Food Inc.

Recently, I watched the new documentary, Food Inc. to check out the buzz. It was exactly as I expected it to be: full of shocking images of cattle stock houses, slaughterhouses, shocking facts. It made me think about the groceries I was putting away yesterday in a new light: where did this steak come from? On the whole it was an almost balanced treatment of the subject with different solutions offered to solve the effects, but missing the mark on the cause. Many interviewees expressed their view of the evils of big corporations trampling down the little man. No doubt that happens and it is infuriating. However, the answer to the problem some say is that more government regulation is in order, or the Holy Word: Reform. I say Reduce. The bigger the government gets, the more power big business will have. Politicians respond to incentives like anyone else on the planet and the more government grows, the more it is able to respond to incentives offered to politicians to "look the other way." I think the FDA is a useless organization that does more harm than good, just by way of the beureacratization that approval for new drugs and oversight of food stuffs has become. If big food companies (about 4 own 80%+ of the food market in the US, if I remember from the doc) have only the FDA to answer to, rather than the consumer, the FDA -or the people in the FDA-will respond to insentives offered by business. I'm not saying that Big Food Corp is handing officials $100 dollar bills all the time, but they are able to affect change through lobbying, threats of making certain knowledge known, and other means of leverage that would affect election results and appointments.

Also, an important fact to remember in all of this is that our food industry is not free market. There are huge subsidies given to commodity crop sellers, like corn and wheat and many others I am not aware, I'm sure. Subsidies-your tax dollars-keep prices artificially low, allowing corn based products to be cheap compared to other food stuffs. It also drives out other developing economies and their chance to sell agricultural products to the US further inhibiting their growth.

Through the malaise though, Food Inc. offered the example of Wal Mart responding to consumer demand for more organic products, demonstrating the consumer does still have a voice. There is immense prosperity and productivity in American farming, unlike the world has ever seen. While most countries are worrying about starving, we are worrying about being too fat. Creating a true free market and dismantling regulatory agencies that are not accountable to anyone would be a near impossible task with the powers as they are, but it is the way to ensure prosperity and health for the most people.