Food marketers won't be lining up to see this new documentary

Fast Food Nation, the best-selling book by Eric Schlosser, not the movie no one saw, exposed the seamy side of the all-American meal. A documentary follow-up of sorts, Food Inc., goes further back in the food chain to show how animals are raised in squalor, slaughtered en masse, bathed in ammonia and served to us with a "Farm fresh" label. Let's just say brands like Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield don't fare so well in this independent film, opening in New York and Los Angeles on June 12 from Magnolia Pictures. The companies' advertising can try to keep spinning the pastoral fantasy, but anyone who sees this film won't be swallowing that notion anymore. (None of the marketers, who control the majority of food production in the U.S., would appear in the doc.) Monsanto, the chemical company responsible for Agent Orange, might take it on the chin the hardest, as filmmaker Robert Kenner follows the plight of some small farmers who dared to stand up to the DDT-maker-turned-agribusiness. Guess how that turned out? If you want to know more about the origin of those Twinkies, the failures of the Food and Drug Administration and the evils of the dollar menu, this flick is for you. Just don't expect to have much of an appetite on the way home.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley