Writers and Directors: Pablo D’Ambrosi, Giulia Innocenzi
Giulia Innocenzi and Pablo D’Ambrosi’s Food for Profit is a raw documentary about the malpractice within the powerful Agrifood sector. Despite protocols designed to maintain both hygiene standards and humane treatment of factory farmed animals, the pair produce convincing evidence that powerful lobbyists within the industry, by ensuring EU subsidies go to intensive farms, make it possible for these farmers to ignore protocols and in some cases, to exploit migrant workers who are lured to work without contracts.
D’Ambrosi uses hidden cameras to record disgraceful farming practices across Europe, while Innocenzi tackles workers and bosses head on. Food for Profit flags up the distressing nature of much of the footage it shows. In case we thought such mistreatment of farm animals belongs to the past, here is disturbing evidence in one huge farm after another that the focus is entirely on profit and that sick and diseased animals are treated with contempt and cruelty. We see a farm worker savagely beating cows in a milking parlour. Elsewhere the film captures the inept and clearly painful injecting of antibiotics by someone who admits they have no veterinary training. Beyond this is the deeply concerning misuse of antibiotics and the possibility, if not the probability that as a direct result, new viruses may be spreading across species.
Innocenzi begins her narration with her home country, focusing on a vast intensive farm outside Venice which in 2021 received 124,000 euros from the Common Agricultural Policy. Gaining access to a building in which broiler chickens are reared, she asked an employee if the floor was washed every day in accordance with guidelines. The truth was, the floor don’t get washed daily – or ever. There was talking of “killing the waste” – a euphemism for killing birds that aren’t making sufficient weight. EU Regulations claim there is no such thing, but Food for Profit shows footage of grotesque battering of unweight chickens which are then dumped.
Innocenzi and D’Ambrosi point the finger at lobbyists, who ensure farmers are incentivised to continue to brutalise animals in the pursuit of profits. When Innocenzi repeatedly tries to confront individuals with evidence of such practices, she is at best ignored, at worst intimidated.
Food for Profit is also raw in the sense that its line of argument could at times be more tightly made. From time to time, shot footage is interspersed with a talking head. The problem here is that Innocenzi and D’Ambrosi haven’t been able to get key scientific figures to talk, nor do they quote from recent peer-reviewed research. The people they manage to film seems chosen at random – a philosopher here, a novelist there.
But the film gains real stature towards the end when the film makers go to Brussels for the crucial vote on the reformed Common Agricultural Policy, a reform which they suggest will do nothing for actual reform. Key figures simply deny the EU even has intensive farming, while arguing “productivity is a must.” Depressingly the CAP is voted in by a large majority and will stay in effect until 2027.
If you weren’t a vegetarian at the start of the film, you are likely to become on after seeing it.
Food for Profit is screening at the 3rd Cinecittà Italian Doc Season, 20-21 July at Bertha DocHouse.