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A Meaty Issue: Thinking Beyond Your Dinner Plate

by Jennie Richards · Published April 11, 2018 · Updated February 6, 2020

“The direction of the market is driven by consumer demand and more people are becoming aware of the consequences that their appetite for meat is having on the rest of the world, and they are making the decision to change it.”

The critical, investigative documentary A Meaty Issue looks at the social, environmental, political and animal welfare consequences of mass meat production. The filmmaker reveals how the world’s growing appetite for cheap factory farmed meat is forcing poor farmers off their land, destroying small farmers around the world, ruining livelihoods, damaging people’s health, destroying rainforests, wreaking the land, and causing extreme violence and suffering for billions of animals eaten for food.

The filmmaker goes around the world interviewing meat producers, farmers, biological food producers, slaughterhouse workers, scientists, researchers and consumers in China, India, Europe and Africa, exploring the consequences of meat-eating down the food chain and questioning how we can possibly answer the growing demand for meat with a burgeoning world population? Most meat-eaters don’t think about the social, environmental, and political consequences that their desire for meat is having on other parts of the world or the planet, let alone on the animals. This film reveals why consumers should think beyond their own lunch and dinner plates. It’s time to come to the inevitable conclusion that we should all eat less or no meat.

Length: 53 minutes

Watch the Film

Watch the film on Amazon

What You Can Do

Reduce or eliminate meat. Reduce your meat consumption as much as possible, or transition to a plant-based vegan diet. See our plant-based meat alternatives.
Reduce or eliminate dairy and eggs – The dairy industry is one of the cruelest, most exploitive industries on the planet causing the deepest suffering for animals imaginable. Cut all dairy out and replace it with plant-based milks, cheeses and ice creams. Battery caged hens are forced to lay up to 10-12 times what is normal for hens, and causes horrific cruelty and 24/7 suffering for hens. Eliminate all eggs and go with many good egg substitutes. See our cheese and egg substitutes. See our plant-based milk alternatives.
Substitute meat with vegetables – Eat more tofu, edamame, lentils and beans instead of chicken, beef or pork. You will save money, feel better and be healthier. See our plant-based meat alternatives.
Buy organic produce and foods – Avoid contributing to the pesticides, herbicides and insecticides used rampantly on non-organic crops that are contaminating our environment and contributing to disease and cancer in people and animals.
Learn more about the impacts of factory farming and industrial meat production – Learn about these exploitive, dangerous industries and their impacts they are having on the animals, our land, the environment, our natural resources, on human health, our oceans and waterways, and on our planet.

Quotes From the Film

“Has the time come for the world to become vegetarian?”

“Mass farms, known as intensive factory farms, show cost efficiencies by crowding animals. The more demand for cheap meat grows the more animals need to be bred, fed and slaughtered—a formula to maximize profits for industry. The animals are reared for one purpose only—weight gain.”

“During the fattening period, the skeleton and cardiovascular system of chickens cannot develop as quickly as their flesh. This makes movement very difficult for them.”

“The lifespan of an intensively farmed chicken is 29 days (Chickens normally live 8-15 years and up to 20 years if allowed to). By now at 29 days most chickens cannot support their own weight they are bred to be so large and grow so quickly.”

“If you buy poultry it’s usually contaminated by multi-resistant organisms. It’s just a question of when and how often you will be contaminated.”

“It’s not just the treatment of animals that is horrible, the meat itself poses huge risks to human health. It increases the risk of colon cancer by 20-30% if eaten over long time periods.”

“Beef in particular carries the viruses that poses a high cancer risk. ”

“The world now eats 5x the amount of meat it did 50 years ago. ”

“China – one of the fastest growing markets in the world, annual meat consumption has more than quadrupled since 1980, to almost 60 kilos per person per year. The increase in the consumption of meat is directly correlated to the increase in the country’s economic development. For China, eating meat is a sign of wealth. It’s a status. It’s akin to driving a Mercedes.”

