Editor’s Note: The following commentary is by Warren Etheredge of The Warren Report.

If you see only one food documentary this year… that’s plenty. Really, that’s all you need, provided you remain hungry to learn more. No movie will tell you everything you need to know, but most should inspire you to investigate further. (Devour all the books you like and never gain a pound!)

Participant Media’s FOOD, INC. takes an encyclopedic approach, cataloguing all the ills of Big Ag. THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN makes it personal, tracking the career path of America’s most unorthodox, organic champion. Chris Taylor’s FOOD FIGHT is less combative than its title suggests, quickly itemizing the decline of our country’s dietary standards in order to focus on the “revolution” born in Berkeley and now responsible for the abundance of farmers markets in major metropolises and heirloom tomatoes on foodies’ lips.

FOOD FIGHT features omnipresent omnivore Michael Pollan, celebrity pizza-maker Wolfgang Puck and activist/restaurateur Alice Waters among a bushel of other toque-inged heads dishing about the military industrial complex, carbohydrates and California cuisine. They all agree: post-war efforts to mass produce meals and reduce dependence on household help increased efficiency while eliminating almost every element of taste, developing a nation of ignorant shoppers with bland palates and bulging waistlines. They all agree: locally-grown foods top corn-bloated food-like substances. And, unless, you are a self-loathing, slow-witted, fast-food-raised diabetic you simply won’t argue the benefits of reversing 4o years of Earl Butz’s failed farm policy that favors profit over flavor, aimless fecundity over sensible food security.

On screen, FOOD FIGHT knocks out its target, Big Ag, a tomato can if ever there was one. Sadly, in real-life the match drags on. Big Ag’s a bruising student of the sweet science, using government subsidies, savvy marketing and rigged economics to lure consumers into a tragically unhealthy rope-a-dope gambit. They grow crap cheap, sell crap cheaper, wearing us down round by round, getting into our heads with their most literal taunt: Eat s**t and die.

So, what are you going to do? Take the one-way ticket to Palookaville? Or, change your habits, change your diet and rejoin the FOOD FIGHT?

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Tags:	Chris Taylor • documentary • Film • Food Fight

Photo by: Stewart

I’m an omnivore, but I do have certain rules around what I consume. For example, I’ll never eat anything I’ve ever had as a pet (although twice I inadvertently ate horse in France and Japan), I won’t eat primates or any endangered species, and I prefer not to eat threatened species (but will if necessary to avoid an awkward moment at a dinner party). Or bugs, I won’t eat those either. I always thought I was doing pretty good following this code, but admittedly never really taking the time to research the fish I consume.

Until I saw The End of the Line.

The End of the Line, the first major documentary about the catastrophic effect of overfishing our oceans, premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival. Filmed over two years, the film follows investigative reported Charles Clover, who penned a book with the same title, as he comes face-to-face with celebrity restaurateurs and politicians who dismiss the havoc they are doing to our oceans.

Yeah! to Jamie Oliver who has removed all reference to bluefin tuna from his books after being told of the devastating effect.

Boo! to Nobu, who refuses to remove Chilean sea bass and bluefin tuna from his menus even after repeated requests to do so.

According to an international group of ecologists and economists, “If we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.” Hi-tech fishing vessels leave it impossible for fish to escape, and the demand for cod in the early 1990’s led not only to the decimation of that species off the coast of Newfoundland, but the fishing industry as well.

“Overfishing is the great environmental disaster that people haven’t heard about,” said film producer George Duffield. “Just last week, a global conference about bluefin tuna stocks saw almost no media coverage in the U.S. We hope this film really sounds the alarm. We can fix this problem starting right now.”

Who is responsible? Consumers who continue to buy endangered fish, politicians who blatantly ignore the repeated requests of scientists, fisherman who continuously fish well beyond the set quotas, and the global fishing industry that is dragging its feet in response to an approaching catastrophe.

