All language subtitles for Eating Animals (2017).Eng

[thrilling music]

We are fairly certain that
they do not live in the past

or look to the future.

Then the man told her

"If they don't dwell
on the past

"and they can't hope
for the future

"they can only live
in the present.

"And if their circumstances
lead them to suffer..

...then that is the totality
of their existence."

[instrumental music]

[music continues]

[music continues]

[music continues]

[music continues]

This is 16 weeks.

This is still the pattern
which I follow today.

The Hamburg,
an ancient old German breed.

Here's the king of all the egg chickens, the Leghorns.

"The American Standards
Of Perfection."

You get a copy
of "The Standards"

and you look at the chicken
and you look at the picture.

You look at the chicken
and you look at the picture

until you imprint it
in your head.

The slight arch of the tail

the height, uh, where the neck
is over the head.

So when I began to try to bring
back standard-bred birds

and as I did my work,
I thought I'm going to go back

to the original
utility farm birds.

I grew up on a farm
here in Kansas..

...and my father
showed cattle and stuff

and did it for a living
back then.

And as a kid, you know,
county fairs to me

was just as exciting
as Christmas or holidays

or anything.

And then I started
seeing all the chickens.

My dad said that all
of a sudden, I would be gone

He always knew
where to find me.

I would always be over
in the chicken barn.

At the age of five,
I got my first show chickens.

This is what we breed here.

The Barred Rock is the oldest
American breed that there is.

This is the breed
that everybody raised

in this country by the millions

from about 1850 to 1950s.

The White Jersey Giant
was a wonderful breed.

Extremely slow-growing
and everything

and that's part of the reason
why they lost favor.

Other than the 40 or 50
I have here

there's probably not another 20
in the whole world.

Everything I'm doing here
is nothing new.

In fact,
this is all very, very old.

This is poultry farming
50 years ago.

There was this wonderful system

of farmers who got together

and supported each other
to produce the best.

That is completely gone today.

He tells them the story

how in 1923
in the Delmarva Peninsula

a small, almost funny,
accident happened

to an Ocean View housewife
named Celia Steele.

She had received 500 chicks

instead of the 50
she had ordered.

Rather than get rid of them,
she decided to experiment

with keeping the birds indoors
through the winter.

Confined and lacking sun
and exercise

her birds would never
have survived

were it not for the newly
discovered feed supplements.

Steele's loop
of experimentation continued.

In 1923, she had 10,000 birds

and in 1935, 250,000.

Ten years
after Steele's breakthrough

the Delmarva Peninsula
had become

the poultry capital
of the world.

She had perhaps unknowingly

given birth
to the modern poultry industry

and begun the global creep
of factory farming.

No one fired a pistol
to mark the start

of the race to the bottom.

The Earth just tilted

and everyone slid
into the hole.

Pull that first bottle,
pull the first bottle out

see what they got
for clarity.

You got the sample number?
Great.

Great.

This is sample number 3-E.

- Okay..
- Hey, Larry.

There's somebody that's movin'

right on the other side
of that shed over there.

Yeah.

There's a creek that runs
through this tree line

off in the distance.

Somewhere just over
three miles long.

In that one creek,
there are 31 CAFOs

Concentrated Animal
Feeding Operations

that eventually drain
into that one specific creek.

So we've actually, uh,
started doin' some

some checkin' on this creek,
on these -- on these waters

to see
what we're comin' up with.

Here in Eastern North Carolina

the area is rural,
the people are poor

very little political clout.

And we have one
of the heaviest concentration

of swine in the world.

And very soon, we'll likely
have the highest concentration

of poultry operations
in the world.

This river was just a paradise.

You'd catch more fish
in just a few hours

than you knew what to do with.

This was a place that you could really make a living fishing.

And then all of a sudden
in the early '90s

my son and I began to see fish
with sores on them.

We began to see fish dyin'
in larger and larger numbers

and then we began to get
the sores that the fish had.

We continued fishing
until this river out here

was coated shore to shore
with these dead fish.

There were so many dead fish,
they were burying them

with a bulldozer
on the other beach.

So we shut everything down.

I remember the early days.

I went out to near
the mouth of the river

and I could see sediments running in and different things

but I didn't see
a source anywhere

which would account
for all the carnage

that was going on in the river.

When I got back to New Bern,
I told the pilot

let's fly up the Trent River
to figure out what was wrong

with this river
and get it fixed.

When I got into Jones County,
I began to see

all these pink
Pepto-Bismol-lookin' lagoons.

Uh, I didn't know
what they were.

I had no idea.

I saw the barns

but I really didn't know
what I was lookin' at.

Everywhere you look.

You can be at 1000 feet
over Duplin County

you look out over the horizon,
you can count 100 lagoons

as you look around
the airplane. 100.

I remember
I called some folks over

some friends I had in Division
Water Quality in North Carolina.

I said,
"Hey, what are those things?"

And then he said,
"Rick, don't you know?

Those are hog lagoons."

You know, you say pink lagoon.
Doesn't that sound nice?

You know, you got a girl
in a bathing suit layin' out

a little chair and table
with some cocktails on it

and everybody's stretched out
in front of the lagoon.

Here's what's goin' on
in a lagoon.

You got 10,000 pigs

in these confinement buildings

and what they're doing
is they're defecating.

They're poopin'
right on the floor

and it goes through slats

and then it goes
under the floor

out to these huge cesspools

that are nothing
but dirt-lined.

No concrete liners,
no plastic liners

just basically dirt.

It goes in that lagoon

and as that lagoon
begins to fill up

with this fecal marinade
of feces and urine

they gotta do something
with it.

They shoot up in the air

and it ends up in the ditches
and it ends up in our water

and then our river
goes out of balance.

And the fish begin to die
and people begin to get sick.

The Earth is about
5.3 billion years old.

Mammals have only been
around 60 million years.

Anatomically, modern humans
have been around

for about 200,000 years.

And then virtually everything
that we associate

with human culture
and human civilization

has occurred
in the last 10,000 years.

And in that 10,000 years

this incredible spike

of population, of consumption

uh, of essentially
humanity freein' itself

from the constraints
of many natural systems

has all happened
in the last 200 years

beginning in the 18th century
but really becoming intense

in this
post World War II period

that people call
the Great Acceleration.

This transformation now
is called the Anthropocene.

This is the period
that's dominated by humanity.

We are the Goliath

and nature in all of its forms
is the David.

There's never been a time
in world history

in which there's been
so many people

with so much access

to the conditions
of a decent life.

There's also never been
any point in human history

when there have been so many
people who don't have access

to the necessary conditions
of a decent life.

Never has humanity
been so powerful

since we crawled out
of the trees.

But probably never have
individual humans

actually felt so disempowered.

The truth is, we don't really
know what to do with ourselves.

We don't know what we want

and in part, we don't know
what we want

because we don't know
who we are.

