Recently I had a chance to interview Elise Pearlstein, producer of the documentary Food, Inc. She is a highly regarded journalist and film producer and just a pleasure to speak with. Below she talks about her food, politics and why its important to know where your food comes from.
JAM-Good morning. Thank you so much for accommodating us.
EP-Well thank you for doing this so early in the morning.
JAM-You know what, absolutely, my pleasure. I gotta tell you when I heard that I had an opportunity to speak with you, I kind of got giddy. Your film had a really big impact on me.
EP-Really?
JAM-Yeah, in fact I wasn’t really in the mood to see a documentary that night. My girl friend dragged me to it because she was actually teaching, or using Omnivore’s Dilemma in a class of hers and she assigned the movie as extra credit. And it worked out really well. And when I saw Food, Inc., it confirmed some ideas that I had.
EP-Did you know what you were getting yourself into?
JAM-I absolutely didn’t. In fact I’m kind of one of those other – I used to lean the other way; I didn’t care that much about free-range chickens or the importance of it, or grass-fed cows and why it’s important. I knew it was healthier. I knew it was better for me, but I didn’t understand why.
EP-Yeah?
JAM-And I actually didn’t eat for about 20 hours after the movie. And then completely re-arranged how I buy food.
EP-Wow. Where do you live?
JAM-I’m up here in
JAM-I do actually. I’ve got three or four very good farmer’s markets as well as a couple of good coops that provide me excellent options actually.
EP-And you must have a very happy girlfriend as well.
JAM-Yeah, she is pretty happy now. She was happy that there was something that she brought me to that had such an effect on my life. So, yeah, she points it out every time we got to the co-op. How did you get connected with Robert Kenner and Food Inc. to begin with?
EP-Well, Robert and I have worked together in the past, and he came to me before we got our funding and asked me if I wanted to be involved. It was a subject that I was very interested in and I was very excited to get on board.
JAM-How much of an influence was Omnivore’s Dilemma and Fast Food Nation? Obviously it was important enough that he had the writers, the authors in the movie, but do you know the impetus for the film?
EP-Well, actually, Robby met Eric , who wrote Fast Nation, a number of years ago and Robby was really inspired by Fast Food Nation. And the idea of seeing something that you thought you new in a fundamentally different light. And that was what we hopped to do with this film. Let’s look at something basic like how our food gets to the table and really kind of explore what’s really going on there. So the film was originally going to be a little bit more directly tied to fast food. But by the time we got our funding and we were ready to go, we realized that we couldn’t just do fast food because basically all food had become fast food in the sense that the same companies that supply to the fast food restaurants are also supplying to your supermarket. And there’s really no difference anymore. All the food that you’re getting in your supermarket is coming out of this same industrial food chain and so we expanded the scope of the film greatly.
JAM-One of the things it does expand to is the first amendment, free speech.
EP-Right.
JAM-And I was curious to find out some of the laws or proposed laws against speaking out against meat manufacturers or where food is made. How did that become part of the food as well?
EP-Well, we were really unaware – or unprepared for how controversial this subject was going to be and how difficult it was going to be to get companies to participate. And to get farmers to feel like they could speak freely about these issues. And really it was when we were talking to Barb, who is the woman whose 2-year-old son died from eating a hamburger –
JAM-Yes.
EP-She was the one who – Robby asked what he thought was a benign question about how has this terrible experience changed how you eat? And she said, well you’re going to have to consult a lawyer before you put any of this in the film because I could be sued by the meat and poultry companies and then she reminded us of Oprah Winfrey and how she was sued for saying something about beef on her show. It just opened up a whole knew area for us. We looked into the veggie liable laws. There are actually food disparagement laws that are on the books in 13 states. And we realized that we in fact had to be very careful about what we said in the film. And we consulted and spent quite a bit of money on a first amendment lawyer to make sure that we were being as careful as we could be about saying what needed to be said but not opening ourselves up.
JAM-I heard that you spent more on that lawyer than any other film or combination of films.
EP-Fourteen films combined.
JAM-I’m sorry, it’s really not funny. But wow.
EP-Yeah, and it was something that – I knew – I’ve done journalism in the past for ABC News and NBC News. I knew going into it that we had to be careful, and document our exchanges and be – make every effort we could to get different sides of this argument. But I did not realize that – we’re talking about food, not nuclear weapons, so there was this shocking element as we were losing sleep over this and spending more and more money on this lawyer that we’re talking about food here – we’re talking about chicken. We’re not trying to get into the Pentagon. It’s really startling that the food world can be so litigious and that you have be so careful about what we say about what we eat.
JAM-One thing about what I was mentioning earlier you not having necessarily a political message – first of all, to me, Food Inc. is not only the best documentary; it’s one of the best films to come this year, and one thing I found interesting about it was not only do you identify problems in food and food production, but you also give answers. You give really – I mean, as disgusted as I was throughout the film, I found myself by the end of it sort of charged to say there are things we can do about it.
EP-Right, and that’s actually what’s empowering about this subject. We eat at least three times a day. So this is an issue where you really can make an impact right away. You can watch the film and immediately start to change the way you eat. And in lots of different ways, and much to the dismay of some of our critics, it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg to do that – to change the way you eat. So it is an empowering – you know, it’s easy to take the bull by the horns and make some real changes. But then also you have to vote with your fork and you have to vote with your vote. On a government level, we have to try to affect some policy so that we can make a bigger difference on things like our food safety agencies and different laws that would protect animals and the environment and workers and things like that.
JAM-Sure and that was one thing I loved about the film, that’s the one thing – well, one of the many things I came away with – but the most important thing is that it is our vote and we vote every time we go to the grocery store.
EP-Right.
