The Documentary Food, Inc. Oligopoly

In this documentary, Food, Inc., the makers focus on two major ideas that have been discussed throughout the class: manipulation of information and erroneous allocation of government money in the food industry. The idea behind the title of this essay is that the food industry, a whole different world, is an oligopoly.1 Furthermore, the two points that were chosen as the major ideas in the documentary, can be related to topics discussed in the course -allocation of government money and misinformation of the public. There were two specific cases that truly highlighted the ideas to discuss, the first one is a Hispanic family whose income is very low and with limited sources and the second is the many “interviews” with farmers.2 First and foremost, the

The degree of corruption is so high in the industry that the agencies responsible for regulation are part of the system. As stated in the report by the National Family Farm Coalition where they analyzed Food, Inc. and FRESH, the FDA conducted 50,000 food inspections in 1972 while in 2006 there were only 9,164, instead of scrutinizing companies, they are having less and less regulation each year. In this vein, the government economic interest is so invested in the food industry that families spend money in fast food rather than groceries. A case study in the documentary, a Hispanic family discusses their preference of spending in fast food rather than vegetables. Their reasoning, explain by the mother, is that because they spend so much time working for the low wages that they are compensated, it seems unreasonable that they spend $20 on vegetables when the entire family can eat at McDonald's for $15. They save $5, almost an hour of their job, and the time efficiency is much better than actually cooking. The conductor of