Original subtitles

Is this how our story is due to end?

A tale of the smartest species doomed...

by that all too human characteristic of failing...

to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals.

Now, the global population officially

passed 8 billion people today.

That number has more than doubled in the past 50 years.

Last year was the hottest year since records began.

Global sea levels rose by more than expected last year.

Temperatures were 1.6°C degrees higher...

than the pre-industrial average.

UN scientists have warned we are on course...

for a catastrophic 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming...

this century.

Bird flu is at a dangerous point.

H5N1 has taken root in US dairy

farms, and now it's jumped species.

With evidence that climate change

has played a significant role... in Los Angeles fires.

Abundance. Microplastics.

170 trillion pieces in the ocean.

Human-made chemicals known as forever chemicals.

Toxic chemicals.

That consuming a single serving of fish...

would be equivalent to a year of contaminated water.

Nearly half of humanity is living in the danger zone now!

Drought, floods, and fires.

Sea level rise.

Time is almost out.

At the point of no return.

We are way off target when it comes to how dire things are...

and those impacts are getting worse.

It could potentially be irreversible.

It isn't too late yet...

Now or never.

People must be capable of caring about things...

beyond is my belly full...

and, am I dry when I sleep at night?

Otherwise, it is all lost.

We are biological creatures and we live in an ecosystem.

The ecosystem that we live in is partly...

what we have inherited over

history, from 3.8 billion years...

of life's evolution on this planet.

And, partly what we have done.

The choices that we've made.

Things that we've engineered.

Things that we've destroyed and the things that we've protected.

It's an intellectual challenge to try and figure out...

what that would look like.

Whether there would be a final collapse.

Or whether this planet would just...

continue to drift through the universe...

containing...

human engineering and almost no other form of diversity.

We should be concerned about that final handful of species...

on a dying mud ball...

floating through the universe...

that used to be planet Earth.

That's what we should be concerned about...

in the immediate sense...

For the last 15 years or so

there's been a series of papers...

published in Scientific Journals saying we really don't like...

the look of what's happening to the food system.

It looks a bit like the financial system...

in the approach to 2008.

The food system itself could collapse.

It's dominated by just a few huge companies.

Like the financial system was before 2008.

So for example, just four corporations...

control 90% of global grain trade.

That's really dangerous.

If one of those corporations fails, and it could just...

bring down the whole system.

People starve then.

Huge numbers of people would starve.

Everyone's doing the same thing.

They're all producing crops in the same way...

with the same chemicals, with the same seeds...

from the same companies.

That's very dangerous.

It stripped the diversity out of the system.

Everyone's doing it for maximum efficiency.

That strips the redundancy out of the system.

These things like diversity and redundancy...

they're essential for the

resilience of a complex system...

which is what the food system is.

No one seems to know this.

No government is prepared to talk about it.

They're not interested.

So food system just refers to the fact...

that it's an interconnected web of connection...

between the food chain and basically everything...

that is along that food chain...

and how it has external outputs onto the world.

We think about the food chain.

We think about getting food from,

let's say, the grocery store...

but what are all of the significant points...

that made it possible for that food to come onto our plate...

and for us to get it to the grocery store?

and then the politics of how land is used.

Then that goes into how livestock are treated...

how they're fed, in factory farms...

the antibiotics so that we have the pharmaceutical part...

as well, finally how that food is packaged...

and brought to the grocery store.

Every single part of that chain is interconnected.

It's this flow, and that's why actually...

it's so challenging to change it.

Where are we heading?

In my lighter moments, I think maybe we will be heading...

to a future where we can live sustainably.

In my slightly darker moments...

I think we're heading towards the world of Mad Max.

Because we have converging threats, existential threats...

that will impact on our food system...

that will impact on our water security...

they're going to impact on our wellbeing in general.

The major players within the food industry...

they abide by regulations.

The question is, are those regulations...

the ones that are best for our health?

I'd love to see regulations that help to make us healthy...

while also yielding profits for those who are involved...

in the production of food.

We have a food system today that is focused on profit.

Food corporations are selling food...

in an extremely competitive environment.

Many of them are privately held...

which means that their stockholders...

have the power.

So the agricultural system like any other...

is focused on immediate and higher returns on profit.

And it really doesn't matter what is being sold...

or the health or environmental effects...

of what is being sold.

What matters is how quickly the companies...

are making money.

The system of food production today...

is based on an industrial and intensive model.

Intensive, meaning what?

All the components, the input and the animals within it...

even the workers, they are all used to the utmost intensity...

in order to produce the maximum possible profit...

in the shortest time and with minimal costs.

We need to be looking at the whole system.

And what I began to see...

reluctantly, because I did not want to see...

and I still don't want to see it...

but I can't unsee it now...

is that "the" biggest threat to the living world...

is food production.

