Civil Eats

It started with a phone call. I had just finished A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen and it had a powerful affect on me. Like most of Jensen’s books, it detailed the toll industrial civilization was taking on the planet and it had me wondering what I could do about it.

I’d been writing about food for more than a decade, spotting trends, finding new restaurants and telling stories about people passionate about cooking and eating. But the more I learned about our food system’s impact on the earth, writing about where to find a great burger or a hot new restaurant started to feel pretty trivial. How could I bring a greater environmental perspective to my role as a food writer? Most food journalists steer clear of unappetizing subjects like agriculture’s impact on global warming, CAFOs, the farm bill, and hunger. I wanted to do something different.

That’s when the phone rang. It was Greg Roden, an old college friend who had connected with television producer Brian Greene. They wanted to know if I was interested in creating a TV show about food and did I have any ideas. Yes and yes. Read More

With the success of films like Food Inc., books such as Fast Food Nation, and shows like Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, people everywhere are starting to learn more about the food system. But what about the specific foods we eat? What if there was a place where you could learn about the exact foods you were eating — in real time — whether you were at your family dinner table, in a favorite restaurant, or even alongside a food truck? Read More

Last week, the Department of Justice announced the panel for the second public workshop on regulation and competition issues in agriculture, which will take place this Friday, May 21 in Normal, Alabama. The workshop will focus on production contracts, concentration and buyer power in the poultry industry, in which four of the top producers — Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms — controlled 58.5% of the poultry market as of January 2007. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Christine Varney will be at Friday’s workshop, which is important because it gives producers, consumers and advocates a chance to speak on record about how the practices of these companies affect them. Read More

If you’ve seen Food, Inc., you may remember watching Carole Morison walk through her chicken house gathering a handful of sickly and lifeless birds. It’s a chilling scene, and one that she tells the documentary’s audience occurred almost daily over the two decades she and her husband were contract farmers for Perdue. By the time the film was made, the Morisons had decided to end their contract with the company and Carole was in a rare position to act as a whistle blower. In exacting detail she described the harsh conditions for the animals and the people involved in such contracts and shed light on an industry often shrouded in secrecy. Now a consultant focused on local food systems, Carole visited the Bay Area recently to speak on several food and farming panels, including one held by the Center for urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) called Inside the Hen House. My interview with her follows: Read More

It has often been said that the reason television is called a medium is because it is neither rare nor well done.  For forty years, PBS has been defying that axiom, consistently providing some of the best television on television.  They also have the only serious nightly news show left.

Possibly the best thing they offer is POV, the easiest way to see serious documentaries by strong filmmakers unless you are a obsessive film junkie with scads of time on your hands and you live in New York or LA.  Even for a show as impressive as POV though, their plans for April 21^st are unique.

In conjunction with the showing of Robert Kenner’s Oscar-nominated film Food, Inc. (trailer) that day, POV is helping to organize potlucks in people’s homes all across the country.  The idea is to get groups to share a healthy, sustainably-sourced meal, watch the film, and discuss – thus helping to spread the gospel of real food. Read More

If it’s true that you can judge a nation by how it treats its most vulnerable members, then unfortunately for Japan, it may be no better than the U.S., when it comes to its treatment of animals. The Cove, a riveting documentary about the nation’s barbaric slaughter of dolphins, reveals the dark underbelly of a culture better known for its love of tradition, civility, and sushi. Now the Oscar winner for “Best Documentary,” The Cove beat out Food, Inc. (reviewed on Civil Eats), a contender for this year’s category as well. Read More

If you think diabetes and obesity are the two biggest health care crises Americans face these days, you’re missing the forest for the trees — literally. Because the roots of all this diet-induced disease lie in two less publicized but even more pernicious epidemics: nature deficit disorder and kitchen illiteracy.

The symptoms include a woeful lack of familiarity with that elusive culinary commodity known as “real food,” or “good food,” or “slow food,” and total estrangement from Mother Earth — who, by the way, keeps hanging around outside pining for a glimpse of you while you remain indoors, mesmerized by your monitor or TV screen and mindlessly munching on ersatz edibles.

Do you have no idea what you’re actually eating, where it came from, or how it was grown? You may suffer from one or both of these maladies. Are you fearful of naked food that’s not encased in microwave-friendly packaging? Petrified by perishable produce that demands any sort of prep? Read More

Today, Food, Inc. debuts, with more cities to follow in the coming weeks, and almost every major media outlet has weighed in: it is certainly not a film to miss, it offers a view into the food system you’ve never seen before, and you will leave the theater changed.

Big Ag realizes that the tide is turning on the corporate control of our food system, and that their message is in jeopardy. This is why most of the corporations and corporately supported groups from Monsanto to the National Chicken Council (now tainted in light of the newly-released CDC report about chicken as contamination’s numero uno) have created special sections of their websites dedicated to the film, in an attempt to mislead the public on the facts Food, Inc. is bringing to light for the first time. Read More

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health yesterday approved the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, sending the bill to the full committee for a vote expected next week.

The legislation is set to increase the authority and funding of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and at yesterday’s markup, Democrats agreed to halve the registration fee all food producers (domestic and foreign) would have to pay from the proposed amount of $1,000 to $500. The $1,000 charge, which had been supported by new FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, would have generated an estimated $378 million—money Democratic lawmakers said would go toward increasing plant inspections and other food safety activities. Read More

Last week The Humane Society of the United States co-hosted a screening of the film Food, Inc. for policymakers in Sacramento. It was a lively and engaged crowd representing the gamut from vegan activists to staunch carnivores, and it seemed every one of them learned something from Food, Inc. Alice Waters, Martin Sheen, Elise Pearlstein (the film’s producer) and the two most powerful state Senators brought cache and insight with their post-screening panel.

Dave Murphy’s great review of Food, Inc. the other day was spot-on and HSUS urges everyone to see it. Its fundamental aim is to expose the rampant abuse of power that has resulted in an inefficient, polluting, degrading, cruel, and unhealthy food system in America.  To add to Dave’s commentary, I wanted to offer the perspective  of someone who works daily to address the torturous conditions that 10 billion animals raised for food routinely each year endure. Read More

If you’ve ever been curious exactly how America produces the cheapest and “safest” food on the planet, but not quite believed all the hype that fuels the empty advertising slogans on your television, then Food, Inc. promises to be the film that explains why there’s a serious disconnect between food propaganda and reality.

In exactly 93 minutes, director Robert Kenner manages to slice down to the bone the many myths of the U.S. food system in a riveting documentary that exposes how a handful of corporations determine what our nation’s children eat and how America’s addiction to cheaper, faster, and larger portions has managed to shorten the average lifespan of the next generation for the first time since the Black Plague. Read More

In his weekly address Saturday, President Obama announced that he had put together a “Food Safety Working Group,” whose focus will include fostering communication between federal agencies in order to make sure food safety policies are being enforced, starting with “closing loopholes” that have up to now allowed sick downer cows to make their way into the food system.  The goal, he said, is to ensure that the food we eat — including Sasha’s peanut butter sandwiches — are safe from contamination. Read More