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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Interview: Robert Kenner, director of ‘Food, Inc.’
During the better part of the past 40 years, according to Robert Kenner’s new documentary “Food, Inc.,” we have seen a massive industrialization of the food we consume, leading to an increasingly unhealthy population and an environment in peril.
A handful of gigantic corporations engineering meat and produce in an effort to make cheaper food in larger quantities has led to a growing public health crisis, the new film contends.
Most disturbingly, Kenner says, most of the companies mentioned in his film do not want consumers to know what is in their food - or to ask.
I spoke with Kenner by phone recently to discuss how we got to where we are and what consumers can do to demand healthier choices from the people who put much of the food on America’s tables.
The M.O.: How are you?
Robert Kenner: I’m good. Yourself?
Well, after watching your movie, a little nervous to eat lunch, to be honest. But I do feel good that I am eating leftover pork tenderloin that we bought from a local farm. So I feel somewhat OK about it.
Well, listen, the answer is that you just have to keep going. And know that there’re good choices and you’ll start to make better choices, and you’re not gonna be perfect. I’m not perfect. For me, traveling is a pain. How do you eat? You have fewer choices. Eating at home, you’re gonna have better choices, but that’s hard for most of us.
If fast food hadn’t come around, do you think we’d be in the predicament we are with regard to the food industrial complex or do you think it simply hastened the inevitable?
It certainly sped up the process, because when McDonald’s wanted all their hamburgers to taste the same, they went from 50 meat producers to a very limited number so that they could have a consistency in the hamburger. So all of a sudden you had a few huge players. Then all of a sudden there was one French fry player, one potato player. What was astounding to me is they’re amongst the biggest buyers for apples, lettuce, tomatoes. So all of a sudden there were so few players. And you realized it spread to everything.
Soon, tobacco companies will have to publish the ingredients to cigarettes on their products. How have we reached a point where we are going to know what is in cigarettes but not know what is in our food?
For me the most shocking thing was when we went to the cloning hearing on whether to label cloned meat. I didn’t even know there was cloned meat. When that representative stood up and said, ‘I think it’s just not in the consumers’ interest to be given this information; it’s way to confusing,’ I thought, that just happens time and time again. These companies do whatever they can to stop you from knowing what’s in your food.
Was that the most shocking thing you discovered?
One was how they are able to keep from us the information about what we are eating. And they can even keep us from talking. I don’t think people went into this with evil intentions to sell us bad food, I think they went into it to figure out how to sell more food and get us to eat more calories and to make greater profits. But ultimately they have to start to figure out a different system but it is up to us as consumers to start to demand that and start to put pressure on them.
What’s been the impact of farm subsidizing on how and what we eat and how has that led to the explosion of corn?
Ultimately we started to subsidize corn because it was a way of producing calories cheaper and helped to keep food costs down because it doesn’t spoil and you can regulate. So we tried to solve a problem 40 years ago, and we were successful. Unfortunately, things got out of balance. I don’t really think there’s a conspiracy between food companies and pharmaceutical companies - which is a question I get asked all the time. But I do think they’re certainly benefiting each other. Certainly, food is benefiting pharmaceuticals because this food, on one hand, is certainly inexpensive, but there’s a real high cost to this low-priced food and it’s making us sick. The consequences of this food, they become shocking when you start to look at them, and surprising. That one-third of all Americans are going to get early-onset diabetes … it’s just staggering.
That’s unbelievable …
There’s a book by a former head of the FDA who was appointed by George (Herbert Walker) Bush who just talks about how these food companies are designing foods to deliver us salt, sugar and fat because you’re basically addicted to them. And it sounds like tobacco … they know you sort of can’t resist it. We have these built-in desires to eat this kind of food, but the amounts of sugars, salts and fats that are going into these foods now are astronomical. And it’s really not good for us.
Why have we skewed our food production towards these cheap foods instead of towards what is good for us?
I think it happened gradually. I don’t think it was intended. Well, on one hand I don’t think it was intended, but on the other hand, I do think these corporations will do everything possible to sell you this food. They’ll advertise and do research on how to get you to buy it, and basically, again, that involves sugar, salt and fat. As we start to see and understand how dangerous this food is for us, I think we’ll actually start to change things.