Food production is the primary cause of wildlife loss...

the primary cause of habitat destruction...

the primary cause of species extinction...

the primary cause of fresh water use...

the primary cause of soil erosion...

and the primary cause of land use...

which is the most important issue of all.

And it's also one of the biggest causes...

of both water pollution, air pollution...

and land pollution, and climate breakdown.

All of these things together.

I mean, it's up there...

it's worse than the fossil fuel industry.

Today's food system is not just impacted...

by animal agriculture...

but indeed dominated completely by it...

in the sense that, take for example land occupation.

So you have two types of land...

you find cropland and you have a range land.

In the cropland, the predominance of corn...

and soy for feed production results in most...

of the cropland occupation.

And that is the key asset that we need to feed ourselves.

Use the cropland to produce corn and soy...

feed them to livestock...

and then eat the products of the livestock.

And that has efficiency of somewhere between...

you know, 10 or even 15%...

all the way down to about 3%, which is beef.

And what that means is that of 100 kilograms of protein...

in feed, in corn, wheat, oats, et cetera...

that you feed to beef...

you get only three kilograms of edible beef protein...

a hundred in, three out.

The most important environmental issue of all...

is the amount of land we use.

Because every hectare of land that we use...

for our own purposes is a hectare...

which can't be occupied by wild ecosystems.

Now, the great majority of species on Earth...

need wild ecosystems for their survival.

They can't survive in ecosystems which we've manipulated.

But also the Earth system itself...

the whole planetary system...

is totally dependent on wild ecosystems...

and the less wild ecosystems you have...

the more likely that earth system is to collapse.

Now, what's the major reason why we don't have...

enough wild ecosystems?

Cattle ranching.

It's outdoor cattle keeping is the biggest cause...

of the transformation of wild ecosystems...

into a man-made, human-made ecosystem...

which is cattle pasture.

Animal agriculture impacts climate

change primarily through...

two, two and a half, let's call it...

major greenhouse gases.

The trickiest to handle is methane...

and that's mostly from what they call enteric fermentation...

which is basically burping by ruminants...

especially beef, cattle, and dairy as well...

then there's CO2, which mostly is incurred...

in the production of the feed...

that goes to feeding those animals...

and then there's nitrous oxide, a third greenhouse gas...

which is mostly the result of manure management...

not exclusively, but mostly...

and they account somewhere between 25 to 30%...

of all greenhouse gas emissions...

by far and away, the biggest impact...

of food production on land is meat, dairy, and eggs...

is animal products.

That hits ecosystems harder...

than anything else we do on land.

And at sea, by far and away...

the biggest impact is commercial fishing.

That hits marine ecosystems harder...

than anything else we do at sea.

I think the sea is always somewhere else...

somewhere other than the place that we consider to be home.

At best, we think of the planet as three quarters ocean...

and water and quarter land...

but in fact, the ocean makes up something like 97%...

of the volume of living space on planet earth.

The assumption that we always made...

was that the sea was wild and intact...

and you could take as much as you liked from it...

with no consequences.

We've come late to this understanding...

about the impact that we've had on the ocean.

That just as on land, the underwater world

has been transformed by human action.

The ocean has absorbed something like

30% of the carbon dioxide that human...

activities have emitted since the

industrialisation of the planet.

What we realise now is that that carbon is not...

necessarily safe, particularly the carbon in shallow seas...

and those are the seas that we exploit most...

intensively because they're the most productive.

They supply about 95% of the seafood that we eat.

And much of that seafood is gathered by...

dragging trawl nets and dredges across the seabed...

and as they pass across the seabed,

they kick up lots of sediment and mud...

and the stored organic carbon inside those sediments...

and when it's released into the water column...

it can then be turned back into carbon dioxide...

and some of that carbon dioxide

can end up back in the atmosphere.

There was a study that was published in

2021 that estimated that the amount of...

carbon which was being released from these

disturbed seabed carbon stores was...

equivalent to emissions from the world aviation industry.

Can we perpetuate this forever while not...

accruing ever rising environmental degradation?

No! The answer is no, we cannot do that.

Scientists have long worried about

progressive change in things...

like you know the temperatures rising like this...

as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere...

but actually the world doesn't

act in linear ways all the time...

and what we are beginning to appreciate more is...

that there may be tipping points in the Earth system...

and if you cross those tipping points,

then you can get very rapid change.

So, for example, loss of ice from

Greenland or West Antarctica...

you know once warming progresses sufficiently, then...

you know, warming from beneath the ice sheet...

from the sea is actually melting it from

below, which speeds up the rate of ice...

loss off the continent or the island of Greenland...

and if the rate of ice loss accelerates enough...

then you could see massive deglaciation happening...

and loss of ice from the Greenland ice sheet alone...

would raise world sea levels by seven metres or so.

