Near the end of Food Inc., director Robert Kenner asks one of his subjects -- a woman whose son passed away after contracting E. coli from a hamburger -- what she eats. There's a pause before the subject explains that she can't reveal what she eats because she might get sued.
It seems ludicrous, but it's the case with just about everyone who's interviewed in this documentary. According to the press notes, most of these people have subsequently either lost their jobs or ended up in a defamation lawsuit for nothing more than explaining how they raise their chickens or why they've helped farmers save their corn seeds for next year's harvest.
Meanwhile, Kenner himself has received email threats from companies, despite having hired a team of first-amendment lawyers to work with him throughout the making of the film.
"I've made 15 films so far in my career, and I can tell you, I've spent more on legal fees for Food Inc. than on all those other films combined, times three," he says. "I could've been doing a movie about nuclear terrorism and had greater access to information.
"It's crazy -- I just never knew how litigious the world of food was when I entered it," he adds. "I never realized how subversive it was. But the fact is that anyone who speaks out about these things does so at his or her peril ... It's scary, it's really scary."
There's a lot of scariness to Food Inc., actually -- from the hidden cameras revealing how 32,000 pigs are slaughtered every day in Tar Heel, N. C., by a poorly paid and illegal immigrant workforce, to the simple fact that genetically modified corn has now become so ubiquitous, it's even made its way into such products as makeup, batteries and diapers.
But perhaps most frightening -- or at least disturbing -- are the connections between agri-business and the U. S. government: During the administration of George W. Bush, for example, the chief of staff at the U. S. Department of Agriculture was a former chief lobbyist for the beef industry in Washington and the head of the Food and Drug Administration was a former executive vice-president of the National Food Processors Association.
"There are a handful of very powerful corporations and they're very wealthy and very connected to the government," Kenner says. "None of them would talk to me, so the hardest part of making this film was just figuring out how to tell the right story. Obviously, I was fearful to some extent about the repercussions, but I also didn't know how I could tell a fair story. I'm not Michael Moore; I didn't have a totally preconceived point of view before I started."
Ultimately, Kenner chose to tell a story about the current state of the food industry, focusing on what happens when we try to offer the most amount of calories for the lowest price, and how this seemingly inexpensive food is actually putting a very expensive burden on our health care system.
"Chickens are being grown with breasts so large they can't even stand up, and we eat that," Kenner says.
"People in space suits spray vegetable crops with chemicals, and we eat that, too."
The system is simply wrong, he adds, and it needs fixing, beginning with more accurate and transparent labelling that lets consumers know whether a product contains genetically modified ingredients or whether milk came from a cow that was given hormone treatment (which shouldn't be an issue in Canada, as this practice is banned).
"What makes me hopeful is that we do have the power to change," Kenner says, "but people need information in order to understand what this food is doing to them. If you have a free society and a free market, it must be based on information, and if we don't get that, we're unable to make choices."