Extra Credit: Watch & Review a Documentary Film

The film I watched was a Netflix documentary titled Cowspiracy. This documentary discusses the impact of animal agriculture on the environment. This documentary tried to persuade the audience that animal agriculture or animal farming is the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions. This documentary changed my whole mindset when thinking about global warming and water usage. Before this documentary I’ve always thought that humans are to blame for the overuse of natural resources. However, the documentary presented the audience with mind-boggling statistics that were compelling and took on a new perspective. For example, according to the documentary a UN article stated that raising cattle produced more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector combined. Transportation takes up about 13% of global greenhouse gases, in comparison cattle takes up 18%. However, in 2009 two advisors from the World Bank stated that animal agriculture is actually responsible for 51%. The documentary also stated that a one quarter pound hamburger requires 660 gallons of water, which is equivalent to two months of showering. What I found disturbing is that this issue often goes unnoticed and is ignored by the public and environmental organizations.

The documentary was also persuasive because it exposed environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Oceana, and Sierra Club for being completely oblivious to this issue. Kip Andersen, interviewed multiple directors from important foundations and organizations and most were completely unaware of the fact that cattle and factory farming are the major issue behind global warming and climate change.

This documentary will be useful for my research agenda because greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption is a major issue for factory farming. Although the documentary focused primarily on cattle, the same concept can be applied to chickens. In fact, after doing some research I found that a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce, and a pound of chicken takes 468 gallons. Thus, the arguments that this documentary discusses are similar to the ones I will make on my advocacy project, and I may refer to some statistics in my essay.