(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – A new documentary film exposing how misguided government policy favors industrial agriculture at the expense of small family farms will screen at the Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield on Thursday, September 22, 2011, at 7pm. Tickets are only $5. The special screening of Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farms, is presented by Berkshire Organics, is a local, family-owned business that brings area residents and local farms together through a weekly delivery service of produce from regional farms and a farm store on the Pittsfield-Dalton line.

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent action, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty’s quest to find healthy food for her four children turned into an educational journey to discover why access to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small family-operated farms selling fresh foods to their communities. Instead of focusing on the source of food safety problems – most often the industrial food chain – policymakers and regulators implement and enforce solutions that target and often drive out of business small farms that have proven themselves more than capable of producing safe, healthy food but buckle under the crushing weight of government regulations and excessive enforcement actions.

Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasonably burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.

The event will be preceded with cocktails and refreshments at 6:30 p.m. and the screening will be immediately followed by a question-and-answer session. Tickets are available at the Berkshire Organics store or online.

This film will not be available on DVD until winter and is only showing in select cities before then.