“Cowspiracy may be the most important film made to inspire saving the planet.”
— Louie Psihoyos —
I’ve watched my fair share of diet and health related documentaries.
Like many others, I kicked things off a few years ago with Food Inc and Forks Over Knives. The classics.
Then came Blackfish and Vegucated, shortly followed by Earthlings (not for the faint hearted).
There’s a long list of great films out there, and they’ve all had an impact on me in some shape or form. But there’s one that has influenced me way more than any of the above…
The Cowspiracy Facts
Produced by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (and backed by plant powered ultra-man Rich Roll), Cowspiracy shows us how our food choices impact the health of the planet we live on.
More specifically, the film reveals how modern animal agriculture and factory farming is one of the most destructive industries facing the Earth today, and how many of the top environmental organisations in the world really don’t seem to want to talk about it…
I wouldn’t really describe myself as the activist type. Far from it in fact.
I’m usually more of ‘share a few ideas, take what resonates with you’ sort of guy.
But Cowspiracy really moved me.
After watching the film, I decided that I wanted to use the little influence I have to help spread the message as much as possible. So I designed this infographic, highlighting the most important facts from the film. I’ve produced a couple before: one on the potential benefits of a plant based diet, and one on climate change.
It’s probably quite fitting that for Cowspiracy I would combine the two ideas…
[block background=”#fce48d” text_color=”#545454″ rounded=”true” shadow=”true”]Download The High Res Metric Version (and raw SVG file for translating): There’s been a big demand for high resolution copies of the metric and imperial versions of the infographic, and some people also want access to the original SVG file for translating into different languages. Click here to join The Hero Academy get access to them and loads of other free resources![/block]
Note: the facts used in the Cowspiracy Infographic were collected from cowspiracy.com and are accurate as of the 25th November 2014.
The Cowspiracy Infographic
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What does this mean for us?
As you can see, some of the facts from the film are pretty crazy…
It seems like modern animal agriculture and factory farming is the one of the leading causes of many of the biggest issues we face today.
Climate change, water shortages, deforestation, species extinction, pollution, overfishing, habitat destruction…
It has a significant impact on them all.
But why are we not told about this?
How come it’s never reported in the news?
Why are so many of the world’s top environmental organisations ignoring the elephant in the room?
Why are we encouraged to change our light bulbs, have shorter showers and avoid palm oil, but nothing gets said about our diets?
It just doesn’t add up.
In the meantime, the issues continue to worsen. Climate change is not going away. Sea levels are rising, along with temperatures. Some experts state that we’ve already hit peak oil reserves. Fresh water is becoming a scarce resource. Our rainforests and the species that inhabit them are about to disappear.
These are issues that are happening right now, not in some distant future.
Surely if we want to take these problems seriously, we should focus our efforts on fixing one of the leading causes, rather than other issues that are having less of an impact?
But why is this not the case?
There’s still hope
Cowspiracy digs deep. In the film, Kip and Keegan attempt to uncover the real reasons as to why the impact of modern animal agriculture remains hidden from the public view. It’s hard-hitting, brutally honest, and eye-opening, yet I left the film feeling inspired and hopeful for the future.
Sure, the situation we’re currently in is far from ideal.
But we have the capability of sparking real change. We don’t have to sit and wait for big changes on a national or international level. We don’t have to wait for the government to pass new laws, or for environmental organisations to speak the truth.
The state of our planet can be changed for the good by making a simple shift in our eating habits:
By moving towards a more natural plant based diet. By making the shift towards eating more locally sourced produce, and eating less factory farmed animals (and plants for that matter).
Homegrown, foraged, sustainably sourced is the way forward.
I know that many of you readers are already in the process of making the transition. Some of you are doing it for health reasons. Some of you are athletes looking to improve your performance. Others are in it out of compassion. They’re all great motivations, no doubt.
But whatever your initial reason ‘why’, you’ve now got another big one to back it up with.
Make the change towards a more plant based diet not just for your health, your performance, and out of compassion – make the change to save the planet you live on. So that your children can grow up in a safe, healthy, sustainable environment.
Right now we’re heading towards disaster, but it’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Round Up
People compare Cowspiracy to Blackfish and an Inconvenient Truth, both of which were hard-hitting documentaries that had a widespread impact, and raised massive awareness.
In my opinion, Cowspiracy takes things a step further. Actually, several steps further. It really is one of the important documentaries I’ve ever watched, and I strongly urge you to see it as soon as possible.
Sharing is Caring
One last thing…
As I said, we’re currently destroying our planet with our forks and knives, but it doesn’t have to continue like that.
If you want to support this movement, aside from changing your diet, one of the best ways you can help make a change is to share information (like this Cowspiracy infographic) with as many people as possible.
Feel free to use the share buttons to the left to send it out on Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, Reddit, via email… Make paper aeroplanes out of it and throw them from the rooftop if you like. Whatever feels good for you.
And feel free to use the infographic on your own blog or website. Just copy and paste the code below into the ‘text’ area of your blog post, and you should be away.
Failing that, you can download the image and re-upload it to your site.
