. The powerful food industry much like the auto industry depends on a system that relies on controlling the variables like supply chain and wage of their business operations to make profits in billions at the expense of the consumers.  

Control is key to mass production. Ford immortalized the concept. The food industry mastered it. In the process, we see that the movie distinguished between a farm and factory. Farms have become factories of mass production. Fifty years ago the waitresses on roller blades served hamburgers. No more. Human creativity gives away to the assembly line production, reducing creativity to a single, monotonous, and repetitive work. The purpose is to cut cost, reduce labor, and employ less-skilled workers.

Today, McDonald’s Corporation is the largest buyer of beef, pork, and potato in the U.S. McDonald’s has become a pop culture and an identity. In the outside world, McDonald’s conjures up images of America.

Carole Morison, a chicken farmer in “Food, Inc.,” said bluntly that the chicken farmers are “like being slave to the company.” The company implies to one of the four biggest meat producing companies that control 80% of the meat supplies.  The economic theory of 80-20 rule rages on.

Unintended consequences of the business practices of these corporations are enormous. On one hand, undocumented workers pay the ultimate price of being caught, detained, and deported. On the other, disease like e-coli costs human life. Both consequences extend beyond the domestic policy arena. U.S. Immigration policy lack mechanisms to control and legalize undocumented workers who enter the U.S. illegally and those who overstay. The corporations exploit the cheap labor of the undocumented workers.

The organic farmer Joel Salatin (Food, Inc.) summed up the cheap food we pay at the fast-food restaurants. He described the cheap food as “mystic of cheap food.” The unintended cost of poor health and degradation of environment are simply too high. He laments that the food industry lost its “accountability” and “integrity.” And he urges that the “controlling mentality” of these large corporations must end.