Food Inc and the New Politics of Food

posted by Geoff Andrews at Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Last week I gave a short talk at Warwick Arts Centre following a showing of the film Food Inc. This film, one of a new genre of food documentaries, is a powerful critique of the industrial food system and the consequences industrial agriculture has had for health and the environment. The participation of food writers Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser gave the film a cutting edge and it has had a big impact in the USA, evident by the swift response of food multinationals. As Pollan says in an article in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, there is now an emerging food movement, bringing together a mix of people from across the political spectrum, which may rival the anti-Vietnam War movement. Can such a movement take off here?