And so the place to begin
is to try to go back

and try to understand
who we are.

Colonel..

...Harland..

...Sanders.
Is that right, sir?

That's right.

[audience applauding]

Colonel,
I don't know what you do

but I think you look
too beautiful to work.

[audience laughing]

Colonel Harland Sanders
was born

in Henryville, Indiana,
in 1890.

His father died
when he was five

forcing his mother
to take on two jobs.

His mother was away
for days on end

leaving Harland to forage
for things in the fields

like sassafras buds and apples

to cook for his younger brother and sister.

I used to work here on this
farm, clearin' new ground.

Then that first month,
he fired me.

My mother, she said

"What on Earth are you
ever going to amount to?

"Harry, you've got no father.

I got nobody to help me
and depend on but you."

And I made a resolve,
if I ever got another job

I was sure going to see, prove
to her that I was worthy of it.

[instrumental music]

After a long run of failures

Harland Sanders began cooking
out of his service station

to make some extra money.

We'd cook meals
for the five in the family

and then we wouldn't eat it
right away ourselves

hoping to sell one, two, three,
or the five meals.

People began to come
from miles around.

But pan-frying chicken
took too long

and Harland couldn't keep up
with the demand

so he modified
a then new appliance

known as the pressure cooker.

He was able to reduce
the cooking time

down to the minutes

and meet customers'
growing demand.

By 1964, Colonel Sanders

was unable to keep up
with the business

and he sold the company
for two million dollars

under the pretense that
there would be quality control

and that no one would tamper
with his chicken recipe.

Well, how'd you like
to make a million dollars

frying chicken?

Today's guest did just that.

And I just think
things have got to be right

and there's nothing in the world
more demanding in food

than to have quality there.

Kentucky Fried Chicken!

Bonzai!

You have a reputation
of being very fussy

about your original recipe.

that you want things cooked

the way the colonel
meant them to be cooked.

- Is that true?
- That's right. That's right.

It just had to be right.
That's all there was to it.

You know, we kind of got away
from that, too, actually

by selling out to two different corporations since I sold

but they've depreciated
the value of my product.

Howdy, folks?
It's me, Colonel Sanders.

I've been gone for a while
and, boy

howdy have things changed.

The guy came out and he did
a little presentation.

And I trusted the numbers
and trusted him

and then he has, like,
this cost projection sheet.

Even if you make the minimum
that we can pay you

you're still gonna have
positive cash flow.

The farming economy was bad.

I wanted to stay here
on the farm.

My kids are the fifth
generation in North Carolina

and I looked at that
as kind of like my lifeline.

What's the drawback here?

Of course, she told me
not to do it.

And I'm like, "No, honey.
This is a sure thing.

I got a contract."

Well, the problem is,
is every number on that paper

that he gave me was pulled
straight out of fantasyland.

My reservation was the debt.

Well, I mean, you know,
we were 20.

She was 21, I was 25

and you're talkin'
about a quarter million dollars.

That's a lot of money.

I went from two houses
to four houses.

My income did not double.

My expenses more than doubled.

It's just a treadmill of debt.

Every contract's
take it or leave it.

You're half a million dollars
in debt.

You're gonna take it.

It sucks, but you'll take it.

You come across
these masterpieces.

Steel, plastic,
rotating wheels.

Mechanical arms
repeating the same motion.

All brought together
in the most ingenious ways

to produce more and more.

Is this efficiency?

You once farmed independently
with sweat and labor

love and tedium,
and it was satisfying.

Now you go into debt,
turn on the machines

take orders
from central command..

...but you are efficient.

That's why you do it.

You and your machines
are feeding the world.

You are giving people
what they want.

You want this world,
you want efficiency.

You don't wanna put anyone
out of business.

Nobody ever got the idea

wouldn't it be really cool
if we raised

millions of animals
under really hideous conditions

and gave them short,
miserable and painful lives.

By the way, we would
also pollute our waterways

uh, and deplete our top soils.

Wouldn't that really be
a great way of doing business?

There was never
sort of some evil genius

whose idea it was to create
a world that was like that.

It's -- it's a place
that we got to step by step.

And we're going,
"How did we get here?"

The United Nations
released a report.

It was over 400 pages.

It's called
"Livestock's Long Shadow."

And in this report,
they said

whatever environmental issue
you're looking at

water pollution,
air pollution, climate change

raising animals for food

are one of the top
two or three contributors.

It causes
somewhere between 14%

and more than half
of all climate change.

And so now we're at this point
where it's a question

of how do we go somewhere else.

If you look back
a generation or two

many, many people
were raising pigs this way.

But the basics
that I am using today

is passed from one generation
to the next.

Father, son, grandfather.

It's a way of life rather
than going to, uh, a factory

producing protein units.

- Sophia.
- What?

- Are they all up and out?
- I think pretty much.

- And they're looking happy?
- Yeah.

If you come out here,
you'll notice

that they'll be watching you.

They -- they pay attention.

They run away first

and then
they're all gonna come back.

They wanna know what's going on.

And I, I think
that's really part

of how a pig makes its living,
you know?

They're interested
in a lot of things.

They're intelligent.

They like being together.
They're a group animal.

If they're by themself,
they're uncomfortable.

Basically, everything that
we're gonna have for breakfast

is from right here.

Uh, it's either from the garden
or eggs from our chickens.

And the sausage
is from Niman Pork.

When I first started
raising pigs in the '70s

I went to meetings
and you know, they told me

you gotta get bigger or get out.

And they showed me
these buildings

and how you could put
one of these up

and how many animals
you could raise

and all this kind of thing.

I just had to visit
one of those buildings once

to realize that I -- I just --

I just did not wanna raise
animals like that.

I'd seen free-range chicken
in the market.

Why don't we call these
free-range pigs, you know?

So I sent some pork out there,
trying to, you know

market to some of the
restaurants in San Francisco.

Specialty market.

So the chef said,
"I don't know what you do

but this is the best pork
I've ever had in my life."

Almost from the beginning

I started
looking for other farmers

that were not going
for the confinement system.

Initially, we weren't
creating new farmers.

We were just finding the ones
that were there.

As the demand continued to grow

I started working on the
network of Niman Ranch farmers

which today
is about 500 farmers.

[cows mooing]

This is what it means when
the grass is always greener.

As you go down into these lower areas, the soil gets thicker

and they know that the grasses
down here are better for them.

They're more palatable,
there's more energy.

It's really strong.

And that means
that the fiber is there

and -- and it's --
it's really producing

a lot of milk and -- and flesh.

The meat industry
has done a good job

of disconnecting eating meat
from killing animals

and it's really made it
possible for people

not to fully appreciate that
there a -- actually is an animal

that had to be murdered
for them to eat this.

[instrumental music]

They're animals that we have
a contract with to care for..

...and provide
the best possible life.

So we've done all that.