The tone of the film isn’t gloom and doomy, with the exception of a few Kubrick-esque tracking shots in the grocery store and some of the music. How did you settle on your tone?
I thought tone was really important because I wanted the film to be empowering. You want people to know that this is a system that we can change and we are going to change. I wanted to connect the dots to a system that is failing us. And ultimately, even though we are up against incredibly powerful forces that are well connected to government, it’s not different than tobacco in that once we start to see and understand what is wrong with the system, I really believe consumers are going to be able to start to transform it and change it.
I wonder if there’s any chance, with Congress talking about health care this summer, there will be any ancillary effect on people thinking about the causes in addition to how we take care of all these sick people.
I think that you can’t have health care reform in this country without having food reform. What I think will change right away is food safety … with the FDA now looking to have the power to recall products that are making us sick in the immediate sense, such as E. coli 0157. The idea that this E. coli that didn’t exist 30 years ago is now not only in meat, not only in spinach, but in chocolate chip cookie dough … it’s pretty amazing that we’ve created these sort of bugs because of this industrial system that is sort of spreading and getting out and moving into all these other arenas.
I was surprised at how subversive this world was, how litigious it was and how things are connected that you don’t think are connected. When I was talking to Barb Kowalcyk (documentary subject and mother of a child who died from E. coli) and she told me she couldn’t tell me what she eats … one, I realized I was entering a different domain than I thought I was in. And then when she mentioned Oprah … what was interesting to me was I had remembered Oprah but I had forgotten the connection to food somehow … all of a sudden I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s more insidious than I thought.’
What we had hoped to do in this film is really promote a conversation. Obviously I am disappointed by so much of the reaction from large industry.
None of them would really talk to you when doing the film …
Well, almost none. The man from the National Chicken Council did, and I thought we presented his best points. Wal-Mart did and Eldon Roth from BPI (Beef Products Inc.) did. Eldon is like the Ray Krocs of the world, in that he is like one of these American entrepreneurs and he is solving a problem. And he was proud of what he is doing and he let me in. And I have to say I admire a lot of what he’s doing - I might question some of it, but the fact is he’s not hiding behind a curtain. And he’s proud of what he does, and I feel like I haven’t gotten to say that enough. It’s the people who don’t want to talk and then want to have a controlled message afterward I find sort of scary.
It seems kind of perverse that we are given this idea of farmers as this agrarian, Rockwellian ideal when in fact it seems from watching your film that many farmers are becoming indentured servants for these industries. Talk about how these companies are keeping farmers under their thumbs.
With the chicken farmers the problem is that they’re so in debt. And there’re fewer and fewer farmers in the United States now. I don’t know what the exact number of farmers is but I’m sure it’s at least half of what it used to be 40 or 50 years ago. Monsanto has come out and said we demonize farmers in this film. And there are people who have not seen the film saying not to see it because it demonizes farmers, and it’s just not a health way of having a conversation. Though Cargill (an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and service) just came out and said, ‘Listen, we realize ‘Food, Inc.’ is having a tremendous success and ultimately we welcome this conversation.’
Can you talk about Monsanto and their seed investigators?
Monsanto didn’t want to talk to us in the film on camera, and then they came out with Web sites afterward dedicated to our film and they try and follow me on the radio whenever possible. They said on the radio that they didn’t ever decline to be on the film, but what happened was we had four to five months of phone calls back and forth, we didn’t do much email but we did have 10 exchanges back and forth. We basically told them who was in our film and what we were talking about - with our characters’ permission - we then even gave them the name and phone numbers of some of these people so they could talk. It was numerous conversations, at which point they were never responding about not being in the film. Then we sent a letter saying, ‘At this point a lack of response will be taken as a no because we have to conclude the film.’ And they never responded to that. And then they go on the air and say, ‘We never declined to be in the film.’
They have armies of lawyers. But I don’t understand … you think they could defend their position about how their seeds work and why they think they’re good. But they go out and, I think, create misinformation.
Were you worried about facing litigation as a result of the movie?
You don’t want to say things that aren’t correct. But obviously this (the food industry) is a much more litigious world than you want to ever imagine. Who thought food could be so dangerous? You’re entering scary territory when you talk about food. There are laws designed to make it so they can sue you more easily.
What are the ‘veggie libel laws’ and their consequences?
