Tag: Leonard Lopate

“Farmageddon”

Note: There is a Washington Post review on this movie that opens today in major cities. The positive review points out the government’s treatment of small farms and begins with a question “Why is it so easy to buy cigarettes but so difficult to purchase raw, unpasteurized milk?

Yesterday on the The Leonard Lopate Show there was a very disturbing interview. It was another story of government being in bed with big business, this time making our food unsafe in the process. Three people try to explain why the government is turning a blind eye to the large corporations that are making us sick while raiding small farms and food co-ops to address problems that don’t even exist.

The outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in recent years, the salmonella in peanut butter and E. coli in bagged spinach have led to concerns about the way the FDA has been enforcing its food safety regulations. Each of those outbreaks has been traced to a factory farm or large processing plants but small farmers who have had little connection to them are bearing the brunt of government raids, searches and product confiscation. A new documentary called Farmageddon investigates the increasingly tenuous standing of small farms in our food system. It opens this Friday at Cinema Village and joining us today are Kristin Canty, the director and co-producer, Linda Failace, the co-owner of Three Shephard’s Cheese in Vermont and Gary Cox, the General Counsel for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Welcome to our show….

You can listen here. You should be outraged by those three stories, everyone should.  I have a few details below.  

“Hot Coffee” the real “True Blood” on HBO

HBO is on tonight!

What is Hot Coffee? It is a feature documentary by Susan Saladoff about “what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s.” Apparently after listening to her interview on the Leonard Lopate Show, I decided that the documentary is about much more than that.

Filmmaker Susan Saladoff, a former public interest lawyer, talks about her documentary “Hot Coffee,” about the McDonald’s coffee case, which continues to be cited as a prime example of how citizens use “frivolous” lawsuits to take unfair advantage of America’s legal system. But is that an accurate portrayal of the facts? The movie looks at the infamous legal battle that began with a spilled cup of McDonald’s coffee and investigates America’s zeal for tort reform, which, Saladoff argues, could restrict the legal rights of everyday citizens and undermine the entire civil justice system.  

You can listen to the interview here. Why don’t you come back here for for a Hot Coffee Open Thread? But right now why don’t you use the time to get friends who never found out the root of tort reform propaganda in America interested in the documentary that will be on HBO at 9 p.m. eastern and pacific and 8 o’clock in central time zones.

While you are helping to create an informed constituency, I’ll give a few details about Susan Saladoff’s discussion with Leonard Lopate below.