Documentaries specific to Food Ethics and Animal Slaughter

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Climate change, Sustainability, and Global Meat, Global Fishing

  • 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.

Ethically themed food animal documentaries: Slaughter, Treatment of Animals, Pigs, and Environmentally focused

Slaughter
  • 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
Treatment of Animals
  • EO 2022 feature length film. Follows a donkey who encounters humans in different contexts. The effect is a meditation on human / animal relationship. This movie was inspired by Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar and, early, by a scene from Dostoevsky's The Idiot
  • Dominion - 2018 documentary about the treatment of food animals in industrial production in Australia. Produced by Shaun Monson (Earthlings creator). 110 minutes Disturbing images of animal abuse and mistreatment. On youtube. https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko
  • 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.
Pigs
  • Farmaggedon segment on China Pig Farms [1]
  • Outdoor pig farming in Iowa. [2] - this video has a neat historical segment. 6 mins
  • 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.
  • 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
Environment Focused
  • The End of Meat In The End of Meat, filmmaker Marc Pierschel embarks on a journey to discover what effect a post-meat world would have on the environment, the animals and ourselves. He meets Esther the Wonder Pig, who became an internet phenomenon; talks to pioneers leading the vegan movement in Germany; visits the first fully vegetarian city in India; witnesses rescued farm animals enjoying their newly found freedom; observes the future food innovators making meat and dairy without the animals, even harvesting “bacon” from the ocean and much more. [3]
  • The Islands and the Whales The whale hunters of the Faroe Islands believe that hunting is vital to their way of life, but, when a local professor makes a grim discovery about the effects of marine pollution, environmental changes threaten their way of life forever. [4]
  • "Sea Spiracy" (2021): This documentary exposes the truth behind the commercial fishing industry and its impact on the environment and marine life. On Netflix.
  • "Gather" (2020): This documentary explores the indigenous food sovereignty movement in the United States and how it is reclaiming traditional foodways. Netflix, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime.
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