Food, Inc.; A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms

Welcome to the nightmare world of CAFOs—Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations—the culprit in two new documentaries detailing the negative health and environmental effects of America's factory approach to animal farming. Emmy Award-winning director Robert Kenner's aptly titled and disturbing documentary Food, Inc. looks at the industrialization of our food production/delivery systems, illustrating how this agricultural monolith affects our health, environment, and economy. Forget the bucolic concept of chickens, pigs, and cows roaming freely on the family farm and munching on grass. Today's prison-like CAFOs are sheltered from public scrutiny, while the FDA and USDA have been rendered almost powerless by judicial rulings and legislation that have led to lax health and safety controls. Kenner delivers a blistering indictment of food conglomerates like Monsanto, Tyson, Purdue, and Smithfield, incorporating information from both Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, as well as commentaries from both authors and other food advocates, farmers, experts, and government officials. Sure, it's all one-sided “advocacy filmmaking,” because company representatives refused to respond—but explain that to the family of two-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk, who died after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli. Back in 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a muckraking novel that exposed corruption, unsanitary conditions, and shocking labor practices in the U.S. meatpacking industry, ultimately bringing about reform. Let's hope that Food, Inc. has the same effect. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (S. Granger)In A River of Waste, former Oklahoma Congressman-turned-film-director Don McCorkell sheds more light on CAFOs—currently the source of most beef, chicken, and pork sold in supermarkets—taking particular aim at toxic runoff leading to waste-contaminated water. In Oklahoma, for instance, scientists and landowners both attest to the decline in fishing and tourist dollars due to poor water conditions, while state Attorney General Drew Edmondson adds that since arsenic is one of the key components in poultry waste, he's dumbfounded that anyone could dispute the use of the word “hazardous” to describe the effects of chicken poop in the water (other toxic compounds include ammonia, antibiotics, and growth hormones). In speaking with farmers, ranchers, and Native American river-keepers, the filmmaker finds similar conditions in California, Maryland, North Carolina, and Arkansas, where cancer rates have escalated in chicken-raising regions. McCorkell makes for a rather wooden host/narrator, but the information presented in A River of Waste illuminates a serious environmental health issue. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)