Halle Hall

Documentary Critique

“Conspiracy: The Sustainability Secret”

If viewers take the line of reasoning seriously presented in the film then we can create a

more sustainable earth. Watching the documentary “Conspiracy: The Sustainability Secret”

made me realize that meat and dairy farms are one of the biggest reasons why our climate is so

damaged now, as well as it causes many other issues that continue to have a negative impact on

our environment.

Throughout this documentary, I learned a lot of shocking facts, things in which are destroying

our earth. This documentary was about how the majority of humanity are ignoring the extreme

damages of animal agriculture. One of the most eye-catching points was that meat and dairy

products use one-third of the earth's fresh water. This impacted me tremendously because of my

nutritional habits. My entire diet consists solely of meat and dairy products, which forced me

come to the realization that I am contributing to the over usage of water on the earth.

Animal Agriculture is one of the biggest industries in the world and has such an effect on our

environment involving greenhouse gases. These greenhouse gases are so corrupt because they

trap heat into the atmosphere, which in reality makes the air that we breathe remarkably toxic.

This was established not only in the documentary on “Conspiracy,” but in our readings called

“Setting the Context,” as well. This article expressed global warming and how the greenhouse

gases are killing our climate by deforestation, and polluting our oceans. Also reading epa.gov

helped bring awareness to how damaging it really is. To feed these cattle alone is tremendously

impacting our environment due to the soil in which is used, some of the contributing factors are

fertilizers and drainage systems. This can lead to nitrogen oxide into the soil.
 What I did not like in this documentary was how the vegan professionals made it seem as

though the only way to help this problem was to completely change one's eating behavior to a

solely vegan lifestyle. This film over-emphasized this by pushing such strong feel for becoming

vegan. I feel as though the experts could have discussed more ways of having a solution for

planetary sustainability, but instead, the experts only discussed vague methods for planetary

sustainability. The concepts that were mentioned were reducing ones shower time to save water,

as well as controlling the faucet leakage out of one’s home or work environment.

Also, it seems as though the so-called “experts” themselves are vegan which in a way made

everything they stated biased. The professionals clearly only discussed what they thought was

important. This circumstance is similar to one of our readings called “Smoke Mirrors and Hot

air.” It’s similar in the way of having fake experts to speak on a very serious matter. In this

article the scientific people only said what they thought was good for the public to know, called

“cherry picking,” this had misinformed the public and made it seem as though burning fossil

fuels is not that bad, and not one of the leading causes for global warming.

After doing my research I realized that a lot of the data in the documentary that was discussed

by the Food Agriculture Organization was not completely accurate and immensely exaggerated.

It stated that the agriculture of animals is only responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases, which in

fact is not true at all. The updated version states that the calculations are actually 14.5% which

makes a huge difference. Also, the documentary stated that 91% of rainforest deforestation is

caused by animal agriculture. This happens because farmers want to plant more crops or create

more grassland for the animals. Again, they empathized the word up to. After finding credible

sources, I discovered an article that stated that 60% of rainforest deforestation is caused by

animal agriculture, as well as another article that stated that 80% of rainforest deforestation is
caused by animal agriculture. This was a repeated pattern throughout the entire documentary of

“Cowspiracy.” They clearly chose the higher end of statistics because of their push on trying to

change the audiences’ perception of consuming meat, to wanting to live a vegan lifestyle

indefinitely, which was the entire objective of the documentary.

Overall, mostly this film did an excellent job of delivering the content effectively, although

they cherry-picked a lot of their statistics such as rainforest deforestation mostly in the amazon

by choosing the higher end, it was still effective in getting the point across of how being vegan

will create a more sustainable earth. As well as how we should really value what left we do have

of earth, because if we do not change for the better, it will be nonexistent in the future. The

points discussed were transformative, considering how they shaped me to realize that the meat

and dairy industries are some of the leading causes to global warming. Also, it helped bring

awareness to how much water is truly used throughout the entire process, and how we play a

huge role in destroying our earth simply by the foods in which we choose to buy and consume.
 Citations

M., Ahamed Musfar P. “Movie Review: Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.”

Indian Journal of Sustainable Development, vol. 2, no. 1, 2016,

doi:10.21863/ijsd/2016.2.1.022.

Klijn, J. “Ongoing 2b/3a Inhibition In Myocardial Infarction Evaluation.”

Http://Isrctn.org/>, May 2012, doi:10.1186/isrctn06195297.

Http://Ljournal.ru/Wp-Content/Uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.Pdf.

2017, doi:10.18411/a-2017-023.

“New EPA Standards Will Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Physics Today, 2012,

doi:10.1063/pt.5.025959.