They've had a good life

and now we have
the authority to decide

that we're gonna
take their life

and cut them up into pieces
and feed people.

So it's, uh, uh,
it's -- it's a tough moment.

[indistinct chatter]

The people born
into animal agriculture today

think that
confinement agriculture

is the way it's supposed to be.

If the consuming public saw
what it really looks like

they would stop eating it.

You have to start thinking
like the turkey

and realize
what they're gonna do next..

...and also sort of learn
their language.

I mean,
turkeys are always talking.

They have a tremendous language
of their own

and many, many
different vocalizations

that mean different things.

So that's part of the reason
why Ben Franklin

didn't want the eagle.

He thought the wild turkey

was a far more majestic,
honorable animal.

People think
turkeys as being stupid

and, you know,
drowned in the rain

and all this stuff,
which isn't true.

That all got based
where people went out

and bought baby turkeys
and brought them home

and didn't properly house them.

And it rained
and they all drowned.

But my response to that
is take a human baby

and put it out in the rainstorm

and see how long
it -- it survives.

It will put its head up
and drown.

Um, you know, that had more
to do with just really bad care.

Now the other side of it is

that the modern industrial
turkey that everybody buys

at Thanksgiving
is a lot stupider.

But that's because of man
when they've decided

to take the turkey off the land
and house them in buildings

actually began to select
for stupidity.

Because if you have an animal
that you don't want it

to do anything,
you want it to just eat

and stand there and gain weight

you don't want it
to have any intelligence.

[laughs]

They like to be
where the action is.

I finally learned
why drugs are so essential

to factory farming poultry.

Healthy birds
don't require drugs.

Sick mutated ones do.

Turkeys have been
so genetically altered

that they're no longer
even capable of having sex.

They're all artificially
inseminated.

I learned that
because corporations

want to pay less for feed

and Americans
like the taste of fat.

Today's meat birds have been
bred with mutant obese genes

to grow faster and fatter
than ever imaginable before.

So much faster and fatter

that if a human baby
had her growth

similarly accelerated

a two-month-old would weigh
more than six hundred pounds.

They're trapped in these bodies

that keep them from doing
normal animal behavior.

Well, abnormal
is now called normal.

Fifty years ago, these chickens

wouldn't have survived
on the farm.

The family farm was the original small business

in this country.

There was this notion
that through your own hard work

and your own decisions,
you can either succeed or fail.

And that was an idea
that embedded itself

in the American way,
that embedded itself

in the American
economy and culture

and lasted until the 1970s

when we changed what
economic sovereignty meant.

You know, the almighty good
and the best object

you can achieve
is just cheapness.

Make the food as cheap
as you possibly can.

And as long as it's cheap

people really didn't care
how it was produced.

We still hold this idea
in our head

that there's capitalism
out there in rural America

that we have
independent farmers

that rise or sink
based on how well they do.

What we really have now
is a system

that looks a lot like
a Soviet Politburo system.

It's a system
based on central planning

central ownership,
centralized control.

I mean, you've literally
got a control room
in Springdale, Arkansas

with people typin' away
on computers, figurin' out

how many chickens
are gonna be raised

on farms in the state
of Georgia

or North Carolina
or Mississippi.

John Tyson and his son, Don

were brilliant businessmen.

You know, he started out
by hauling

you know, fruit
from Arkansas to Kansas City.

And then when that went under,
then he started hauling chickens

and then that's what started
his business.

He had a lot of guts.

Don Tyson was brilliant
and visionary

and ruthless
and completely unsentimental.

He was born in near poverty.

The northwest corner of Arkansas was the poorest corner

of one of the poorest states
in the country.

Nobody showed
a great measure of pity

to him
when he was growing up

and I don't think he felt
he owed that

to anybody else.

The chicken business
was pretty simple then.

We grew one chicken,
it made money.

We grow two chickens,
it makes money. We grow more.

And so that, that's the history of our company.

But as it grew, he ran into the problems that I have today.

The demand fluctuated too much.

He had to find a way
where he had a product

that didn't change,
that was identical

and was in demand
12 months of the year.

Don spent 12 years
going to McDonald's saying

"I can make chicken cheaper
than anybody can make

a pound of beef
or a pound of pork."

And finally after 12 years

they -- they saw
what he was seeing.

And that was
the Chicken McNugget.

♪ McDonald's
new Chicken McNuggets ♪

♪ McDonald's and you ♪

He was always capable

of putting the, the risk,
the loss

the chances on other people.

Preferably his farmers.

They always paid the price
when things failed.

He'd invented
the tournament system.

It is truly a Machiavellian
and brilliant system

that all these companies
now use.

The tournament is unique
in that most farmers

get paid a certain price
for the commodity they raise.

You know, corn farmers,
soybean farmers

there's a market price
for their product.

But chicken farmers get paid

based on the terms
of this tournament.

Tyson will take
all the farmers in an area

and then it will rank them
based on how efficiently

their birds were fattened up

on a given ration of feed
that Tyson provided.

Based on your ranking

you were either paid
a premium price

or your pay is cut

and that is the bonus

that's given to the farmers
at the top.

It makes it so all farmers know

that if they're going
to do well

it is gonna be at the expense
of their neighbors.

So it systematically divides and conquers rural communities.

It makes sure
that farmers don't cooperate

they don't share information.

If I try to compare
the results of my tournament
to my neighbor's

I can actually be sued
by the company.

I have no desire whatsoever

for my kids to do this.

I've got more faith in them

and they're smart enough
to not do what their daddy did

and, uh, I just had such a bug
to get back to the farm.

I got nobody's butt to kick
but mine for getting into it.

Um, but I will keep them
out of it.

My 13-year-old son has never
set foot in these houses.

Neither will my other son
or my daughter.

I don't know one chicken farmer that's happy.

It's that disrespect
for the farmers.

For what we are to this business

and to be treated like, uh, uh..

...like a serf.

Somebody called it
indentured servitude.

Indentured servant doesn't have
$500,000 worth of debt.

I'd trade places with him.

Year after year, the lopsided
contracts reduce Craig

to little more than a low-level manager of his own farm

owning nothing
more than the houses

the waste and the dead birds.

His chief concern
becomes protecting his family

from the danger
of their massive debt.

It's not just the unwinding
of a way of life.

There is, perhaps,
an exhaustion of spirit.

We turned off the interstate
in the Central Valley

and headed toward
the town of Tulare

to see if we could find
any trace of the lake

that was no longer there.

Tulare Lake was once the largest body of fresh water

west of the Mississippi

before it disappeared.

We were told that
long before European settlers

came here,
the lake's basin was home

to the largest
Native American population

in North America.

How they once thrived
on the plants and animals

that lived around the lake.

Tulare Lake was a significant
stop for millions of birds

migrating along
the Pacific Flyway.

With its fertile ground
and water resources

settlers began to move in.