But this doesn’t mean that we need to stop eating fish and frequenting our favorite sushi restaurants. It means that we need to be well-informed and ask questions: where does this fish come from and how was it caught? Make sure the fish is from sustainable fisheries. We also need to reach out to our politicians and let them know how we feel. Let them know we need to reduce and control the number of fishing vessels across the world, protect large areas of the ocean and stop using destructive nets that destroy the ocean floor and its inhabitants.

After viewing the film (tears literally streaming down my face in parts) I vowed to only eat sustainable seafood. We can no longer hunt our fish into extinction.

Ask before you buy: only eat sustainable seafood.
Tell politicians: respect the science, cut the fishing fleet.
Join the campaign: for marine protected areas and responsible fishing.

Lay claim to your piece of the ocean (2 hectares each!)

Fish Facts:

1 billion people rely on fish as an important source of protein. (www.panda.org)

According to the UNFAO, about 70% of our global fisheries are now being fished close to, already at, or beyond their capacity.

As many as 90% of all the oceans’ large fish have been fished out. (www.panda.org)

Government subsidies of over $15 billionn a year play a major role in creating the world’s fishing fleets. (www.panda.org)

A Greenpeace report states that 40% of the world’s oceans should be placed in natural reserves. (www.msnbc.com)

Japan has caught $6 billion worth of illegal Southern Bluefin tuna over the past 20 years. (www.abc.net.au/)

In 200 tuna long liners set set 1.2 billion hooks catching untold numbers of turtles, seabirds and sharks. (www.ejfoundation.org/page270.html)

15 species of sharks have seen their numbers drop by 50% in the last 20 years. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/)

Illegal fishing is worth up to $9 billion a year. (www.illegal-fishing.info)

52% of fish stocks are fully exploited. (www.msc.org)

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Categories:	Environmental • Fish & Seafood	10 Comments
Tags:	bluefin tuna • charles clover • chilean sea bass • Film • fish population • fishing • rupert murray • Sundance • the end of the line

For the last 8 years we have attended the Sundance Film Festival and have seen it grow from just a few thousand attendees to about 50K this year. It’s always a wonderful adventure seeing artistic documentaries, creative short films (aka “shorts”) and feature films, many of which make it to the big screen.

As exciting as the festival is, it’s also a lot of hard work! Accommodations, travel and tickets are purchased months in advance, even restaurant reservations need to be booked weeks, if not months, in advance as well. Once we get there it’s also a workout. You are generally sleep deprived, cold and hungry the entire week. Despite that, each year I am as excited as a kid at Christmas in anticipation of the next festival!

As I write this, our friends are discussing what’s next on the film schedule:

“What do you have at 6:15?”
“In Bruges at Eccles.”
“Oh, you’re going to that too! We’re coming from the Library, can you save our seats?”
“So when do we eat?”

This is a common issue that I have tried, over the years, to alleviate: when to eat. And when to eat good food. Food in a restaurant, served on a plate, with a fork and knife and actually chew my meal at a normal pace. Our schedules are usually so packed with films (we average 2-4 films a day with a maximum of 5) that squeezing in a decent sit-down meal is a challenge. Sustenance usually consists of downing a cup of coffee in the morning (if you’re lucky), some sort of protein bar, maybe some popcorn, and if you’re lucky a greasy piece of pizza…all while standing and snarfing down with miraculous speed. This year, however, I’ve managed to reserve seating each night for our group of nine and we’ve enjoyed delicious meals at Jean Louis, Butcher’s Chop House, Windy Ridge, Bangkok on Main and Cafe Terigo.

As far as the films go our favorites this year have been, in features: The Wackness, Sunshine Cleaning, In Bruges, Choke and The Visitor, and in documentaries: Fields of Fuel, CSNY: Déjà Vu and Man on Wire.

It was another great year at Sundance enjoyed with friends and family. Planning for next year has already begun!

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Tags:	Film • Movies • Pizza • Sundance