Is it wise to sink ever deeper into environmental debt?

To me, the answer seems no.

We should strive to act in a judicious,

timely fashion, well ahead of a pending...

catastrophe so that we have the latitude and the flexibility...

to choose the kind of response that we are comfortable with.

I don't think there is enough

attention to environmental problems.

There have been five mass

extinctions in planetary history...

which wiped out more than 75% of species at the time.

But the sixth mass extinction, which we're in right now...

is unfolding around us and we're not doing enough about it.

There isn't nearly enough public attention. There isn't...

enough resources being put into the

protection of the environment...

and so we're sort of sliding towards a time of reduced...

biodiversity and increasing instability for the planet.

It's about education, all the time...

and that's where we fall down.

All over the world. On so many fronts,

kids are not genuinely educated.

Climate crisis may come up a bit here and

there and they feel a bit scared by it...

you know, from something they've heard in geography.

Who is actually genuinely telling them

how animals are farmed, how they are killed...

and what the consequences of that are for them, their...

family's health, for those animals

themselves and for the planet.

Because we are now in...

the sixth mass extinction.

This is serious...

and if we care about our future, then we

have to take this seriously and stop...

farming billions of animals in the most appallingly cruel ways.

Now, we all love animals, don't we?

The big ones, the little ones...

maybe not the ugly ones.

My favourites are the old meat and

dairy animals, burgers and shakes.

And they're never going to go short because

apparently there's now 70 billion of them.

We're eating the earth.

Believe it or not, they eat so much, they

need 80% of all the agricultural land in...

the world and horror of horrors, we've now run out of it.

We're eating the earth.

We're eating the earth.

We're eating the earth.

Someone just told me that we're in the

sixth mass extinction and that a million...

different species are going to be wiped out.

Ha! That's the bunny huggers for you.

We're eating the earth.

We're eating the earth.

We're eating the earth.

I want to keep hold of our creamy ice creams

and bacon butties. We're just going to...

have to chop down more forests. That's fine with me.

If we are serious about the survival of

the species and about our own so-called...

civilisation, there needs to be a radical

rethink in the way in which we behave and...

the way in which we treat others and other species as well.

I used to be an merchant banker,

specialising in corporate finance...

and I went out to see a client who had interests in many...

different industries. It was a conglomerate.

And one of the operations that they

had turned out to be a slaughterhouse.

And we should bear in mind that at the

time I was a meat eater and my favourite...

food was fillet mignon and lobster...

a fact for which I am so profoundly ashamed today.

Well that day in that slaughterhouse

I was absolutely terrified.

So I moved out of my profession and decided

to become involved in a process of...

learning as much as I could about

these industries but I call them atrocities.

And as a consequence of that, today

we support about 850 projects in 54 countries.

As I travel around the world I give talks to sometimes...

small groups of 100 people and sometimes 5000 people...

and they are all good, caring, loving people

who genuinely want to change the world...

as long as they don't have to change themselves.

Animals must be off the menu because tonight

they are screaming in terror in the...

slaughterhouses, in crates and in

cages, vile, ignoble gulags of despair.

Eight billion people are alive today and

we humans torture and kill two billion...

sentient, living, loving animals every week.

10,000 entire species are wiped out every

year because of the actions of one species.

If we were killed at the same rate...

we would be wiped out as a species in one weekend.

This is a crime of unimaginable proportions.

Meat is still holding a symbolic status of power...

partly because, throughout history,

it was the food of the kings.

Of the higher class...

It holds an inspirational element,

as we can see in all societies...

when they reach higher sources of income...

the first thing we observe is an increase in meat consumption.

Everybody agrees that China is a country...

with a huge impact on the rest of the world.

So China's food system has shared...

many similarities with food systems elsewhere.

And, for the last few decades, meat consumption...

was on the rise and capitalist, production of food...

and consumerism made people just want more.

Even they don't need more. But with all the risks that

come with this increasing consumption of meat in...

a country with huge populations, we can see that...

the risks are pronouncing themselves much...

more clearly now.

This is a matter of scale, the scale at...

which animals are raised for food...

for people.

The industrial scale husbandry of livestock...

huge pig operations, huge poultry operations.

Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, in some cases...

millions of chickens on a particular chicken farm.

Where you have thousands or tens of thousands of pigs...

in particular pig operation.

Something like 99% of the animal products

that we eat are produced in factory farms...

and factory farms are these concentrated operations where...

I don't think any of us...

whether we're vegan or not, can ethically

stand by what happens in factory farms...

where animals are treated as objectified

commodities rather than as beings.

They find it difficult to think that animals

deserve to have equal consideration for their rights.

It is a difficult thing.