And in the 1850s

the governor of California
ordered the execution

and annihilation
of the Yokut Indian Nation.

As settlements grew

the farmers redirected
the rivers

that fed the lake
to provide water

for their crops
and farm animals.

The early pioneers
of big agro business

took the cows off pastures

and placed them
into high-density feed lots.

We drove
through the now dry lakebed

and passed the massive
dairy complexes

that now populate the area.

Okay, let's see.
He's right behind us again.

Who knows what he's doing?

So stay off of our property.

We have our right.
We're on a state road.

So I'm not doing anything wrong.

I appreciate it, okay?

Thanks. Okay.

It is good.
Let's pass on now.

Wow.

Might want to get
a picture of this too.

Good eye.

[indistinct chatter]

Back, back, back, back.

Here he comes.
Paul, here he comes.

Paul, he's coming.

Nine billion farm animals.

Their lives are categorized
by unmitigated misery

from the moment they're born

to the moment
that they're slaughtered.

98% of people
eat animal products

and 98% of people

are complicit
in cruelty to animals

that if they actually
witnessed it

they would find it
morally loathsome.

These are the worst jobs
in the country

working in slaughterhouses.

And yet anytime anybody
is eating meat

you are entering
into this mercenary relationship

wherein you are paying
someone else

to slice animals' throats
open for you

to castrate pigs
without pain relief

even on the so-called
humane farms

to slice the beaks off
of chickens

even on the cage-free egg farms.

The level of abuse from the farm
to transportation to slaughter

is something that will shock
the conscience

of most kind people.

It's only a matter of time
before you move from

you know, where we are now
to a world in which

more and more people are saying

you know, well, maybe
we shouldn't be consuming them

in the first place.

Do you have eight?

Today is the day in which
we load all the turkeys

for the Thanksgiving market.

It's always the day I hate.

It's -- it's not like
it's a great enjoyment to know

that I'm going to send these
turkeys off to their death.

I just don't know how else
to finance what I'm doing.

This is the way I know of saving
these endangered animals.

There ought to be 12 in there.

If you want to help
preserve them or save them

we have to put them back
into your meal.

Are you gonna drive dad's truck
or is he gonna drive?

He is.

Where do you want me
to move it to?

They'll start loading
right here.

When he was a young kid, he
told me he was gonna do this.

I mean, he was eight years old

he bought twelve turkeys

and, uh, he raised them all

and when they got about,
oh, half-growing

the, the coyotes got in 'em

and killed them all but one.

And that one turkey
was kind of like

one of the family for years.

Lars, my wife,
she went to leave one day

to g -- go get the kids
from school

and backed over that turkey..

[laughs]
...with the car.

And, of course, she jumped out
and wrung its neck

and right away
and let it bleed out, so we..

It wasn't a waste. We ate it.

He is really old.

Sort of support him up
or he isn't gonna breath right.

But after that,
well, he always had turkeys.

[indistinct chatter]

This has to work.

I've thought
about that a lot at night

that it is my responsibility

to show people

because part of sustainability
is the economics.

And, you know, these birds
have to pay for their way.

Part of being a farmer
is making a living at it.

So who says
standard-bred turkeys

have to be skinny little
narrow-breasted things.

Look at that,
some of these hens.

Beautiful round-breasted hens.

These birds you've worked with
for six, seven months

and you've started with an egg

and hatched
and everything else

are gonna be sent off
to be killed.

And if, if you're not
aware of that

you know,
but I love my turkeys

so I know what's gonna happen.

Today farmers working outside
of the factory farm system

are required to fit themselves
into a model

built to serve big ag.

Access
to affordable slaughterhouses

what the industry calls
processing plants

is the single biggest problem
that farmers like Frank face.

Most slaughterhouses
in America today

simply refuse to work
with smaller clients.

Independent farmers

once a crowned jewel
of American democracy

are now peasants serving
the will of corporations.

We sent our turkeys
to the processing plant

in Nebraska to be processed

not knowing that the plant
is very close

to being foreclosed on
by the bank.

The employees
really didn't give a damn

and they were cutting
the colons

and spilling fecal material
all over the meat

and the inspectors
were condemning them all

and nobody really cared.

The turkeys
are just part of the widget

that's gotta get shut down
the assembly line.

Basically, they destroyed
40% of our flock.

We more or less lost

about the entire amount
of turkeys

which was about 2600 turkeys

was -- was the number of turkeys
I put on the truck.

You know, again,
these big companies

these big corporations,
you know, they don't get it.

So we're entering MARC,
uh, right now.

The most striking thing
about it

is that there are
these large concrete bunkers

they used to manufacture ammunitions during World War II

and they stored them
in the bunkers.

And they were able
to get it transferred

from US Military Department
of Defense to the, uh, USDA

and created the MARC.

It's probably the largest

livestock research center
in the world.

More than a billion dollars
has been spent over there

in the past 50 years,
which is allocated by Congress

to support
maximizing meat production

and dairies
and things like that.

As a clinical veterinarian

I've been at MARC
for half of its lifetime.

So I knew where the dead bodies were buried.

About a mile down,
there is probably some sheep.

That's it.
Left side of the road.

- All those buildings.
- What did you say, Connie?

I'm saying
that's the research center.

I was banned from here
eight or nine months ago.

- Here comes another car.
- Yeah, we got company.

They're probably calling
MARC security.

Well, they can't do
anything to us.

We haven't done anything wrong.

What I came to realize
over the years

was some of the actual
experiments that they did there

I could no longer buy into.

One was a case
where a technician did surgery

on about 60 pigs.

She used a very fine suture
and the wrong suture pattern

and so a couple days
after the surgery

all the guts fell out
of the pigs.

So when a lamb is born..

Another case that comes to mind is the project

called the Easy Care sheep

and MARC was trying
to fight nature.

They were trying to convert
domesticated sheep

into a wild sheep

and the idea was just
to minimize the labor.

I had a veterinary student
and his job

he would just pick up lambs
by the dozens or hundreds

depending on the day,
that had died each day.

So he'd go out there
and pick up all the deads.

Another example
I can think about

was on a Saturday
I was on call.

The technician told me there
was a heifer that was down.

So I went up there
and it turned out

it was from an experiment.

Typically, the way to measure
sex drive in a bull

is you put one bull into a pen

with a single female
who's in heat

and you see how many times
the bull mounts

the female in 15 minutes.

In this case, this heifer
was with five or six bulls

restrained in a headlock.

I'm -- I'm not sure why,
what the rationale for that was

but this heifer was mounted

until she ruptured
both of her Achilles tendons

and broke
both of her rear legs.

Basically, a cow was raped
to death.

After that, I started
documenting things I saw

or things I heard about,
cases of animal abuse.

I had a log.

I guess at some point, uh

I realized I just..

Yeah, I just, it was time
to pull the trigger.

