Nothing sweet about sugar industry
Film exposes worker abuses Few changes since 18th century
Brian McKenna says the idea for his latest film struck him as he watched his children eat breakfast. The Montreal- based, award-winning documentary filmmaker has five kids, two of them under five. And seeing them dig into a box of cereal for their morning meal became downright unsettling.
“ The issue of sugar becomes a very big one when you have children,” McKenna says. “ I’ve watched the children’s consumption of sugar rise dramatically over the years.” McKenna soon began examining various aspects of the consumption, marketing and international trade of sugar, a substance we all consume daily. The veteran of the CBC flagship program The Fifth Estate was shocked to learn that many of the nastiest historical practices surrounding the sugar trade — including slavery — still exist today. And due to the brilliant marketing strategies of corporations, sugar has become a burgeoning bad habit among consumers, many of who are hooked on diets laced with excessive amounts of the sweet substance. The result is Big Sugar, a twopart, multi- layered and intricate documentary treatment of the commodity’s dark side. It’s a film every bit as enlightening and disturbing as one would expect from McKenna, the man behind such controversial documentaries as The Valour and the Horror and Memoirs of Pierre Trudeau.
Big Sugar
makes history contemporary, as it recounts the fact that in the 18th century, the sugar trade was essentially like the oil trade is today, influencing international politics and causing nations to go to war. But it also indicates the massive influence the sugar cartels continue to have. McKenna says marketing strategies have created new and lucrative markets for sugar, especially soda pop, an average can of which contains six spoonfuls of sugar. Citing the rise in obesity and alarming leaps in rates of type 2 diabetes, Big Sugar, like Morgan Spurlock’s Oscarnominated Super Size Me, points to dangerous shifts in eating habits.
“ For the first time in history, we have more overweight people in the world than hungry people. How did sugar get so powerful that they could basically put it in virtually all of the food we eat? It has become ubiquitous — sugar is even a key ingredient in cigarettes.”
In order to examine the field conditions, McKenna recruited video journalist Mark Ellam to go undercover in the Dominican Republic, where he captured extensive footage of the workers living in squalor, deprived of a decent wage while doing gruelling work for long hours. Essentially, Ellam uncovers that the situation these workers face echoes the slavery that existed in the sugar plantations of the 18th century.
“ We thought that era, in which slavery was practised, was over,” says McKenna. “ But it’s not — it goes on, and it’s appalling.”
While Big Sugar provides evidence of rancid working conditions, McKenna says he’s “ not very big on victimology. I like to go after the perpetrators — if someone’s being tortured, I like the idea of seeking out the torturers and holding them accountable.” McKenna sought out the powerful American billionaire Fanjul family, a Florida- based clan that owns a massive 97,000hectare sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic, rife with dire working conditions and a dodgy environmental record. “ The Fanjuls had come under criticism before and were supposed to have cleaned up their act. They haven’t.”
Big Sugar
indicates the extent of political influence the wealthy sugar lobby has, making it clear that the Fanjul family has had direct access to both the Clinton and Bush administrations. A former Republican congressman, Dan Miller, appears to criticize congress’s annual $ 1.4 billion ( all figures U. S.) subsidies to the sugar industry. And Big Sugar also takes us behind the scenes at the 2004 Geneva Summit on Obesity. There, a group of renowned nutritionists proposed that a recommendation of no more than 10 per cent sugar in a human’s diet be drafted. That recommendation was an attempt by the UN to curb what has become a worldwide obesity crisis. It was dropped when the Bush administration threatened to yank $300 million in funding to the World Health Organization over the sugar issue. But while illustrating just how dire things have become, McKenna shies away from creating a picture of hopelessness. “ It’s important to offer some hope to an audience,” he says.
Big Sugar
tells the story of Thomas Clarkson, the Cambridge University student who, in 1785, mobilized the Quakers to push for an end to slavery throughout the British Empire. “ People can work together to call into question the practices of multinational cartels and those who make their trade on the backs of slavery. It is still possible to bring those people down and to beat them.” On another labour front, McKenna says the CBC lockout won’t solve the CBC’s problems. He asked the network to postpone airing Big Sugar, but the CBC refused.
Big Sugar
airs tonight and next Tuesday at 9 p. m. on CBC.