Conspiracy: The Sustainability Secret
Year: 2014
Director: Keegan Kuhn & Kip Anderson
Starring: Kip Anderson
Runtime: 91 mins
BBFC: N/A
Published: 03/01/20 (Legacy Review)
Director: Keegan Kuhn & Kip Anderson
Starring: Kip Anderson
Runtime: 91 mins
BBFC: N/A
Published: 03/01/20 (Legacy Review)
I feel like something needs to be said about Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret and not everybody is going to like it. I have over the years seen vegans praising this film to no end and actively stating “It will change your life.” And “You have to go vegan after watching this film.” The documentary explores the effect that the negative effects the agriculture industry has on the world. However the documentary is incredibly biased, provides little information about where any of the statistics come from that are being presented, and is edited in such a manner that “interviews” if they can be called that are cut together in choppy ways to support the biased claim of the question asked, unless the interviewee is 100% convinced that the only problem facing the world today is agriculture and that leading a vegan lifestyle will make everything perfect in a very short amount of time.
Now whilst I support the view that reducing meat consumption is good for the planet, the end user is not the one at blame here and this is something the documentary briefly addresses but neglects to elaborate on. The real way to end agriculture problems is to impose strict production limits on livestock, as a result less meat can be produced. Instead the final 45 minutes becomes the film maker’s hunt for vegans who all share the exact same opinion as he did at the start of the documentary, rather than actually finding out more about what can be done to stop so much waste being produced.
I’ll probably get a lot of hate for dismissing this documentary. But a documentary that masquerades as unravelling an agricultural conspiracy but is actually just one vegan guy making a very sub par biased view as to why environmental organisations are bad and vegans are great and everyone else is guilty of destroying our environment is not a well made film. The film maker rarely provides sources to his findings to support his claims, despite being very quick to point out that leading environmental organisations do not report this stuff. The people he interviews to support his views again are unable to provide evidence to support their views. Those who oppose his view either have their interview haphazardly cut together to make the organisation look bad or agree with his view on agriculture being a problem but think that the issue needs to be addressed at the source rather than making out that meat consumers are murderers and solely responsible for all bad in the world.
On a side note, the documentary takes a pretty hard detour into showing you the slaughter of animals in an attempt to make you agree that killing animals for food is bad...but if you didn’t already know that your chicken nuggets were once a living chicken you need some help. Plus the animals that were shown being slaughtered were actually very happy and very loved ducks raised by a family who knew what they were doing and educating other people in the area about what is necessary to get meat on your plate. So demonising those people instead of say battery hen farms is evidence enough that this guy clearly had no clue how to actually present his argument effectively. On another side note the guy drives a proper gas guzzling old camper van and preaches about climate change, if you can’t see the irony there then you are truly blind.
This is a reminder before you unload on me in the comments I haven’t said here that reducing or cutting out meat is wrong, or won’t help the environment; I am simply criticising the film for holding the exact stereotypical narrow mindset with no evidence to support its claims that many find to be the reason for not supporting, or mocking vegan views.
Now whilst I support the view that reducing meat consumption is good for the planet, the end user is not the one at blame here and this is something the documentary briefly addresses but neglects to elaborate on. The real way to end agriculture problems is to impose strict production limits on livestock, as a result less meat can be produced. Instead the final 45 minutes becomes the film maker’s hunt for vegans who all share the exact same opinion as he did at the start of the documentary, rather than actually finding out more about what can be done to stop so much waste being produced.
I’ll probably get a lot of hate for dismissing this documentary. But a documentary that masquerades as unravelling an agricultural conspiracy but is actually just one vegan guy making a very sub par biased view as to why environmental organisations are bad and vegans are great and everyone else is guilty of destroying our environment is not a well made film. The film maker rarely provides sources to his findings to support his claims, despite being very quick to point out that leading environmental organisations do not report this stuff. The people he interviews to support his views again are unable to provide evidence to support their views. Those who oppose his view either have their interview haphazardly cut together to make the organisation look bad or agree with his view on agriculture being a problem but think that the issue needs to be addressed at the source rather than making out that meat consumers are murderers and solely responsible for all bad in the world.
On a side note, the documentary takes a pretty hard detour into showing you the slaughter of animals in an attempt to make you agree that killing animals for food is bad...but if you didn’t already know that your chicken nuggets were once a living chicken you need some help. Plus the animals that were shown being slaughtered were actually very happy and very loved ducks raised by a family who knew what they were doing and educating other people in the area about what is necessary to get meat on your plate. So demonising those people instead of say battery hen farms is evidence enough that this guy clearly had no clue how to actually present his argument effectively. On another side note the guy drives a proper gas guzzling old camper van and preaches about climate change, if you can’t see the irony there then you are truly blind.
This is a reminder before you unload on me in the comments I haven’t said here that reducing or cutting out meat is wrong, or won’t help the environment; I am simply criticising the film for holding the exact stereotypical narrow mindset with no evidence to support its claims that many find to be the reason for not supporting, or mocking vegan views.