“The increase in meat in the Chinese diet is taking a toll on health risks. Eating meat plays a major roll in the cities, and the side effects are becoming very evident. Obesity is rising sharply and diseases associated with meat consumption are on the increase too. Chinese doctors are sounding the alarm bells. Heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancers are all rising sharply. ”

“The female sows spend up to 8 months a year in small cages where they can hardly move. When I was a child they had sows walking around free.”

“If a sow does not give birth to enough piglets and she loses her productivity, she is weighed and slaughtered.”

“Danish Crown runs the second largest slaughterhouse for pigs in Denmark, up to 20,000 pigs are killed every day, up to 60 million a year. Much for the export market.”

“We have a test system, we put a pencil on the eye of the pig after stunning it – it’s the most sensitive part of the body, and if it is moving or feels it, then they are not stunned enough.”

“In France, animal rights activists claim that animal cruelty in slaughterhouses is rampant, the stun mechanisms don’t work, and animals are commonly killed while fully conscious. Many are not properly killed before the boning, gutting and cutting begins.”

“Turkeys walk in their own excrement, and are often sick on turkey factory farms. Dead animals rot amongst the live turkeys and will be there for a week dead on the ground, birds are sick and dying, and cannot walk.”

“The meat the consumer sees is different than what happens on farms and slaughterhouses.”

“In Paraguay – farmers are being forced from their land for soy farmers who raise soy to be fed strictly to industrial farm animals worldwide. It is a business that is destroying the lives of many. It’s all for animal feed.”

“Areas of rainforest are being decimated for soy farming for animal feed. They are logging trees to make way for crops for animal food that is destroying the rainforests.”

“People who eat meat in the U.S. and Europe—haveno idea of the consequences down the food chain of their consumption. In Paraguay it means our economy and our agricultural policies ignore the rights of the Paraguayan people. Grain, soy and meat – the government doesn’t care about the people, the locals have no support who lose their homes, livelihoods and their properties are being destroyed – by the military governments violence and abuse of their people. All for animal feed for meat. The government hopes that these tactics will deter more families from occupying the land.”

“The displaced farmers in Paraguay live in camps – evicted from their homes or forced from their farms to make way for Soya crops for animal feed. Many have lived in the camps for a decade now. They no longer own property, have a livelihood or freedom. Everything was taken from them. The interests of small farmers have no hope against the meat industry.”

“Soya farmers spray their crops with maximum pesticides for productivity, but surrounding communities see a prevalence of deformed babies, brain deformities, face deformities and poisoning from the pesticides that are killing locals. There is no justice for the poor.”

“The EU members states are the largest importers of soy crop.”

“In a world driven by profit, the market is all powerful. Ultimately, it’s the consumer who defines the market and has the power, but right now the consumer is still too busy eating meat.”

“Some people are seeing our hunger for meat as unsustainable, and they are trying to make a difference.”

“Hindus reject all forms of violence to living beings, meat is off the menu in Indian markets who are Hindus. Vegetarianism is integral to Hinduism.”

“Not only is vegetarianism gaining in popularity and status in Germany, not only is it environmentally friendly, it’s organic, and healthy ingredients fit in well with a society that is becoming more health conscious.”

“Soya beans contains the highest amount of protein of all the pulses (beans).”

“Feeding animals soy and then eating the animal is wasteful, the consumer should go directly to eating the soy – eating tofu is a much more effective and healthy way of getting our protein.

“We waste 95% of the world’s soya crops for animal fodder and feed.”

“16 kilos of soy is needed to produce one kilo of meat, as opposed to ½ kilo of soy needed to produce one kilo of tofu.”

“Why must meat be made from something as horrible as dead animals?”

“In Holland, researchers and scientists are trying to create a vegetarian alternative as close to meat as possible. Soy is a plant alternative for meat.”

“The direction of the market is driven by consumer demand, and more people are becoming aware of the consequences that their appetite for meat is having on the rest of the world, and they are making the decision to change it.”