When we do our regular food shop at our local supermarket, wherever we find ourselves in the developed world, we are literally spoiled for choice. Walking up and down the aisles we are presented with shelves brimming with products, all with enticing labels, and many of which feature images of happy farmers taking care of healthy animals on perfect farms. When we pop these products into our shopping trolley, we usually don’t even feel the need to question whether they meet all the standards of healthy, sustainably produced foods that are good for us and the environment. Yet, by now, most of us are aware that things are never exactly as they seem, as the authors of the documentary Food Inc. discovered when investigating behind the scenes. Many of the foods that are presented as ‘traditional’ are often produced by large industries that treat fruit, vegetables, and meat as mass products that can be produced at low cost, even when that means resorting to unorthodox methods. Profit, not the health of the consumer, is very often their number one priority.
These practices give rise to countless problems. First, the decrease in the number of independent producers is creating small monopolies in the food sector, making it extremely difficult to determine the exact origins of our food. The variety that seems to be on display in the supermarket is nothing more than an illusion because the reality is that most foods are produced by the same few companies who own a series of different brand names and use the same industrial methods to make their products.
When someone tries, as the authors of the documentary did, to understand how some of our food products are made, by paying a visit to the company to observe production first-hand, you are likely to be met with hostility and silence. None of the large food production companies granted access to the filmmakers, and any third party journalists were silenced.
There are several issues that currently determine the cost of food in the United States. The first of these is price: consumers currently pay, and therefore expect to pay, prices that are as low as they were in the 1970’s. This might seem like a bonus, but what hides behind such cheap food prices is a world of social and environmental exploitation that would leave us shocked if we became aware of the full extent of it. It all began with fast food, whose prices, over the years, have had a massive impact on both supermarkets and restaurants. To keep prices low, the producers have to work with low quality ingredients, which is done by using mass production methods which involve cutting costs wherever possible. This includes complete disregard for animal welfare, and the extensive use of pesticides and chemical additives in fruits and vegetables. Savings are also made by cutting labour costs, which means that anyone who works in food production is likely to be paid less than minimum wage. The cost to these workers does not only affect their bank balance, but also their health, as a result of the conditions in which they work, and the chemicals that they are exposed to. The problem of industrial food production is therefore widespread, and extends to the environment, animals, and the socio-economic wellbeing of a large segment of the entire world population who are exploited because they are poor and in need of work. On top of all this, the cost of food is also relative; it might seem low, but it really isn’t because the actual cost of buying so-called ‘cheap’ food has many other hidden costs. Aside from all those just mentioned, we also have to consider the cost of the medical help people end up in need of after a lifetime of eating food that is disguised as healthy.