It's also very difficult, using the laws...

of supply and demand and

economics, to get companies and...

businesses and farms and institutions to change as well.

We accepted and allowed to the removal of

a control system on a political level...

and that they would become privatised.

All of this dates back to the 70s and the 80s...

with the rise of neoliberal ideologies and politics...

so the current system whose functioning forces

people to buy and eat what is produced...

it is functional and motivated by

its own existence and survival.

Corporations have an enormous amount...

of political power...

and they use their money to get governments...

to do what they want...

to do things that are good for business.

When I visited a small river...

in this county in Devon...

which was famous for its wildlife...

and I turned up with a friend...

and you could tell straight away...

something was very wrong.

We stepped up to the bank of the river and it was dead...

and its stank was a really powerful stink...

and so I thought, what's happened here?

I couldn't understand.

Eventually, I found this pipe coming into the river...

and even though it was a dry day...

there was shit pouring out of this pipe into the river...

and you could see below the pipe, everything was dead.

And so I thought, what is this pipe?

Where is it coming from?

And so I followed the pipe up the hill to a dairy farm...

and it came straight out of one of the slurry pits.

And I looked at Google Earth and I saw that a few years before.

The size of the dairy unit had been doubled.

And I later found it had twice as many cattle as it had before.

But they hadn't bothered to build any more slurry lagoons...

any more shit pits.

Because it was cheaper just to build a

pipe going straight down into the river...

and literally pour the shit straight into the river.

So I thought, well, look, I'm a Guardian journalist.

I'm a well-known environmentalist.

I'm about the most empowered person there could be...

when it comes to making a complaint.

So I rang up the Environment Agency's pollution hotline.

And they said, oh, this is very serious, sir.

A few days later, I phoned up the

Environment Agency again and said...

so what are you going to do about it?

They said, well, we decided not to take action, sir...

because it's not a serious incident.

So we went and had a look.

And we didn't find any evidence of a fish kill...

so it's not a serious incident.

I said, of course you didn't find

any evidence of a fish killing.

There aren't any fish left to kill.

And then I got this massive response

from people all over the country...

saying our rivers had the same problem.

But I also got two whistleblowers

from the Environment Agency...

came to me and said, this is inevitable...

because we've been told from the top...

from the Secretary of State for the Environment...

not to prosecute dairy farmers.

So then I looked into it further and

found that dairy farm pollution...

is one of the biggest forms of pollution in the whole country.

Chicken farm pollution is another one.

They don't prosecute that either.

Pig farm pollution is another one.

They don't prosecute that.

And I thought, if they're not

going to regulate this industry...

I'm not going to eat its products.

There is an expression, what goes around comes around.

You can't escape the consequences.

The amount of plastic entering the ocean every year...

has been estimated to be around 14 million tonnes.

Of course, anything that doesn't degrade over time very fast...

is going to build up.

If you keep adding 14 million tonnes...

14 million tonnes year after year, then it all accumulates.

So the ocean now has up to an estimated

200 million tonnes of plastic...

embodied within the water and the sediments of the seabed.

As plastic breaks down, it forms smaller and smaller particles.

So it then is ingested by marine life.

But those particles also attract nasty chemicals.

Forever chemicals they're called.

Things like DDT and PCBs and the plastic additives...

that are added in agrochemicals.

And those attach those plastic particles.

As they're ingested by marine

life, they build up in the tissues.

So when you catch a fish, which is at the top of the food web...

like a tuna, the tissues may be laden with toxins...

some of which is being absorbed from

plastics that they have eaten...

and if we eat that fish, then we then become...

the carrier of those toxins.

Change is difficult for everybody...

because animal agriculture forms such a significant part...

of our gross domestic product, of our cultures.

In fact, a lot of our best memories...

occur from sitting around the dining table...

and many of the bad habits that we live with today...

we learned when we were babies in the arms of our mothers...

and we associate the comfort food that our parents gave us...

because they loved us, with safety and security and care.

So it is almost hard-wired into our systems...

that this is something that is good for us.

As well, there is this feeling about people and livelihoods.

This is a heroic way of making a living.

Instead of seeing the dragging of trawl nets...

across the seabed as incredibly destructive and impacting...

on the sea in an industrial sense...

this is just as destructive as clear-felling forests.

It's seen instead as being part

of the culture and the history...

and the heritage of a country.

And that these people are going out...

and they're resting a living from the sea.

They're bringing back good quality food for people to eat.

And we celebrate that without understanding the impacts...

that it's causing.

Most people imagine that the meat

and the milk and the egg they eat...

come from these little farms with a few cattle...

a few chickens, maybe growing a few vegetables at the same time.

And all the marketing suggests that.

The advertisements, the packaging...

yeah, look, a few chickens scratching outside.

