La face cachée de la viande

A documentary that exposes the shocking truths behind industrial food production and food wastage, focusing on fishing, livestock and crop farming. A must-see for anyone interested in the true cost of the food on their plate.

Meat the Future ushers the viewer into a world vexed by the impacts of modern day industrial animal agriculture and zeros in on a solution-focused story. Revealing challenges and breakthroughs and posing a myriad of questions about the future, this 90-minute character-driven documentary explores the advent of real meat without the need to raise and slaughter animals. Spanning three years, Meat the Future chronicles the potentially game-changing birth of a new food industry referred to as “cell-based” “clean” and “cultured” meat – a term hotly debated as the industry approaches commercialization

Meat is the modern story of the animals we eat, as told by the people who never get to say their piece - from the solitary hunter who believes everyone needs to be educated about their food, to an industrial pig farmer who argues that money isn't his primary driver.

The film exposes the links between Agrifood and politics. With a pool of international experts it analyses the many problems related to factory farming: water pollution, migrants exploitation, biodiversity loss and antibiotic resistance.

There are 85 million cows in the Brazilian Amazon, which means three cows for each human dweller grazing today and area that was once forest. Less than fifty years ago, in the 1970s, the rainforest was intact. Since then, a portion the size of France has disappeared, 66% of which transformed into pastures. Much of this change is a consequence of government incentives that attracted thousands of farmers from southern lands. Cattle ranching became an economic and cultural banner of the Amazon, forging powerful politicians to defend it. In 2009, there was a game changer: the Public Prosecutor's Office sued large slaughterhouses, forcing them to supervise cattle supplying farms.

Horse slaughter is more than inhumane. It's big business.

Elles Kiers and Sjef Meijman lived intensively with four Bunte Bentheimer pigs for seven months. During the slaughter month they had their beloved pig Bom killed and then prepared it themselves. The short documentary Blood (Dinanda Luttikhedde, 2011) follows the visual artists in the final phase of their research project into the origin of our food. A valuable ritual unfolds around the processing of this animal.

MEAT traces the process through which cattle and sheep become consumer goods. It depicts the processing and transportation of meat products by a highly automated packing plant, illustrating important points and problems in the area of production, transportation, logistics, equipment design, time-motion study, and labor management.

In 2015, the WHO listed one of the additives in processed meats as carcinogenic. That same additive was nearly banned in America in the 1970s - until lobbying from the meat industry discredited the scientists. At the heart of this strategy are the scientists who collaborate with the meat industry and who receive generous compensation for studies that promote meat consumption.

An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses. Describes the fate of the animals and that of the workers in graphic detail.