With the recent (May 2011) E. coli-related food poisoning deaths in Germany, food production and safety continues to be an important issue.
Food, Inc. was a 2008 Academy Award runner-up to The Cove. Both are great documentaries and should be viewed together as companion pieces. While The Cove has perhaps gained more attention and created greater controversy, I believe that Food, Inc. exposes far more important and dangerous issues, ones that most of us either do not know about or do not want to know about, even though they exist literally right under our noses - in the food we put into our mouths.
The inhumane treatment of both animals in CAFOs and local farmers by multinational conglomerates like Tyson and Monsanto is vividly portrayed. And if the plights of chicken farmers and immigrant workers seem too far removed from our daily lives for us to be overly concerned, what about the estimated 3000+ annual deaths caused by food-borne illnesses in the US (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)? Food, Inc. exposes the role that the oversized, government-subsidized food industry plays in food poisoning.
The Japanese fishermen portrayed in The Cove seem to be unaware of the impact of their actions, contained as it is in their small world. The corporate executives and government officials portrayed in Food, Inc. are fully aware of the harmful and far-ranging effects of their actions, which makes their irresponsibility all the more distasteful.