If people knew the reality, they would be absolutely horrified.

these enormous steel factories...

which might have tens of thousands

of chickens crammed into them...

thousands of pigs, hundreds of dairy cattle...

all in one huge great steel factory,

living in horrendous conditions.

It's totally different to the public image.

So for instance, Tesco, one of our big supermarkets...

here in the UK, has got a brand called Willow Farms.

And if you buy the eggs, you'll see Willow Farms and these...

chickens scratching about outdoors.

And there might be flowers and butterflies and stuff like that.

There's no such place as Willow Farms.

Willow Farms does not exist.

The eggs come from these huge factories.

Willow Farms is just a brand.

Those drawings aren't based on reality at all.

It's the story they tell because it's the story we want to hear.

And if someone like me is rude enough to say...

actually, it's not like that.

That's not the reality.

It's not just the farmers and the supermarkets that hate you.

It's the consumers as well.

People don't want to hear that story.

They don't want to be told the reality.

The food industry has followed the tobacco industry playbook...

to the letter, cast doubt on the research...

blame personal responsibility, fund your own research...

so you get the kinds of results you want...

fund groups that will support you, fund nutrition societies...

so they won't say anything bad about your product...

insist on being at the policy table...

and when all of that fails, lobby and litigate.

That's the tobacco industry playbook.

It's staved off concerns about

cigarette smoking for 50 years...

and the food industry is doing much the same.

So, Chris, bringing up the date for

the litigation of the court case.

Well, we won the first round...

but there's no injunction granted on the footage.

They had a 28-day period...

and unfortunately they didn't decide to appeal.

It seems like they want to drag this

whole thing out as long as possible.

And by the time we're able to release the footage...

if ever, it's going to be old...

and they'll be able to say that it's not relevant anymore.

So it's a difficult position, but I

don't think we have a choice, but...

That's a rather cynical abuse of power and money, isn't it?

Very much so, yeah.

I mean, they're a massive multi-million-dollar company.

And at least we know one thing.

What you do is on the right side of history...

and I often say that one day...

when animal rights is enshrined not just in the human heart...

but also in legislation and our behaviour...

your fingerprints are going to be on every page...

and I can't wait for that beautiful day to dawn.

It is such an enormous empire that we're up against...

that has many billions of dollars at their disposal.

They have the status quo at their disposal.

You know, it's considered normal to eat animals...

and extreme to not eat animals...

to not pay for animals to be abused and killed.

So we're up against all these social norms...

and an industry that is able to spend billions of dollars...

upholding those social norms.

When I walk inside an intensive farm...

I think that I'm going to get used to it...

because I've been doing this for many years.

And I use the camera to protect myself really...

to try and distance myself.

And then you just can't.

You know, you'll see an animal who's in pain...

who's lying on the floor.

Not a rare sight.

And this animal is clearly in the last throes of life.

Whether that be a chicken who's collapsed...

because they're forced to grow far too fast...

or whether that's a pig who's writhing around in agony...

whoever it is...

I just feel their pain...

because how can you not, they're right there in front of you?

and you feel an obligation to do something about it...

and so you times that by the number of animals...

who are being factory farmed across the planet.

And wherever you look, whether that camera's in Italy...

whether it's in Australia, whether it's in Saudi Arabia...

wherever that camera's pointed...

it's the same over and over and over again.

It is that it's kept so secret...

and the industry relies entirely on this secret-ness...

on keeping consumers in the dark.

I think that most people are opposed to animal cruelty.

They just don't know that they're paying for it

when they're buying meat, dairy, eggs,

and other animal products.

A lot of the time we were going into farms...

and slaughterhouses...

middle of the night...

knowing that we could be caught, we could be charged.

And we would put in hidden cameras...

and try and capture what was going on.

You good?

I've been to a number of turkey farms...

egg farms, chicken farms...

which are bad enough, as it is...

but there's something about pig farms...

that are a whole other level of hell.

The moment you step into these places, you smell...

I mean, it's a smell that just never leaves you.

It never leaves your clothes, it never leaves your skin.

It is the smell of death, it's the smell of fear...

it's the smell of waste...

because these animals are living in their own faeces...

and urine, they are packed tightly together...

in small barren concrete pens.

And I came out of that place on fire...

I'd never seen anything like that in my life...

and it just changed me.

You know, I wanted to go to all of these places...

and just show people what the hell was going on.

We were going to pig farm after pig farm...

dozens of them, and showing the exact same kinds...

of conditions in all of these farms across the country.

Something else that we captured as part of that film...

was the largest slaughterhouse for pigs.

We'd heard that they were gassing pigs...

that was their method of stunning them before slaughter.

They would send them into these carbon dioxide gas chambers.

There was no footage anywhere in the world...

that I could find.

The only information I could find about it...

was the industry saying that it was

the most humane method of killing pigs.

