Most of the blogs that I write fall into two camps. They are either how to articles or reviews of successful or unsuccessful brand campaigns. So this one is admittedly off the beaten path but holds such interest I frankly couldn’t resist. I’m talking about the movie “FOOD, INC.” that was released last year that provides in a documentary format some very troubling facts about the food industry.
You can read for yourself about these issues and watch the movie’s trailer at the Food, Inc. website or rent or purchase the movie at Amazon here.
Here are a few of those facts:
- One-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese.
- Approximately 10 billion animals (chickens, cattle, hogs, ducks, turkeys, lambs and sheep) are raised and killed in the US annually. Nearly all of them are raised on factory farms under inhumane conditions. These industrial farms are also dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming.
- Cancers, autism and neurological disorders are associated with the use of pesticides especially amongst farm workers and their communities.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illnesses.
- In January 2008, the FDA approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned livestock, despite the fact that Congress voted twice in 2007 to delay FDA’s decision on cloned animals until additional safety and economic studies could be completed.
Judge for yourself. Seems like we have allowed ourselves to be trapped in the same sort of madness that the tobacco industry got us into not that long ago. After all, we’re not talking about indulgence; we’re talking about our health or lack thereof.