Attribution isn’t required, but a link back to Health Room is always appreciated 🙂
Embed Code:
And Don’t Forget…
You can click below to sign up to The Hero Academy where you can download high resolution copies of the metric and imperial versions of the Cowspiracy infographic, along with the original SVG file for translating into different languages.
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Thanks for reading! If you have an opinion, don’t be afraid to voice it in the comments section below.
Just to clarify, I’m in no way affiliated with Cowspiracy. I’ve been in contact with the team and they gave me the all clear to produce the infographic, but I’m not receiving any monetary incentive to do so, or to promote the film. I’m just doing this because I believe the documentary is important, and I think as many people as possible deserve to hear about it.
Your infographic is great. You might even want to include another section on which “environmental” organizations are willing to even admit/show awareness the truth, since that was a major part of the film. I wish they could have put an estimate on the amount of agriculture money spent lobbying. Great documentary. While I was watching it, I watched with the idea of how my friends and family would see it. The sad thing is I imagined them dismissing it when they saw that the narrator had what they would call something like surfer hair, and one of the interviewees had three earrings.
I kind of wish they had made the film half as long so that it kept people’s attention better, although I certainly had no problems watching to the end. The second half was especially great.
It will be nice when this makes it to Netflix. I really hope it does. That will help it out a lot. Not many people are going to want to buy it, and those who do might not be taken very seriously when they ask their family to sit down for 90 minutes and watch a DVD they have no interest in. Such is the state of our society though. It’s a bit frustrating. Makes more share-able things like your infographic very handy as something that someone can look at and learn something before they move on.
Thanks for your comment Doug! That’s good idea, I’ll definitely look into that.
Yeah I know what you mean, sometimes it’s frustrating. But we can only do our best! I think making it to netflix could make a massive difference, for sure.
Have great day, and thanks for commenting!
Luke
While the issue is real, I think the movie badly missed the mark when talking about the environmental organisations.
For example, it left out the huge amount of work Greenpeace has done over the years to protect the Amazon from the cattle industry – work that is still paying off… http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-soya-moratorium-lives-on-but-what-will-fo/blog/51477/
I think there are lots of aspects to the climate crisis (livestock is a big one, but not actually the biggest). I think it’s great for different people to work on the different parts of the problem.
Thanks for the comment Andrew, I do appreciate it!
This is a brilliant infographic! The world should pay attention.
Thank you for making it.
Thank you! Keep up the great work on your site. When I have kids someday, I’ll definitely be showing them your comics 🙂
Well done infographic! This is a great tool to have, but it needs one edit (at least):
About halfway down, under “What can we do about it?” There is a statement that says, “A person who follows a vegan diet produces 50% less CO2, 1/11th oil, 1/13th water and 1/18th land compared to a meat eater.”
Well, we don’t produce oil, water or land, but I get the point. That statement should read, “A person who follows a vegan diet produces 50% as much CO2 and consumes 1/11th as much oil, 1/13th as much water and 1/18 as much land compared to a meat eater.”
Cheers!
Thanks for pointing that out. You’re right, and I did dither over that when I put the infographic together, but ended up keeping it the same as the cowspiracy site. I will edit tit at some point though!
Oh stop criticizing ALL! It’s not like we have another planet to go to, or like we have a ton of time left B4 we have no more time. Not like we shouldn’t have all begun moving towards a vegan diet like – yesterday. Not as if any of us have any extra time here for contemplation when the prediction is, ‘possibly’ another 10 years and the planet will be done if each individual (that means all of us) continues on with comsuming meat and dairy. Looks like yesterday would definitely not have been too soon to become vegan. Learn about how to and go do it!! govegan.com
Thanks for your support Janet! Keep up the great work!
Hi! nice infographic! could you please share it in SVG format to translate it into Spanish?
Cheers Alberto! Yep I can get that to you no problem! Will send you it when I’m back to my computer in a few days!
Could you please share the infographic translated into spanish? please
Hi, I’ve just updated the post and included links so you can download the original .svg file and make any translations 🙂 If you do share the file on your own site, link it back to me so I can check it out!
Great infographic! We’d love to use it when we’re giving out samples of our plant-based meats to help people clearly understand why we do what we do. Would you consider sending us a high-res version that we could download & print? Thanks for bringing more awareness to these facts!
Thanks a bunch! Yep i’ll get you a copy sent over tomorrow when i’m back at the laptop. Cheers!
Luke,
I’m really impressed by this infographic and would love to share it in German. You’ve already had a request for sharing it in SVG for translation – could I have an SVG version too, please? Also, any hint regarding the fonts used would be appreciated!
Cheers –
Hans
What a great infographic. Thank you for sharing it!
Hi!
Would be it be possible to obtain an editable copy for translation?
Thanks
Yes I would really like a copy for editing please. I want to print and post around my school 🙂
Cheers Dylan, that’s great to hear. You can download the images using the links in the blog post above – there’s also one of the original .svg file that you can edit in Inkscape. Best of luck!
Thanks!!!! Im going to translate to spanish so we can use it in ours activities to veganize the city!
Awesome, great to hear Claudia!
Why isn’t this information on the news. Well Cowspiracys shows the opera Winfrey example.