I am currently inside the top of the gas chamber.

How this could possibly be legal,

how this could be the standard...

how the industry can turn around and say to...

people that they care about their animals...

that they treat their animals well.

It goes so deep, everything from what's sprayed...

on the crops that are grown for feed for animals...

the preventative use of antibiotics on factory farms...

because of the terrible conditions animals are in...

the way the pharmaceutical industry is

involved providing those antibiotics...

which is then having huge downstream

effects as possibly antibiotic resistance...

meaning...we won't be able to take antibiotics

if we have an infection in the future...

which would have huge and dire consequences of course.

Antibiotics have two purposes in intensive farming.

First, they prevent the spread of diseases...

this is because we have many animals

in cramped spaces next to each other...

while sharing the same genetics, by the way...

Second, the antibiotic is facilitating growth...

because the body is able to spend less energies to

protect itself, since it's supported by medications.

You might think you're getting seafood...

from a wonderful pure water fjord in Norway...

but actually that salmon might be dosed with antibiotics...

it might be being treated with various

kinds of anti-fungal compounds.

The kind of chemicals that go into the...

aquaculture industry would make your hair stand on end.

In Scotland, for example, huge oil drum

sized quantities of formaldehyde...

are being added to salmon pens

to control sea lice infestations.

And that formaldehyde is a known carcinogen.

People are actually eating the meat from those...

animals, their bacon, their ham, their sausages...

is coming from these typical factory farms...

where animals are in such diseased and ill states...

and you'd think that Covid would have woken us up, wouldn't you?

Three in four infectious diseases

cross from animals to people.

So that is the majority of new infectious

diseases that are coming across that way.

Among the most dangerous things that we are doing...

is raising livestock for food on these...

industrial scale poultry, pig and cattle operations.

As one point of extreme jeopardy to emerging diseases...

I graduated from veterinary science in 1984...

and avian Influenza was considered a very rare disease.

However, as human population has increased...

the population of intensively raised chickens...

has also increased.

And that's facilitated the amplification of...

avian influenza, causing extremely

high mortality in chickens...

but the concern there is it can also

mutate, cause illness in people...

and now we're seeing the expansion and spread of H5N1...

that it's mutated such that it's now causing...

deaths in wildlife, and it's

entered the dairy herd in the US.

New CDC report on the first severe

human case of bird flu in the US.

New cases of the bird flu are raising

alarms among health officials.

53 confirmed human cases across seven

states this year alone...but this week...

the first person has died from bird flu in this...

country in that state. The question then comes up...

okay...given that this happened,

what is the risk for everybody else?

The spillover of a virus from a wild animal into a human...

happens because of opportunity.

It doesn't happen because the virus seeks us out.

A virus can't walk, it can't run, it can't swim...

it can't fly.

it rides inside

the cells of a cellular host, meaning an animal.

And how does spillover occur? It occurs because...

usually because human activity...

brings humans...

into contact with wild animals that carry that...

particular virus. We hunt them, we trap them...

we kill them, we butcher them, we eat them...

or we take them alive and we ship them around...

and in doing that, the virus has an opportunity...

to spill, to tumble into the human host...

and then if the virus is lucky or it's very adaptable...

it can take hold in a new host, a new kind of host...

and when a virus does that and succeeds...

in transmitting from human to human and...

passes all around the world the way SARS-CoV-2 has...

that virus has achieved extraordinary...

evolutionary success.

It has won the Darwinian sweepstakes.

It has gone from a virus that had only a little...

bit of habitat hiding in these relatively rare animals...

into a virus that is infecting humans all over the world.

Do we feed ourselves in a sustainable and...

healthy way today in the developed nations?

No, absolutely not. It is clear that there is...

a huge proliferation of degenerative diseases...

essentially people choosing implicitly by...

the way they choose to eat. They choose to have...

degenerative diseases. From the environmental...

standpoint, it is very similar...

no, we are very much not sustainable.

You just asked a question about whether...

dietary advice is...

influenced by food corporations.

The simple answer is yes, of course.

The best example is the meat industry...

which for decades has fought against any...

suggestion that eating less meat would be...

better for health or the environment...

and has done that quite successfully.

Is meat consumption going up?

It absolutely is and it's set to go up...

even further if you look at the targets around...

the meat industry...

and if you look at the tactics amongst the meat industry...

they are working with retailers to target consumers...

with precision...

going after consumers who are...

actively reducing their meat intake so there is...

no mandate at the moment within the meat industry...

to actively reduce meat intake and switch across...

to more of a plant-based horticultural strategy...

High meat consumption is...

an environmental problem without question.

It's a health problem only in countries where people...

have enough money to buy a lot of it.

Whether people choose to eat meat...

is another question entirely and you don't have to eat meat.