I thought
I could just be hidden

and just supply Michael Moss

of "The New York Times"
with the documents.

Another veterinarian
showed up unexpectedly

and, uh, saw me with him there

and -- and that's how
I got found out.

Is this the same guy
in the red?

Yes. Probably a security guy.

Do I have to stop?
Is he looking at me?

You're staying on the road.
You can do whatever you want.

Oh, we're just driving,
looking around.

Okay, um, I notice you got
a camera in the back there.

- Yes, we do.
- Okay, what is it for?

It's, uh, we're filming.

You're on federal property, sir.

- Are you --
- May I see your ID?

Uh, are you
a -- a state police?

- No.
- Okay, then I'm sorry.

I'm not going to.
I know my rights.

She's writing down your plate.

Now what?

- You can go.
- Okay, okay.

Hours after they were stopped
for filming

Jim and Connie
received a knock on the door

from an FBI agent
specializing in eco-terrorism.

Despite the fact
that he has no criminal record

the agent placed a file folder
on the table

an inch and a quarter thick

and opened it to the first page

revealing a color photograph
of Jim.

Not long after
he was visited by the FBI

Jim bought
"The Whistleblower's Handbook"

and in it, he read
that about 80% of the time

the whistleblower
gets hammered.

It just builds over
20-something years.

I mean, you just get
to a point where..

I mean,
everybody's got that point

and I just hit mine watching
that, uh, Perdue commercial.

My dad always, uh,
taught us one line.

Uh, do the right thing and we're doing the right thing

and we're transparent.

He wants the public to believe
that that's a normal farm.

I might not be a lot of things,
but I'm not a liar.

My granddaddy drilled that
into me very good.

Um, he always said,
you know, tell the truth

no matter how bad it hurts.

I've seen birds
with four legs, no eyes.

Bacteria-laden intestines.

You'll smell that
walking in the door.

That can be horrendous.

And you'll see heart attacks.

They call them flip-overs.

We call it water belly.

This will get purple
and it's just full of fluids.

It's a absolute breakdown
of the heart

lungs and whatnot.

I'm not a vet,
but that's not normal.

Rubber.

The leg's folded
completely in half.

I -- I really don't know
what happens.

It's just so soft
that it doesn't snap.

You run into a lot of these
that can't get up.

You can hear respiratory
in this one really bad.

Can you hear it?

This is your premium primetime,
no antibiotic ever, cage-free

humanely raised, blah-blah,
whatever else is on that label.

You know, I -- I --
I mean, I took pictures.

I cut the birds open,
told them what it was

sent it, nobody came.

If you want the egg to hatch

you had to leave it
in there with..

If Craig, he had come
to me first and said

"I wanna be a whistleblower.
I wanna tell the truth

about what's happening
on these farms.."

I would not have said, get
a camera and start videotaping

because the risk
would have been too high.

We've been around for 37 years

and, uh, represented very
high-profile whistleblowers

and we know what happens.

You're probably just gonna get
your ass handed to you

by the corporation.

It's not just like you can come up to these giants

and throw stones
and say bad things about them

and expect not to have
some sort of retaliation.

There's a brand that's at stake

and they definitely
wanna fight for that.

We were going through
the government route

and -- and
what we found out was

if you step
in that congressman's office

time you leave,
the chicken counselor knows

that you were just there.

That's just the way it is.

And I found out, okay,
the hot button is video.

I'm Craig Watts.

I'm a contract poultry producer
with Perdue Farms.

Leah released a video

and "The New York Times"
picked it up

and then they got it
on the "Reddit" board

and, and it's just
like, pfft, damn.

"Forbes" and "Washington Post"
and front page of "Reddit"

and "New York Times," "Wired."

It really upset people.

The next thing you knew,
there's a half million views

in 24 hours,
and I was like, "Oh, shoot."

I mean, I didn't expect that.

They dispatched a team
of welfare experts to my farm.

Company people.

Six visits in ten days,
if I remember right.

They were telling me my welfare standards on my farm

weren't up to their standards.

How can I be so bad to finish first in the tournament system?

The whole thing was to get me
to the breaking point.

What you guys doin' over here?

- Just filming.
- Just a little videotaping.

Well, you can't be
filming my farm.

- Why not?
- Because I don't want you to.

- Well, okay, well.
- Yeah.

You guys might as well
get in your trucks

and go on about your business.

Now you're here
trying to hurt me.

- I'm not trying to hurt you.
- Yes, you are.

You're trying to put me
out of business.

- You've tried for years.
- I haven't, what..

When have I ever done
anything to you?

- You want to hurt me.
- What?

That's what these cameras
are about.

Cut your camera off,
please, sir.

We could see
where they're putting the waste

we could see the lagoon,
we could see if it's overflowing

we could see if it's running
in the rivers and streams

and where they're spraying,
right?

We could see all of that.

The one thing we can't see

is what's inside
those buildings.

That's the deep, dark secret
of this industry.

What is it that the industry
is trying to hide inside?

Is it suffering?

When asked,
the majority of people

say that they object
to animal cruelty

and environmental degradation.

You'd be hard-pressed
to find any other issue

on which so many people
see eye to eye.

And yet suffering and disregard for the environment

has been built
into the equation of cost

and efficiency.

They've calculated
how close to death

we can keep an animal
without killing it.

How close to destruction
we can keep the environment

without losing it altogether.

It's an essential element
for a system

that delivers the cheap meat
we've come to demand.

Are we trying to hide it
from ourselves?

The public
has a right to know

the truth
about the meat they eat

about what this industry
is doing to them.

Okay, and then hit it again
to turn it off.

We process 19,000 hogs a day.

Uh, so it's been five months

since I started working
at the plant.

Whistleblowers in our society
play a very important role.

Corporations
can't tolerate that

so they pass these laws
called Ag-Gag to shut us down.

And in some states, if you take a photograph on a factory farm

you could have committed
a felony.

Not a misdemeanor but a felony.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

My job primarily is I recruit.

I look for people who are,
for one, willing to go

into these environments
and work in them

but also to do it successfully.

Honestly, finding people
who even want to do this job

is challenging enough,
let alone then breaking it down

to people who are,
who are gonna be good at it.

To actually participate
and be a part of this world

maintaining your cover,
and it's -- it's huge

and you can't do that

if you're just gonna stand
there and watch.

You have to do the job
you're hired to do.

There are many days where
I would come back to my hotel.

I'd wanna curl up in a ball

and just not do anything,
not write my field notes.

I don't wanna relive
the horrible day

that I just had.

I don't want anybody to know

about what's going on
inside those facilities.

You can't do that.

You can't shut down
the individual's right

to inform other people
about what they know.

I don't think
that's constitutional.

I have a right
under the First amendment

and Fourteenth amendment.

Ag-Gag is the stupidest thing

ag ever did.

When that hit the editorial page
of "The New York Times"

it made ag just look like
they had something to hide.

