Following is a guest article from Louisa Kasdon, Food Editor of STUFF magazine and how2heroes board member. Louisa recently organized a screening of Food, Inc. along with a panel discussion featuring Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farms who is featured in the film. The video here features highlights of the panel discussion.

Last Spring, I went to a press screening of the documentary Food Inc. “Wow”, I thought, “This is going to be huge”. A tipping point for the food safety and responsibility discussion. I invited everyone I knew (admittedly, I don’t know that many people), to a preview for the movie. And then, like an old beech that quietly dies in the backyard, there was dead silence. Little conversation, few viewers for this very provocative, and excellent movie.

Get the Flash Player to see this player. I was stunned. I started on my own little campaign to get people talking about this movie. Called the director, Robby Kenner, spoke to the distributor, met with others like chef Jody Adams who had seen the movie and been equally riled up, trying to arrange a time and venue for a screen to get people who work in the food business to join in the conversation.

Thanks to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and the Museum of Science (MOS) that moment came the last day of September. The movie was screened to a full house with a waiting list for tickets, rarities at the MOS for an adult event on a weekday afternoon. And the audience was full of chefs, food service workers, community people, mothers, scientists, concerned physicians, restaurant owners, and serious corporate professionals who are responsible for the link between health and work.

After the screening, the lights came up and the audience remained in place, as an invited panel discussed the movie and its call to action. I was honored to be the moderator, along with panelists Gary Hirshberg, the Chairman and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms (a central character in the documentary), chef-owner Jody Adams of Rialto, Jessie Banhazl from Green City Growers (producer of backyard farms in Boston and Metro West Boston), and Judith Frampton, an RN and VP for Medical Management for Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The conversation could have continued for hours, or until all the dinosaurs in the museum began to come alive and look for dinner. School lunch. Urban gardens. Who is the secretary of Agriculture? Backyard chickens and organic cows. All this and more. A tip of the iceberg lettuce.

We all understood that this was a first step, a first community discussion in Boston of the issues surrounding the industrialization of our food.

Good news. This is not the end. MOS and Harvard Pilgrim plan to come together twice more this fall to discuss food issues in a community setting. Two dates are on the calendar – November 12 and November 19, both a 7 PM. TO register, visit www.mos.org/forum. And get a copy of Food Inc. when it comes out on DVD in November. Invite your friends over to watch but remember:

Food Inc. is not a fairy tale with a nice neat ending. It is a deeply provocative film that invites free-ranging discussion. Where do we get our food? What do we choose to eat? Is organic sustainable? Is industrial food all bad? What is the appropriate role for personal responsibility? For government responsibility? And at the end, how much change is both sustainable and scale-able? Our hope is that the movie today will provoke thought and action, and possibly set a path to personal action. But it all begins with questions…. and very few pat answers.”

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