You can eat a perfectly healthy diet without it.

With all the problems in the world, it's so easy...

to get overwhelmed like what can I do as one person...

to make a difference in...

in global warming, and hunger...

and deforestation, in the Amazon...

and what people need to know...

is that what we put in our mouths every day...

can make an important and a meaningful

difference in all of these things.

It's why Vice President Al Gore...

who owned a cattle ranch became a vegan...

because he realised that's where you can really...

make a difference.

That it takes 14 times more...

resources to make a pound of meat-based protein...

than plant-based protein.

That's 14 times more...

people that can be fed for the same amount of resources.

I've been doing research now for almost 50 years...

and we were able to show that when people...

change their diet, when they eat primarily...

a plant-based diet, fruits, vegetables, whole grains...

legumes, soy products, and so on...

as close as possible to how they come in nature...

low in fat, low in sugar, low in refined carbs...

that our bodies have this remarkable capacity...

in many cases to begin healing if we

stop doing what's causing the problem.

If you are going to have a predominantly whole food...

plant-based diet we're going to shift the...

dial in terms of our health and that of the planet...

and that really means at least 80% of our diet...

needs to be whole foods plant-based...

and there's no limit to how you can push that.

So being vegan is the ultimate and...

organisations all around the world dietetic organisations...

nutrition organisations, medical organisations...

the WHO it's all acknowledged...

that for all stages of life you can...

achieve on your nutrition.

A lot of athletes are finding that...

when they go to a plant-based diet...

that they perform at a higher level.

So it's a complete myth that you need meat to be strong.

In fact, it may be the opposite.

I think healthy diets are really simple...

so simple that...

the journalist Michael Pollan can...

explain them in seven words.

Eat food not too much, mostly plants.

That's really all you need to know.

A plant-based diet provides all...

the nutrition that you need, with the exception if you're...

on a strict vegan diet that you need

to supplement that with a B12...

but, other than that, it provides all the protein...

all the nutritional value, and also it's low...

in the things that cause disease and high...

in the things that are actually protected.

What's good for you is good for the planet.

What's personally sustainable is globally sustainable.

People have to be taught what to eat.

The ancestral humans ate whatever

was available, but we're...

not hunter gatherers anymore.

We're supermarket gatherers...

and if you're in a supermarket where there are...

50,000 products available, you have to be...

taught which ones to choose...

and people who are not taught eat junk

food because it tastes better to them.

Eighty-six percent of the four trillion...

dollars that we spent in the U.S. last year were for...

chronic diseases.

Half of the American population

today is diabetic or pre-diabetic.

Big multinational corporations spend billions of dollars...

to try to find the right combination...

of fat and salt and sugar that are really

going to activate all those taste buds.

Statistically speaking, eating plants is far better...

for the human body certainly than eating beef...

eating meat, and eating animal products

in descending order of emphasis.

Red meat, especially processed meat...

has been linked with a significant increased risk of...

prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer...

heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

So if there's one area that people can make...

the most difference in, it's cutting

out red meat from their diet.

You know, these biological mechanisms

that cause chronic diseases...

are common to all these different chronic diseases...

so, the dietary recommendations are not like...

here's your diet for heart disease...

here's your diet for prostate cancer...

here's your diet for type 2 diabetes...

here's your diet for Alzheimer's.

It's the same diet and lifestyle program...

because they all share the same...

underlying biological mechanisms.

Things like chronic inflammation,

oxidative stress... changes in the microbiome.

You know, we have 100 trillion cells in our gut...

that can cause a healthy gut or a harmful gut...

and we're learning more and more about...

how this is part of the underlying cause...

of so many chronic diseases.

So when we change all of these...

diet and lifestyle factors...

it affects all of these underlying

biological mechanisms...

in ways that allow our body to heal...

and because these biological mechanisms are...

much more dynamic than we once realised...

you can get better quickly and you can get worse quickly...

depending on what you eat and how you live.

When you are transitioning from having a meat-based diet...

it can feel overwhelming but...

actually it's about how we learn to fall in love...

with food again and I think everybody really needs...

to be doing that and once you do that you realise...

you put a bit more effort into the planning...

of it and give it time to become second nature...

A plant-based diet is the way that, people have been eating...

for thousands of years before they had refrigerators...

before they had factory farms...

before they had the prosperity...

to be able to eat meat several times a day.

So the paradox is that, when people are starting...

to eat like us and live like us...

they're starting to die like us.

If they go back to their older patterns of eating...

they're gonna be much healthier...

and it's a much more affordable way to eat as well.

Oh, the single most important problem...

is that people eat too much of it.

It's calories.

Calories from everything.

I mean, 75% of American adults...

are overweight or obese...

20-30% of American children.

That's a calorie problem.

