Big Food's Paranoia

The film Food Inc. was peppered with references to big food companies refusing to talk to the filmmakers. Director Robert Kenner told Bob Garfield, host of NPR's On The Media, that he was surprised at how paranoid they turned out to be.

It was, Kenner said, "Orwellian." Going in, he said, "I actually thought that we'd be having a conversation with the people producing our food."

Kenner is not known as an ideologue or an advocate, and his track record bears this out. He's made several films for PBS shows like American Experience, and he tends to be inquisitive and evenhanded in his approach.

While he didn't expect to be invited to film inside slaughterhouses, he figured some people from the big food companies would at least talk to him. Almost none did.

One exception: Wal-Mart (WMT). Thanks to that company's having the courage to go on camera, Wal-Mart (the world's largest grocer) actually came off fairly well. It got the opportunity to point out that in response to customer demand, it had stopped selling milk containing growth hormones.

Several other companies came off looking even worse than they otherwise might have, simply because of their silence. Many of them were left to respond, often lamely, after the film turned out to be pretty popular. More on that later.