If you’re still eating meat, eggs, and, well, any animal by-products it’s probably because you haven’t seen Cowspiracy: The Sustainable Secret (2015). This documentary, crowd-funded via IndieGoGo, won the Audience Choice Award at the South African Eco Film Festival in 2015 as well as more awards.  The film was directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn with producer Leonardo DiCaprio, more well known for his role in Titanic and other films. Kip Andersen has his own non-profit that is committed to producing films that encourage others to live sustainably. Andersen also directed the highly criticized documentary, What the Health (2017), that has a similar message to Cowspiracy. Cowspiracy follows the narrator, Andersen, as he talks with many environmental organizations. Andersen is convinced that animal agriculture is the main culprit for the environmental crisis and deforestation.

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Kip Andersen began to do all the things he was told to do in order to save the environment after seeing Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. The film covers many of the effects of global warming such as wildfires, melting ice caps, countries going underwater, and more. It also explains what we can do every day to prevent these effects. Before watching this film, Kip Andersen was just like any other American. He even mentions how he had a pretty typical American childhood. His mother was a teacher while his father was in the military. He says his childhood life was “simple”. He always loved camping and loved the outdoors, so this movie changed his life. In the film, he shows himself acting to prevent climate change by changing his habits in his own life. He claims after watching Al Gore’s film, he became obsessed with protecting the environment. He began taking shorter showers, recycling, biking places more often, and doing many other things to try and save the environment. When he learned that there was a lot more to climate change than fossil fuel emissions, he began researching more. His commitment to protecting the environment makes him seem very reliable. He claims to have found that animal agriculture was a bigger contributor to global warming, yet no environmental organizations had this information on their websites.

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The film follows Andersen as he talks with several environmental organizations to hear their input on the environmental crisis. Some of the environmental organizations he tries to contact include Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, and Amazon Watch. His goal in contacting these environmental organizations is to see if they will acknowledge that animal agriculture is a huge contributor to the economic crisis. Shockingly, he has a difficult time getting these environmental organizations to acknowledge this idea. You can see these groups avoiding talking about livestock, denying that it is a problem, or downplaying its contribution to the crisis from the very beginning of the film. The film opens with a clip from an interview with Bruce Hamilton, the Deputy Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Bruce discusses the greenhouse effect, how it is causing a global increase in temperature, and how this could lead to the next mass extinction. When Kip asks, “And what about livestock and animal agriculture?” in response to Bruce’s previous comments, Bruce answers with another question, “what about it?”.

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Kip surrounds the entire film around the idea that animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to animal agriculture, yet his research is faulty. In the film, he states that animal agriculture is responsible for 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. They also point out that animal agriculture is then more responsible than all emissions from types of transportation combined. While that statistic wasn’t totally made up, it was incorrect. An FAO study found that in reality, 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture. (FAO “Tackling Climate Through Livestock”).

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There are a few more questionable moments in the film. For example, there is a scene where Kip is speaking to Dr. Klaper, a physician at True North Health Center regarding vegan and vegetarian diets that is misleading. Kip is curious, as are many Americans if it’s possible to get all the nutrients you need on a vegan or vegetarian diet. In this scene, Dr. Klaper tells Kip that “all the nutrients are there in the plant kingdom” that are necessary to humans. However, in a “Nutritional Update for Physicians: Plant-Based Diets”, it reveals this is not exactly true. It says that “Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria, not plants or animals. Individuals who follow a plant-based diet that includes no animal products (vegan) may be vulnerable to B12 deficiency and need to supplement their diet with vitamin B12 or foods fortified with vitamin B12” (Tuso, “Vitamin B12).

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Between the lack of responses Kip receives from large organizations and the statistics that he offers throughout the film regarding animal agriculture, this film offers a compelling argument against the current way we are tackling the environmental crisis. Overall, it’s a great film to watch if you’re considering adopting a vegan diet. While the film contains some faulty information, it also contains a lot of shocking information that everyone needs to learn. It does give you a feeling that you can help the environment, but not in the typical ways. Sure, recycling, biking, and using less water are all helpful, but going vegan is the easiest way to help the environment. If you are interested in taking steps to help our environment, this eye-opening documentary is a must-see.