The fact is you can be sued for disparaging a food product. And you can be sued for corporations losing income. Oprah was sued during the mad cow disease scare for saying she didn’t want to eat hamburgers. She was sued. She won the case eventually, but, you know, it took millions of dollars and six years of her time. That’s something that sort of slows one down. I’ve spent more money on legal fees for this film than on my past 15 films altogether.
One of the interesting things about the film is seeing how connected some of the people at the food industries are related to government. Can you talk about the relationship between major government figures and their work with or for these food companies?
One thing that we say in the film, and I just want to reiterate, it’s not bad to have people from industry go work in government and be part of it. I think that’s happened before and it hasn’t been terrible. What’s a problem is when people are ruling on things that they worked for or on in industry and then they go back to the same industries and get rewards. You know, there feels like a conflict of interest, and that’s where it’s crossing the line. I don’t think we should rule out the fact that just because people have worked in industry it should be considered a problem. I think it’s when they go back and forth and keep getting rewarded for what they do when they’re in government that it becomes a problem.
What do you say to people who complain about the prohibitive costs of organic foods?
The problem is we have an uneven playing field. We’re subsidizing food that’s making us sick. We don’t see the actual costs when we go to buy it. Those costs are going to bankrupt us. We show this family in our film, and ultimately this family is spending $500 a month for medicine for the father to buy diabetes medicine … which is going to be the case for one of every three Americans who’s born after the year 2000, so this is going to be an amazing expense for Americans. Even if you’re eating out of the garden you’re going to be paying for this food. In making this film, there were times when I was in field and I saw people in space suits spraying our food, and I’m thinking,’You know, I don’t know if I want to eat food where people have to wear space suits to grow the food. Something seems wrong.’
I think there are many solutions, and I even respect Cargill saying, ‘Don’t rule out the industrial system, it can be part of a solution.’ I’m ready to have that conversation. We’re not proposing you only eat a certain kind of food, but I am saying this system we have now - it’s a brand new system, it’s only about 40 years - is failing, and we need to have a conversation about how we’re going to feed ourselves.
Do you think we’re turning the corner?
I think there’s beginning to be a consciousness. It’s mothers who have to feed their children who are going to make it all change. They are the ones who change things much faster than government.
How do you empower people to make healthier choices and put pressure on these food companies and the government?
As we say, there are two ways of going about it. You vote three times a day … so becoming more conscious … when you buy locally, all of a sudden you are making a conscious decision that is helping a local farmer, making you eat a better meal, helping the environment, helping workers … it spirals. Hopefully we can start to change little things. If we can change one of our meals, we’re going to have a great change. But we also have to vote with our votes. Look at takepart.com or my site, robertkennerfilms.com, we list organizations that you may want to become partners with who are involved in political legislation.
I saw an article from the Guardian over the weekend that said that 98% of personal products labeled as ‘green’ are not actually as eco-friendly as they may purport, so people are being ‘greenwashed’ into believing they are making a more eco-conscious purchase.
These companies are very smart and know how to operate. There are companies now selling processed food and calling it local. So, we’re up against large, sophisticated businesses. I think the problem with organic is that the standard of certification are too low. You can have organic milk, but the animals are still in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), which are operations where you may find 30,000 chickens in a dark room where they don’t see daylight for their entire lives. Or it’s pigs or dairy cows that don’t get to move, but they can still be called organic. So the standards are too low. Michael Pollan was saying he thinks people generally live up to those (organic) standards; the problem is we need to raise those standards.
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Sleepwalker gets knife to the face
I’ve been known to sleepwalk. I’ve been known to get drunk on rare occasion. I have even had the misfortune of using my then-girlfriend’s closet as a toilet during said sleepwalking. So this story hit a little too close to home.
According to KansasCity.com, a Kansas man arrived home drunk Tuesday night and reportedly began to engage his girlfriend in conversation for a few hours. Obviously he was too drunk to know better but not drunk enough to just pass out.
The story continues …
The girlfriend awoke about 1:30 a.m. and saw her boyfriend urinating in the closet. She believed he was sleepwalking, because he had done that in the past. She tried to wake him up, but he ignored her and walked toward the kitchen.She said he pushed her out of his way. Scared he might hit her, she grabbed a knife and held it up as he approached. After he was cut, she drove him to a hospital. His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening.
To do list: throw away girlfriend’s knives.
