Books: Food, Inc.

March 31, 2010 | Advertising, Books, Economics, Education, Ethics, Family, Food, Health, Journalism, MSM, PR, Politics, Research, Safety, School, U.S. government

I just finished reading Food, Inc.: How Industrial Food is Making us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer — And What You Can Do About it, edited by Karl Weber and compiled as a companion piece to the movie, which I also just watched. I actually watched the movie (by Robert Kenner) first, not realizing that was the correct order of things.

I’ve read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, watched King Corn: You Are What You Eat, a documentary by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, and read quite a bit on food, the food industry in the United States and food safety (or lack of it). Food, Inc., gathers much of the information out there and puts it all in one place.

In any case, if you eat, you might be interested in this book and film. The film was done first. The book contains information from people who weren’t in the film. Schlosser says the film and the book are not just about food. They’re also about threats to the First Amendment and the corrupting influence of centralized power.

Contributors include (listed in order they appear in the book)

• Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal from 2001 and the movie in 2006
• Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food
• Robert Kenner, director of this and other documentaries
• Gary Hirshberg, president and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, producer of organic yogurt
• Humane Society of the United States
• Peter Pringle, a British investigative reporter and foreign correspondent
• Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association
• Robert Bryce
• Anna Lappé, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and the Small Planet Fund
• Cool Foods Campaign
• Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers; Alexa Delwiche, who worked as a researcher for UFW; and Sheheryar Kaoosji, a research analyst for Change to Win
• Pesticide Action Network North America
• Muhammad Yunus
• FoodFirst Information and Action Network
• Michael Pollan
• American Community Gardening Association
• Joel Salatin
• Sustainable Table
• Marion Nestle
• Sherri White Nelson, Heifer International
• Center for Science in the Public Interest
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Preston Maring

I think the information provided by this book and film is very important, though not half as fun as reading Barbara Kingsolver’s take on food issues in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I’m reading now. In fact, her book was written before Food, Inc., and I wondered, hey, did they read Kingsolver? Because if they didn’t, they should. But sure enough. She was listed in the “to learn more” section at the end of the book.

Posted by Becky @ 6:00 am | 3 Comments  

Parents face jail for truancy in children

September 18, 2007 | Education, Ethics, Family, Journalism, Opinion, Parenting

Editorial writer Joseph H. Brown said sending parents to jail for not sending their kids to school is a good thing: “Making Parents Accountable.”

When it comes to our public schools, accountability is mandatory. That’s why we have the FCAT here in Florida and the No Child Left Behind Act at the federal level.

Teachers and administrators are held accountable, he said. So are governments and schools, he said, but parents aren’t.

There’s one important component in the education process, however, that always escapes accountability: parents.

That’s about to change, though, because Circuit Judge Ross Goodman in Escambia County plans to charge parents of chronically truant students with misdemeanors and the possibility of jail time. (His wife, Marci Goodman, is a judge in Santa Rosa County and once sentenced a woman to two years in jail for keeping her child out of school for two years.) This came about because 583 students (of 40,000 total) in his county were absent without an excuse for at least 30 days last year.

If the parent is not sending the child to school, then I can send the parent to jail. — Circuit Judge Ross Goodman

Brown says everyone else is held accountable, and it’s time to hold parents accountable too. My question is, though, when teachers, administrators, schools and governments fail children, do they go to jail too?

This isn’t new. Parents across the country were arrested for their children’s truancy, according to a 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor. And they’ve established similar programs in the United Kingdom.

What do you think? Should parents go to jail if their children are chronically truant from school?

Posted by Becky @ 2:37 pm | Comments