Dumbest thing
they could ever do.

When you get bashed,
you should be opening the door

not shutting it.

I have a saying.

Heat softens steel.

Undercover videos
of really bad things

that made the steel soft

and then all of a sudden,
industry started coming out

with some good guidelines
on animal handling.

And they realized, yeah,
we need to change things.

Big is fragile,
but has advantages.

Economy of scale, cheap price.

But it's fragile.

We are approaching what was

the notorious Westland/Hallmark
slaughterhouse

where they kill
spent dairy cows

and they're no longer considered
to be profitable milking cows.

We're just looking
at what you're doing here.

I guess
is this a slaughterhouse?

It's against federal law
to have cameras?

You'd give us a tour
if we asked?

- You would give us a tour --
- I sure won't know.

But do you do tours
of the place regularly?

Is that something..

Really?

Right, so these, right, right.

- Okay.
- Alright, we'll do that.

In the 2000s, the Humane
Society sent an investigator

here to work at this place

and documented
horrible conditions

with cows being pushed
with forklifts

with animals being
horribly mistreated

and this plant was sending

these downed cows
into the food supply.

Ground beef
from these diseased animals

was going
into the school lunch program.

That was what was happening
routinely here

and that resulted
in the largest beef recall

in US history.

You were established
by Abraham Lincoln

who called you
The People's Department.

But now your job
is to protect industry

from increasing public fears
about everything

from tainted meat
to farm animal abuse.

When your own dietary
guideline committee

cites health concerns
and recommends Americans

eat fewer animal products

you ignore them

and buy unwanted meat and cheese to feed our children

through the federal
school lunch program.

While independent farmers
struggle

you spend millions
on photos of celebrities

with milk mustaches
to prop up big ag.

While thousands of Americans
are hospitalized

or dying from food poisoning

you allow millions
of pathogen-infected chickens

to be sold with your approval
every week.

While people demand meat
raised without antibiotics

you ignore sound science
and side with meat companies

to continue putting drugs
in animal feed.

You silence the whistleblowers

who do the job
you were created to do.

Your job is to guard the fox,
not the henhouse.

You are now known as the USDA.

It doesn't look like

the democracy that was around

when I signed up for
the Marine Corps 40 years ago.

I swore to support and defend

the Constitution
of the United States

against all enemies,
foreign and domestic.

I always wondered about the domestic part of that oath.

What kind of a domestic enemy
would I have to support

the constitution against,
you know?

And then
I got into this business

and I see what these
corporations are doing

and the way
this meat is being raised

and, and then how they put money
in the pockets of legislators.

The USDA's been charged by the
president to do a better job..

Every secretary of agriculture

whether they're Republican,
Democrat

they learn on the first day

that if the subsidies
don't continue to flow

if meat doesn't continue to be
favored in diet guidelines

you're gonna hear about it
in the next election.

[indistinct chatter]

They pay the US Government
enormous amounts of money

to make sure that their products

are front and center in what the
government tells people to eat.

There are plenty of things
in his childhood

and now his child's childhood
that informed him

that diary was a necessary part of a well-balance diet.

But he had seen too much
and for him

it was no longer
an issue of personal health.

He's no longer blind to what
goes into a glass of milk.

What are you, what are you
feeling for in there?

The dairy cows
are artificially inseminated.

It's a bit jumpy,
I think I would be

if someone did that to me.

He learned that immediately at their birth

babies are separated
from their mothers.

The females will be sent into the dairy production cycle

while the males are sent into crates for veal production

or sold as beef.

The cows' tails
are sometimes docked

for the benefit of the milker.

The hybrid cow has been bred
to maximize milk production

yielding ten times
the amount of standard cows.

This can lead to mastitis
of the udder

or other painful infections.

White blood cells,
also known as pus

accumulate and end up
in our milk.

They quibble back and forth
over the suffering

that goes
into the glass of milk

they serve their children.

After that expose

they tried to fire me

but in the end,
it was my tenure

that kept me
from getting fired.

But on the other hand,
I have to move to Lincoln.

I mean, my family's
gonna stay here.

But what I didn't really
plan for or expect

were all the other
negative things.

The past five years have been
really, really difficult.

Really difficult.

It's not the way I ever dreamed

this time in my life
would be, you know?

And granted,
it's for a good cause..

...but..

...I wish it were somehow
done differently

with -- with us on the radar.

Sorry.

He had this drive to do this

and again, some good stuff
has come out of it..

...but also some
not-so-good stuff.

I mean..

...all through the years,
I've, um..

...with kind
of an absentee dad..

...I played the role
of both parents.

It would be easier for me
to fix the work side

than the family side.

You know, families,
there's too much.

All the emotional stuff
that's involved in that

and, um,
being relocated to Lincoln

and, you know,
I don't want to go to Lincoln.

Well, so here we sit.

At Niman Ranch, we sell
about 3000 pigs a week..

...and the hog kill nationally
is 400,000 a day.

So 3000 a week, 400,000 a day.

So we're still,
in the big picture, small

but the demand is there.

One of the worst fears
that people have

if they live in the country
is that somebody will build

a confined animal feeding
operation, uh, next door to you.

The laws here
allow those to be built

within 1800 feet of your house.

The neighbor down the road

a piece of land was sold off
by the farmer.

It depends on which way
the wind blows.

There's a lot of odor that comes out of the buildings

but each building
holds about 2500 hogs

in confined animal feeding
operations.

They're not really owned
by the farmer.

They're owned by a company.

Then another neighbor

he doesn't care whether
he makes any money on the pigs.

It's, he considers
it a fertilizer plant.

After a lifetime
of raising pigs

Paul decides to make
some changes.

He says raising hogs
is a young man's game

so last winter a farmer came

and picked up
the last of his pigs

the same line he's had
since the 1970s.

Paul has become
an increasingly rare breed.

It is uncertain whether
his now unique knowledge

of raising hogs traditionally

will find its way to a new generation of farmers.

I have done everything to bring
those birds into existence.

I had their parents,
their grandparents.

I've gathered the eggs,
I set the eggs

I washed the eggs.

I spent hours and days
taking care of them as babies

and months being with them
in the pasture.

Some of the lines I have here

this truly is the last of them
on Earth.

I find my faith
in doing what I do

and the connection with the
earth and with these animals

a very religious experience.

Holiness doesn't mean
you do great things.

It means you do small things
with great love.

When I was a kid, there was
a true love of the aesthetics.

I would go and I would visit
the farmers that I knew

and you would look out
over the field

and you would see
a flock of Barred Rocks

or you would see a flock
of Bourbon Red turkeys.

They would truly love
the beauty of what they saw

of what they were doing.

That is gone today in farming.

There's no way
you could love an animal

that has been
genetically engineered

to die in 6 weeks.

I've come to learn why annually

billions of birds
are fed antibiotics.

