Having watched Seaspiracy on Netflix recently, I decided to watch Cowspiracy again last night after finally getting done with work. That's when I realized - I had never watched Cowspiracy in the first place. Instead, i mixed it up with another documentary about the industrial dairy complex.
If you have already seen Seaspiracy, then Cowspiracy will have a familiar feel, with a very similar story-telling arc.
- It starts off with an introduction of the narrator and his childhood
- How he got involved with environmental activism
- How he realized there was a big piece of the puzzle that all the environmental groups were missing
- Confronting the conspiracy head on by trying to interview the environmental organizations
Those are the similarities. The big difference I felt with Cowspiracy was the focus on environmental sustainability and not a lot of focus on animal cruelty like with Seaspiracy.
The destruction of the Amazon rainforests to make way for soybean farms, using 1,000 liters of water to produce 1 liter of milk, the volume of waste of animal farms are all highlighted in the documentary.
Probably the most sobering message is that even methods of farming and food that we thought of to be sustainable like 'grass-fed' beef are not environmentally sustainable.
The clearest message for me was the need to eat less meat in order to save the environment. Going full vegan may be a stretch for some and of course there are those who would argue that man needs to eat meat.
I grew up in a country that's shown in green - consuming about a quarter of the meat of many other countries in the world. With the wide variety of spices and vegetables on offer here, I don't feel like i've missed out. Lab grown meat could be a potential solution for those who really can't give up their meat but maybe we need to examine why that is.