Norwich: Food,Inc.

This must-see film tells an unwholesome story of big American agri-business, where working conditions, animal welfare, the livelihoods of farmers and consumers’ health are all held hostage by the drive for ever bigger profits.

The film highlights how a mere handful of companies control most of the food production business. One such company, Monsanto, has teams of detectives out scouring the countryside for farmers daring to save seed from one year to the next – or those that could be said to encourage such practice through their offer of services, like seed cleaning.

The film illustrates how ‘corn’ (maize to us) is turned into beef in the notorious feeding lot (with not a blade of grass in sight) – how corn indeed forms the basis for so many products in what seems on the surface to be an almost infinite choice in the modern American supermarket; how chickens (with echoes here of recent TV programmes by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall & Jamie Oliver) are crammed in their thousands into spaces where they can barely move around – and if they could, they’re so weighed down by grossly fattened bodies that their legs can’t carry them more than a few paces.

Don’t miss this film! Catch it at Cinema City on Monday, 29th March, 8.30 pm. Peter Melchett – Policy Director of the Soil Association and North Norfolk organic farmer – will be present at the end of the film for a Question & Answer session. The Soil Association is the official charity partner of the film.

Suggested links: http://www.foodincmovie.com/; and ‘Why Food, Inc. should make us all retch’ by Charles Clover in The Sunday Times: www.timesonline.co.uk/news.

(Sarah Gann/Transition Norwich Food Group)