Review of Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014) by Karen M — 19 Nov 2015

I was not as impressed as I wanted to be. Frustrating! I agree with the concept of eating much less mass produced food. I agree that large scale commercial animal farms are a cruel and debased eco-disaster. I agree with the idea that Big Ag is corrupt, and that making the bottom line more important than the survival of the planet goes beyond stupid into the territory of insanity. Unfortunately, Cowspiracy manages to mangle their arguments so badly that it might have been better left on the shelf.

1. The data is cherry picked. 51% is subjective and it's certainly not peer-reviewed agreement.

2. Andersen takes this number and shoves it in the faces of various organizations who may be either unaware, skeptical or simply focused elsewhere, and expects them to have an immediate aha moment on camera and change their entire goal statement and public message while he watches. When this doesn't happen, he calls it a conspiracy.

3. The "solution" is simplistic and the viability of sustainable, local, small scale farming is glossed over in a rush to the finish. No corresponding analysis is made for the disastrous impact of standard large scale commercial plant farming and "food product" processing. These grievous oversights leave me feeling like the entire movie was a propaganda wrapper for the opinion that killing animals is mean, period. If that's your opinion then by all means go vegan, but simply eating no faces while ignoring the impacts of large scale plant based ag does not absolve you of your share of eco-destruction.

Final edit: I googled "CAFO protest groups". While I didn't see any Really mainstream names, there are hundreds of organizations fighting industrial animal farming. Why not making a documentary working With them to provide another angle (climate change) as an argument against large scale animal ag, rather than promoting the idea that this movement is non-existent... unless of course you're really just promoting veganism ...