It's not
that they're initially sick.

It's so they can stand
the filthy

overcrowded conditions
they're raised in.

It's because their bodies
have been modified

to grow 4 times more quickly
than they would naturally

leading to diseases
that make drugs essential.

Nearly 80% of all antibiotics

produced
by the pharmaceutical industry

are used
for factory-farm animals.

This constant flow
of antibiotics

is a vital artery
of industrial farming

as essential as air or water
to the factory-farm system

and it has led to the birth
of so-called superbugs.

These bugs are already mutating

to bypass the antibiotics
designed to kill them.

Tens of thousands of Americans
now die annually

from ailments
once easily treated.

The CAFO system,
it's like a petri dish

for resistant bacteria

and flu viruses as well.

It's a system that is just ripe
for creating disease.

Birds and waterfowl,
in particular

are a melting pot
for all these viruses.

They come together,
they mix and match.

You can get H5N1, H1N7.

What's changing things now

is that the industrialized
poultry industry

is spreading across the world.

So now we routinely
raise birds

in flocks of several million

on a single site
in close proximity

and it's very easy to get
a buildup of pathogens

that will go through the entire house in a matter of hours.

The risk then comes that these
viruses jump into humans.

And that's when you get
a human pandemic

and that's when we get worried

about the likes of Spanish flu
back in 1918.

The 1918 pandemic
was unlike most influenzas

that attacked the weak.

This one preyed
on the young and healthy.

The virus spread
around the world

traveling on boats
that moved across the oceans.

Estimates suggest
that one-third of the world

fell ill.

25 million died
in a 25-week period.

By now, the deadly strain
of influenza

had not disappeared
from the planet

even though it had largely
disappeared from our minds.

Where is the virus now?

Is it en route
on the wings of a bird?

Imagine 2500 cesspools like that

cooking in the hot summer sun
in Eastern North Carolina

and -- and if you don't expect
something bad
to come out of that

well, I got a bridge
to sell you.

This is now some
of the filthiest floodwater

ever seen in this country.

In the mix, millions of gallons of concentrated hog manure.

Worried about disease

state officials are shipping
in portable incinerators.

Sooner or later,
it might be swine flu.

It might be Avian flu.

Something bad's
gonna happen in America.

Now I'm not a scientist,
but it takes a idiot

not to realize
that that's gonna happen.

That may be a rendering truck.

We are creating
the perfect storm.

I mean, it's -- it's

not if, it's when
there's going to be

another really
dangerous flu virus.

Frank's birds are outside,
they're free-range

they're exposed to the
environment, to pathogens

to wild fowl, et cetera,
et cetera, from day 1.

They've build up resistance.

But we can't feed
the world's population

on chickens running around
in a field.

If we're gonna produce enough
chickens to feed the world

then we're gonna have
to double from 50 billion

to 100 billion a year

unless we all turn vegetarians
tomorrow.

[speaking in Chinese]

The combined population
of India and China

is approaching 3 billion people

and every year, their diets
look more and more like ours.

The decisions they make will shape the world we all live in.

When I think about the forces
that shaped my life the most

this place is a -- a very
significant one to me.

Got a couple in here.

Hey, pups.

I was taken by how similar

animals in the barn
and animals in our home were

and had trouble
making distinction

between the two of them,
in terms of which ones

you would -- you treat as a pet

which one you would --
you would take to slaughter.

And I think that had
a big impression on me

in terms
of what I'm doing today.

The notion that you can't
perfectly replicate

animal protein with plant
protein, I think, is wrong.

The core parts of meat
are everywhere.

They're abundant
in the plant kingdom

and so why not take them
directly from the plant kingdom

run them through our process

which is heating,
cooling and pressure

and create that piece of meat
for the center of the plate?

For most people
to eat plant-based food

you're gonna have
to replicate meat

and it's possible

but it's up to companies
like myself

and to others to invest

so that we really deliver
on the promise.

[indistinct chatter]

We looked
at over 3200 plants now.

We've identified 11 and then
we can use these plants

to do a whole bunch
of different things.

We can use it as an ingredient
to everything

from binding a cookie
to aerating

to gelling in a pan
like a scrambled egg.

There's something amazing
about plants

and we can tap into 'em
and we can use it.

And I think there's a way to do it that preserves resources

that, that promotes things
we can all agree on.

People are eating meat
because it's delicious

because the price points
are good

and because it's convenient.

So people are not eating meat

you know,
because of how it's produced.

They're eating meat
despite how it's produced.

Yes, people eat
a lot of meat now.

But once people
are given 2 choices

and one of them is healthier and environmentally sustainable

and doesn't harm animals,
and the other one is

you know, what factory farming
and slaughterhouses look like

I think we're gonna see
massive shift over

to the plant-based
technologies.

In, uh, 1889

there was a story in
"The New York Times" that said

"Edison's gas light substitute
is catching on."

Electricity, you know,
over 100 years ago

was called
a gas light substitute.

When it becomes the easy thing, the affordable thing

it's not a substitute
any longer.

It's just called electricity.

One year after he lost half his flock at the slaughterhouse

Frank is unsure if his poultry
ranch will be able to survive.

A friend and neighbor
come to help

try to balance Frank's ledger.

Be careful. She just..

Yeah, I was gonna say
don't do that!

We're running these numbers.

It'd be tough to do worse
than we did last year

with the slaughter problem,
but looking at these numbers

the changes you've made
are clearly working.

This is the 1st year
you've made money

on all of your hard work.

It's kind of like
now we have a foundation

that we can actually
take off from.

I can't compete
against the factory farm.

I can't compete.
It's not even my job.

- It's not even my focus.
- Right.

My focus is in what I do.

Ben brought some ladies here

a while,
a few weeks ago to visit

and one of the questions
she asked me, she says

"Of all these birds and turkeys

"which ones
are the most important?

Which ones do you wanna keep?"

And I said,
"That's like asking, you know.."

Um..

[inhales deeply]

[instrumental music]

For 17 months,
I was in work limbo.

Eventually, the choice
was either move to Lincoln

or not have a job, so I guess
it wasn't really a choice.

[blender whirring]

Connie and I..

It's not finalized yet,
but we're getting divorced.

Um..

Yeah, that was
the biggest price..

...out of all this.

I hope that at some point

Connie and I can become..

...um, friends again.

In the last 3 months, I've slowly become an activist.

Working
with the Humane Society.

I guess
it's the next logical step.

Going from thinking
and then whistleblowing

and the next step,
you have to take action.

There's inherent cruelty
in that system.

I look back on it now and I say

"How could I not see that?"

Maybe it's like
if you don't wear glasses

and you can't see well,
you put your glasses on

and then, wow, there's a whole
new world out there.

Maybe it was sort of like that.

I like my non-work activism
much more than my job.

I'm already much more
comfortable in my own skin.