You know, when you switch from a typical American diet...

or a typical European diet, to a whole foods plant-based diet...

you're actually getting a double benefit.

You're not only reducing the intake of foods...

that are harmful, but you're also getting...

thousands of other substances that are protective...

that have anti-cancer, anti-heart disease...

and even anti-aging properties.

So for a long time, public health...

advocates have advised against eating...

a lot of meat, the advice is not to stop...

eating meat, but just to eat less of it...

and the meat industry opposes that quite...

forcefully and effectively.

Theoretically, we do have a chance

to mitigate the impact of climate change...

but we have to act soon.

We can't wait too much longer because we're starting to...

set changes in systems that it's going to be...

impossible to reverse unless we act quickly...

and...we really need our politicians and our...

very big corporate entities to work together...

for the benefit of all of us, including the environment.

There's no way we would have a liveable future.

We would have a sustainable planet.

We would have met our climate goals

without reducing our meat, dairy, and eggs.

There's no way.

That is very clear scientifically.

The question is how do we make this happen...

culturally and politically and economically...

that is the challenge.

Changes have to mostly begin from the bottom up.

You have to persuade people.

Anybody who does anything that involves...

persuasion or talking about the world has to think about...

these things and help people be persuaded

to make choices for themselves....

And I think it's like throwing a pebble into a lake.

You don't realise where the waves are...

going to end or what impact it's going to have.

In the 70s, for example, my friend Peter Singer...

wrote a book called Animal Liberation...

and that book didn't make a big impact immediately...

but now...

I can't think of anybody in the activist

movement who hadn't read the book...

or hadn't been profoundly affected by it.

I spend most of my life either studying or...

teaching or writing about philosophy and more...

specifically ethics.

I'm probably best known for my book Animal Liberation...

which was first published in 1975.

There was almost nothing that was ever published,

up to 1970, about factory farming.

I know that there were people who

read it and were influenced by it.

For example, Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder...

of people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...

the largest radical animal organisation in the world.

When you're in a community that doesn't do...

anything much for animals, it's hard to break.

I think it's important now that there...

are communities of people who are vegans and...

who are...effective altruists.

That is another movement that is important here...

and that makes it easier for any individual...

to be vegan or animal activist or effective altruist...

We have changed people's attitudes about what...

they wear, what they eat, what they buy, and how...

they entertain themselves.

We've stopped all car crash...

tests internationally on animals.

We used to slam... them into walls.

We've stopped NASA sending...

live animals into space. We have introduced...

all sorts of vegan products into the marketplace...

and we have stopped a lot of experiments that...

were absolutely pointless, fruitless...

but have a lot to go.

But I do think everyone is on that journey.

Whether they want to be or not...

everyone's kind of on that journey. And I think certain...

things like environmental crisis will push us...

will push more people to thinking, "What can I do?"

and there's not that many things you can do

as an individual that have a very big impact.

We've been around 80 years...

our founder, Donald Watson,

actually coined the term vegan...

and since that point, obviously...

we've kind of done a lot of work to build veganism as a concept.

We also do a lot of political lobbying...

and talking to policymakers...

trying to encourage them to choose vegan,

as a kind of compassionate solution.

In 2021, on the Earth Day...

we launched in Yunnan Province in

China, the China Vegan Society.

One important thing we did was to try to come...

up, with the Chinese word for veganism...

and this character has been around

for centuries and centuries...

but nobody uses it anymore.

This actually means, thriving plants...

so we used this as the departing point...

for us, to promote, an entirely new narrative...

on veganism in the 21st century.

Going from 25 members to say 2 million people...

in the UK is big growth, and I think it will...

always be hardest at the beginning...

while it's a fringe idea and a fringe philosophy...

many people go "Oh, I don't want to be difficult...

I don't want to be strange or unusual" on the sidelines...

and the more people that do it...

the easier it should be. So I would hope that...

when we get to the kind of 5%, 10% mark, we'll see...

quicker change because it will become more normal.

That's my optimistic, idealistic vision.

We need to keep fighting for the better world...

which we know is possible. And there are...

just so many people in the world who want that...

and who need it, that I'm not assuming that...we're powerless.

I think that's wrong. I think that...

individually we can each make a small contribution...

and collectively that can be...

extremely important and can really turn

things around over the next decade.

I would sincerely hope that this film

achieves as many viewers as possible...

who are willing to change their diet into a plant-based one...

and the reason being so that as an individual...

they improve their health and medical condition.

Secondly, so that as a global citizen

they contribute to the environment...

and stave off the threat of severe global warming...

leading to so many natural calamities.

And thirdly, so that as a person of conscience...

they alleviate the horrible suffering...

and cruelty to millions of animals...

that are slaughtered every day...

to satisfy the desire of human beings for meat and fish.