JAM-We make a choice and that’s how we influence decisions. The whole – the Stony Field yogurt getting into Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart looking at the organic as here is something our customers want, and now we are going to provide it for them.
EP-And that’s what Gary Hershberger, the CEO of Stony Field says, you have so much more power than you think you do, every single time a product goes by the scanner you’re voting. And these companies have to listen to your vote. If we don’t buy something, they’re not going to make any money. They’re not going to sell that product. So it’s very important to vote with your consumer habits. But also just to even ask questions. I found just calling these companies trying to get information, calling the number on the web site to say, “Is there corn in this?” “Are there genetically modified ingredients in this?” They’re not used to getting those questions and I think it puts these companies on notice that consumers do want the information and a lot of the most crucial information we want and need is not on the label. And that’s because it’s been, the industry has worked hard to get certain information off the labels – or not on the labels.
JAM-I’ve actually been an advocate against high fructose corn syrup and I thought I was doing a good job not bringing it into my house. OK, after watching Food Inc I realized I was wrong.
EP-Well, corn itself is in so many forms. And a lot of the words you can’t pronounce end up being corn. Not necessarily high fructose corn syrup but a corn product.
JAM-Right. And I was shocked by that. Even when I thought I was doing and OK job at it, it looked like, oh I’m really not. So. For all the things you brought into this film, were there any that you stayed away from or that you felt you couldn’t put in the film?
EP-Yeah, I think we came across a lot – there’s a really big story around the environmental consequences of these industrial factory farms and how this waste gets into the water and into the air and affects the people living around these facilities. And that was a story that we investigated a little bit. But we couldn’t do justice to how profound these impacts are. Likewise, we came across a lot of studies being done and concern about antibiotic resistance and the development of super-bugs that can’t be treated. And that was something else that our chicken farmer talked about because she’s been subject of some of this antibiotic resistance studies. But it was something that again we could have gotten more into but we just couldn’t do it all in the film.
JAM-Right. I remember her just mentioning it. It’s one part of the conversation and then you kind of move on from that.
EP-Right. And also one other thing we spent a lot of time in Tarhill South Carolina with the workers – the whole story of the workers working in the fields and in the plants is something that didn’t get enough time in the film and again how – just the effect not only the animal and the environment but on the workers handling these products and the speed of lines and injuries and all that kind of stuff was again something we could have done a lot more on.
JAM-Yeah, I mean after watching it, those scenes directly related to that subject, I thought to myself, wow there is a real place for unions and seeing that there is good that can come out of unions. Because I think the idea of unions for some people, we’ve moved passed that saying they’re not really necessarily any more and these are specifically the type of conditions that started unions to begin with in the
EP-Getting the film out beyond theaters is just a great opportunity to reach everybody. We really wand people to see the film and we want a public dialog about these issues. We want people who agree and disagree to see the film and to just start talking because obviously we’re not trying to get everyone to speak the same thing but we do feel that it’s really important that we bring all the different –what’s the word?
JAM-Opinions? Ideologies?
EP-No, but really all the different, um…stakeholders to the table. And when it comes to food we are all stakeholders because we all eat. It’s important to us that people see the film. But we know that there was a lot of interest in seeing the film and the movie didn’t get to a lot of small towns. We’d love people in farming communities to see the film, more rural areas. And we just want it to start a public dialog about something that we should be talking about.
JAM-How important is local business when it comes to food?
EP-Local business is incredibly important because when it comes to food some of the problems of our food system have really come from companies being too centralized and too big and losing a certain amount of accountability to their local customer. Also it makes – when something goes wrong, the effects are really widespread because these systems are so big and centralized. So I think there’s something about when it comes to food, local means knowing your farmer. Knowing the source of your food and it also – in a societal, cultural way, it keeps you connected as a community. So there is a real value to local influence in the food system and I think it applies to local business as well, it’s how we keep our communities grounded.
JAM- I read or saw another interview with you and you said one of y our first jobs was doing a documentary on Pink’s Hot Dog Stand?
EP-That’s true.
JAM-You’ve really run the full gamut.
EP-I have. I seem to keep – I’m interested in food. I’ve looked at hot dogs, potato chips, Hillsburry Bake Off Contest.
JAM-I’m sure you get this question quite a lot: how has the film changed your eating habits or how you buy things?
EP-The film definitely opened my eyes to how I shop and how I eat. And I have two pretty small children and I’m keenly aware of what I’m putting in their bodies because they are so vulnerable. And also I just feel like it’s important for me and for them to know that food isn’t created in the back of the supermarket. Part of that distance of feeling disconnected from your food is how we’ve allowed some of these things to happen. I try to take them to farmer’s markets and we’re going to go to the county fair and look at the animals. We live in an urban environment so we can’t just drive down the road and meet a farmer, but it’s important to me that we stay connected and actually see where our food comes from.
And I would just say, you didn’t ask me specifically about this when you were talking about the political agenda, but I mean I think it would be, if there is a way to make the point that we did not go in with a particular agenda, we really wanted to hear all different points of view. We thought it would be a more interesting film if we could bring all the different players to the table, and it was the fact that they wouldn’t – that a lot of these major corporations didn’t want to participate in the film that actually changed the course of the film because once we couldn’t get people to talk, that became part of what the film was about. Robby’s last film was called Two Days in October and it one a
JAM-And that is a good thing to point out. When you take a look at the top 5 grossing documentaries out there, you know, it’s going to be Michael Moore.
EP-Yeah. And we are not like him.
JAM-He’s a polarizing character in media right now.
EP-And he doesn’t make it any easier for us.
JAM-No. I like his films, don’t get me wrong. But, his films are entertainment. He comes at it from a wisecracking point of view, which I appreciate. And at the same time, it’s not true journalism.
EP-Right.
JAM-And your film is.
EP-Thank you.