[applause]

I think if I had the choice
to do it again

I'd do it again.

We thought we could simply go
to the legislators

of North Carolina
and the governor and say

"Look, here's the problem.
We know what it is.

The scientists are showin' it. It's documented. Let's fix it."

Go to the forests and streams..

We were able to figure out

where the pollution sources
were comin' from.

We were able to educate
the public.

We were able to educate
the government.

What we weren't able to do

is to make somebody
do somethin' about it.

Alright, this one here
at 3 o'clock.

Here it is now,
20 years later

and every one of those lagoons

is still out there
where they were.

It's a problem not just
for those of us out here

who think this is a problem.

It's a problem for our society,
in general.

It's the way we eat meat,
the way we raise meat.

It's the way
we treat the animals.

It's the way
we impact the environment.

It's health issues.

It's how we're treating
our communities.

How we're treating the people
that live in these areas

who have no choice
but to be here.

It's just, uh,
it's -- it's a sad situation

all the way around.

It's sad,
but it's also infuriating

and downright maddening
at times

that you have an industry
that has that much

of a stranglehold
on this society.

Come on, let's go!
Come on!

What time do you get off
ballet tonight?

- Around 6:00.
- 6:00?

Sometimes I -- I get fatigued.

Are you still practicin'
for "Nutcracker?"

I'm up there now and my time
is limited on this Earth.

And sometimes I think that maybe the best thing to do

is to just enjoy what's left.

And then I think
about my grandchildren.

Uh, they got a whole lifetime
ahead of 'em.

There's enough left for me.
There is.

But is there enough left
for my daughter

and my grandchildren and my two great grandchildren?

Is there enough left?

Connecting.
Okay, it is connecting now.

There's gotta be a stop to this. There's gotta be a limit.

That was slow.

Duplin County traffic, skyline
on the roll, runway 2-3.

Duplin County,
departing to the southeast.

There's always gonna be people
who are willing to stand up

and tell the public
about what's going on.

I wanna hit Hookerton
on the way back down to..

That's near Grifton,
the Grifton Tower.

People need to understand
there are 2 sets of law

that govern what we do
on this planet.

There's the laws of men
and the laws of nature.

The final word is gonna come
from Mother Nature herself.

The unfortunate part
about that is

it's gonna affect you and me

just like it does
all the bad actors.

That -- That area
around Goldsboro

that's really flooded right now.

If they pass a law that says

it's a criminal offense
for me to take a picture

from a public highway
or from an airplane

then they're gonna
have to lock me up.

Somebody's gonna try to strip
those rights away from me.

It's gonna be, they're gonna
have a fight on their hands.

After the video release
that Leah and I did

I raised chickens
for another year.

I mean, there was nothin' more.

I had nothing left
with the business.

So in January of 2016,
I decided to, to cancel

the contract
and, uh, start life over at 50.

Well, I just woke up
one morning.

I had my, my head,
my hands like this

and it's about, like, 3 o'clock
in the morning

and I'm just waiting
for my wife to wake up

and I look at her and I say,
"Can I stop raisin' birds?"

Um, and she said,
"I told you that 2 years ago."

It's scary.
I have young kids

and, and I'm not where I
expected to be at 50 years old

so there ain't
a storybook ending.

We're just gonna h -- hope
we can find an ending

where we land very softly.

That shit runs downhill and I
was at the bottom of the hill.

[chuckles]

It's good that I'm not beholden to Perdue Farms anymore.

Having to raise their chickens
while they're lookin' at me

the whole time
as an expendable resource

and not a person
and not an asset.

When I was doing chickens
under contract, I mean

bottom line is,
I was a homogenizing widgets.

Is this farming?

I say no.

I don't want my kids involved in this method of raising food.

There might be a heck of a past,
but there's no future in it.

Um, I don't see it
gettin' any better.

I see, um..

I -- If the world's appetite
in meat grows

and the -- and these, these
companies keep expandin'

like they are, um

at some time, uh,
some point in time

it's gonna force our hand
to change.

They're talkin' about this
Feed The World mantra.

This is insane.

We're not feeding
the world now.

We're not even feedin'
everybody on this road.

It's a defense

for the system
that's in place now.

You're growing soy
and wheat and corn

and such a high percentage
of that

is just going back
to feed animals.

Uh, tillable acres.

At some point in time,
it's finite

but it's not gonna
be sustainable.

At some point in time,
you're gonna have to go

for less meat consumption.

You vote at least 3 times a day with your fork.

I believe with,
in all my heart,

the future lies
in diversifying farms.

I believe you're gonna see more

traditional-type
livestock production.

The -- The hogs on the pasture

and the cows on the grass-fed

and the, even the chickens
on the pasture.

That is like the new,
that's -- that's like, um..

It's like back to the future

is kind of where -- where

where I think we're goin'.

Without the diversification
in the monoculture

you're so dependent
on those commodity prices

that it's feast or famine.

When you put all your eggs
in one basket

all your eggs
are in one basket.

You don't have anything
to fall back on.

I was fascinated
by the question

about what was here
before we were raising

13 billion bushels of corn,
you know?

[chuckles]

Iowa, it's actually the most
altered landscape on Earth.

99.9% of the --
of the prairie is gone.

And so the fascination
with it kind of hooked me.

So I planted this and never
regretted it one second.

It's 140 acres
of restored and reconstructed

tallgrass prairie.

It's an oasis
for wildlife, really.

All kinds of mammals,
badgers, foxes, skunks.

And every time
you go out there

you'll see something different.

The seed bank was there.

I've never put a fish
in any of the ponds

yet there were 2 varieties
of fish in the ponds.

Well, this is the stuff
that's been here

for the last 10,000 years

since the Wisconsin glacier
came through.

It just enriches a person's
life in my estimation.

Much more
than another field of corn.

There needs to be a place
for farmers to come

and relearn this again

as we did years ago.

I'm not sure
that's easier to read though.

- No, that's harder to read.
- Yeah.

- Really?
- Yeah.

I like it on the wall.

This type of farming,
this type of breeding

is not taught anywhere anymore

because all the
land grant universities

are controlled
by the factory farms.

'Cause that's where
the money is.

It may take us a long time,
but little bits at a time

and this is what we're hoping.

It's gonna be back a ways.

I want a big enough space
for busses to turn or whatever.

If we're going
to change something

then we need to change
the entire system.

We cannot legislate

nor pass laws

nor fine the factory farm
into compliance.

It isn't gonna happen.

The only way to replace
this system

is to replace it
with something new

and make it available
to more and more people

one farm at a time,
one state at a time.

This is my mission.

And I'm sure I won't live
to see what happens.

When I told my mentor
when he was dying

that I would try
not only to save the birds

but to save the memory
of those people.

It is a love for the birds,
but it's also a love

for that whole personal
system of people

fighting to keep
something alive

to keep something going.

[instrumental music]

[instrumental music]