Agribusiness. Industrial farming. GMOs. Animal Antibiotics. Bored yet? Then Farmed and Dangerous is just the show for you. Sound like a documentary? It’s not. Although the circumstances would make for a fantastic horror film, it’s a comedy — at times even an LOL comedy. Brought to you by Chipotle, the series takes on the challenging task of informing viewers about the dangers of big agricultural business in an entertaining way.
The story revolves around a major farming corporation that deems petroleum tablets the next best thing to feed their cows — cows that explode after eating them. But who cares, petroleum is “from the Earth”, “natural”, and they claim it will be less expensive and more efficient to “feed the planet” this way (all actual claims made by real food companies). And if there are side effects well, that’s what Buck is there for, hired to “fix their image, not the cows”. As the head of I.F.I.B. (Industrial Food Image Bureau, brilliant pun), he feels good about, “People dying from eating instead of starving, that’s progress!” The fictional scenarios may seem out of this world, but reality is not that far off. We fall for this type of trickery all the time.
Sure the characters are one dimensional, but what works so well is that they’ve created an outrageous way of informing people about outrageous practices that are relevant to anyone who eats. Whether you already are a petition-signing food activist, o no tienes ni idea what I am talking about, the show is amusing as well as informative. Plus, Ray Wise (Twin Peaks, RoboCop), as the aforementioned Buck, gives an excellent performance. And so do those exploding cows.
