Documentaries specific to Food Ethics and Animal Slaughter

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Sustainability and Global Meat

• Soyalism – a 2018 documentary by Stefano Liberti and Enrico Parenti. How China and Western agribusiness are taking over the world's grain and meat industry, while putting small farmers out of business and plundering the environment. Most of this is on Youtube.

• Meat & climate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7854HbH9Ro. 26 minutes

Expose of Slaughterhouse conditions, reflections on meat culture, and local effects of intensive pig production

• Inside a Slaughterhouse Investigative reporter Lisa Ling goes behind the scenes of a slaughterhouse to see how meat is made. https://www.oprah.com/own-oprahshow/inside-a-slaughterhouse-video A pretty refreshing and low judgement look at a US slaughterhouse. It is rare to get into a US slaughterhouse that handles 450 cattle a day. The reporter is somewhat shocked by what she sees, but Cargill’s representative also makes a statement on behalf of the enterprise. Only 6 minutes. No particularly disturbing images of animal abuse, but images of meat processing. The actual death of the animal is not filmed.

• Slaughterhouse: What the meat industry hides. 2017 documentary by Aitor Garmendia. From 2015 to 2017, an investigation has been carried out in 58 slaughterhouses across Mexico. Now, this documentary takes us into the hermetic world of the meat industry, where all the cruel secrets that have been kept from the public are uncovered: Animals in slaughterhouses around the world suffer from systematic exploitation and violence. Disturbing images of animal abuse. (The U.S. does import meat, mostly beef, from Mexico.). https://youtu.be/0VbTT5GUqBk. 39 minutes

• Dominion - 2018 documentary about the treatment of food animals in industrial production in Australia. Produced by Shaun Monson (Earthlings creator). Disturbing images of animal abuse and mistreatment. On youtube. https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko

110 minutes

• The Hog Industry in North Carolina – Pigs, Politics, and Pollution a WRAL documentary. Screen. 45 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHosjIWdqRk 45 minutes

• How Swine in North Carolina Affects real People | René Miller Excerpt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqXxwYEkF1s Documents health effects from pig CAFOs and “spray fields”. 5:30 minutes.

• Spy Drones Expose Smithfield Factory Farms 4:30 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayGJ1YSfDXs Good visuals of a typical Smithfield hog operation and some testimonial from residents and others about odor and illness from living near these pork factories. No disturbing images of animal slaughter or abuse.

• Neighbour to a Pig Factory - Danish pig farming. 28 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDFjQaugVr4

• Undercover at Smithfield Foods 2012 3:35 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_vqIGTKuQE Reports on gestation crates and different producers progress in eliminatings them. Disturbing images of animal abuse.

• The Meat Lobby: How the Meat Industry Hides the Truth | ENDEVR , Sandrine Rigaurd. 2016. Documentary: Focuses on health effects of processed meats and the power of the meat industry to manipulate public policy. A visit to a French pork processing factory shows the use of chemicals in producing sliced ham. You learn why processed ham is pink, for example. A key ingredient is sodium nitrite, a suspected carcinogen. The researchers pursue the industries use of scientist advocates to promote their views. The documentarists approach here is aggressive, but it does seem to involve documentary evidence and attempts at direct interviews with science and industry figures. The video ends with California’s consideration of listing nitrites as know carcinogens. No disturbing images of animal abuse, but some footage of meat processing. While they declined to do that in 2016, this document provides a partial update to the issue: https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2021/06/09/Should-processed-meat-be-added-to-Prop-65-list-Court-orders-state-of-California-to-answer-petition. https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Doctors-group-wants-processed-meats-added-to-15121237.php. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX1KUPZC3Ck

• Equine Destiny: Full Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzCr0R62-js Disturbing images of animal slaughter. 47 minutes

• Slaughterhouse - The Task of Blood 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu4EFCaF9A8. Disturbing images of animal slaughter. 59 minutes

• Infiltrating Florida’s Animal-Slaughter Underworld - Richard Couto has spent millions of dollars of his own money to fight animal cruelty. From a secret South Florida compound, he stages undercover horsemeat buys to bring down illegal slaughterhouses. Police say they’d be happy to work with him — if only he’d follow the rules. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zxsvdFyXmk 19 minutes Warning: this video contains content that may be distressing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised. Read more about Richard Cuoto's controversial mission to uncover illegal slaughterhouses in Florida.

• Profit vs. Ethics: Saving livestock from the slaughterhouse (9/21) Report by Christian Gropper and Barbara Struif. With Deutsche Welle 2021. Documents an animal rescue farm for animals that would be destroyed by industrial agriculture, including retired dairy cows. Also, stories of animal farms converted to non-animal farms. 28 minutes. No disturbing images of animal abuse. https://youtu.be/hRkfFYvOLr8

• The Dying Trade not out yet. By Jack Hancock. The director/producer comes on to tell you about his family history of Hancock Butcher shops, now closed. Interesting back story. https://plantbasednews.org/culture/film/son-of-a-slaughterhouse-worker-launches-film/ I found that the editing in trailer made it hard to watch, but you could skip to the middle for the director’s pitch. Meanwhile, Hancock has produced many small videos, some quite humorous, advocating his vegan views. https://www.youtube.com/c/HumaneHancock/videos. This assignment would involve watching the trailer and sampling some of his short videos, many of which are pretty clever, if not annoying. Plan on 20-40 minutes of viewing.

• The Last Pig (2017) – by Allison Argo, Joseph Brunette, and David Kennedy. A story from a small scale pig farmer about the level of awareness and sentience in pigs. He gives up pig farming, hence “the last pig”. See me for a copy of this one. 53 minutes