“..Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess?
That’s the impression I get when watching many of the recent spate of food documentaries.
Activists announce that this or that is wrong with the food system;..
.. on the rare occasion when something appears to be getting done about it, the folks who are doing things badly simply change their tactics, not their strategy.
That’s how it’s gone with the British 2009 documentary film Pig Business.
I watched this film in several 10-minute segments via YouTube (Part One) because it hasn’t been released in the U.S., primarily due to legal pressure brought upon the director (Tracy Worcester, who spent four years making the film) by the film’s main villain, Smithfield Foods.
The world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield has 52,000 employees processing 27 million pigs per year in 15 countries, accruing annual sales around $12 billion.
The UK’s Channel 4 ran the film last summer despite four letters from Smithfield threatening litigation ..
.. but since no U.S. insurer would back the film’s release here, it has become essentially a black-market film.
Score another one for corporate censorship.
Smithfield does, in one sense, have cause for concern:..
.. this film certainly doesn’t show their company in the most favorable light.
Right off the bat, the viewer is struck with some rather gruesome images of pigs being brutally mistreated ..
.. apparently at the hands of workers in Smithfield-run facilities.
We hear from farmers and neighbors complaining of health problems that they tie to the fumes and water contamination from Smithfield hoglots..”
(Watch the trailer:..)
go to source/story>>hPig Business: Who owns your food owns you | Grist
