Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret: Documentary Analysis
851 Words4 Pages
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a documentary directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn and was released in 2014 by A.U.M. Films and First Spark Media (Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret). The documentary stars Kip Andersen as the narrator and many other people that Andersen interviewed. During the film, Andersen investigates the harm caused by animal agriculture and attempts to find the solution to these problems. A good documentary should be factual and informational, provide needed examples and visuals, and should provide solutions to counterarguments that might be said. Cowspiracy is a mediocre film that is factual and informational, and provides the needed examples and visuals, but does not do an adequate job in providing solutions…show more content… Andersen says in order to solve the problems caused by animal agriculture, people should switch over to a vegan diet. He also gives many examples as to why animal agriculture is not a good plan for the earth. One reason he gives is animal agriculture takes up about half of the world’s land. Another reason animal agriculture is a problem is because it is the cause of 30% of the world’s water consumption. It is also the cause of about 90% of the amazon rainforest destruction. Another thing that Andersen talks about, and what most people don’t realize, is how much water it takes for cattle to produce simple things like milk or a burger. It takes 1,000 gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk and it takes 660 gallons of water to produce one burger (Cowspiracy). During the entire film Andersen does not provide any benefits of animal agriculture. According to Cowspiracy, if the world started converting to a vegan diet there would be immediate results in the environment. One thing that would be a result is that greenhouse gas emissions would be greatly decreased. Right now, animal agriculture is producing more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s transportation vehicles (Cowspiracy). Considering a vegan diet would not be a bad…show more content… Cowspiracy did a good job with this criterion. Most of the information presented throughout the film was not common knowledge, which is a necessity for a good documentary film. Cowspiracy also did a great job in listing sources for their information in the film and on their website. For every fact stated throughout the film they have one or more sources on where they got their information posted on the documentary website. Another criterion that Cowspiracy fulfills is providing needed examples and visuals. Cowspiracy did a great job of showing footage that pertained to the facts that were being said. For example, when talking about whether or not it would be sustainable for everyone to have their own source of meat, like ducks, Andersen showed a segment of himself going to someone’s house who owns their own ducks and showed footage of the ducks and what the owner must do to get the meat from the ducks. Cowspiracy also used helpful graphs when talking about different