I finally had an opportunity to watch Food, Inc. last night. If you have a chance to watch it on Comcast Channel 1 or elsewhere, it's a must see. An excellent companion to Fast Food Nation and The Unhealthy Truth.
Mostly, it confirmed my fears that the worst aspects of the healthcare system are also evident in the food system. Little or no competition. Three or four huge corporations controlling most of the industry. The best foods are prohibitively expensive for working families. No serious regulations. And it's making us all sick. Oh, and Monsanto is clearly the biggest bastards of the group. They're arguably more dastardly than the worst health insurance companies combined.
If we're at all interested in an inexpensive, universal healthcare system, costs have to be controlled. And there are certainly cost-controls in the current legislation. But real food reform would significantly cut healthcare expenses far beyond focusing merely on reforming insurance.
In a very broad stroke sense, it seems to me that step one would be to cut or eliminate subsidies for corporate agribusiness and funnel those subsidies to farmers who produce food using traditional and organic methods. Of course this is waaaay easier said than done.
The basic argument is that the food system is un-American. When a corporation is legally able to manipulate a small farmer -- forcing them into debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the purchase of a nightmarishly medieval facility for growing steroid-pumped chickens, while the farmer is only bringing in $18,000 a year, this is a corporate oligarchy of the worst kind and it's killing the American dream.
Adding... Issue 2 was passed on Tuesday, by the way. Very bad news for our food supply. It's clear that the coercive, cloak-and-dagger practices of corporate agribusiness strong-armed enough small farmers to support it (see Food, Inc. for more about the corporate enslavement of small farmers). So now there will be a small, easy-to-manipulate regulatory body that will inevitably continue to allow the filthy, dangerous practices of factory farming. Watch for similar concepts coming to your state very soon.