Eating Animals

Absorbing but horrifying, this hearts-and-minds documentary about factory farming (co-produced by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, director Christopher Quinn and narrator Natalie Portman) is a conscientious survey of cruel practice in the name of cheap and convenient meat. From Lindsborg, Kansas, where the Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch's ancient breeds run wild, to Duplin County, North Carolina, where the run-off from "concentrated animal feeding operations" kills fish and produces Pepto-Bismol-pink lagoons, Eating Animals threads testimony through upsetting footage but resists finger-wagging. Hypocrisy rears its head In Thornton, Iowa, where free range pigs are treated more as pets than "protein units" but are sent to slaughter anyway. The one per-cent who rear organically are an endangered breed, adding conspiratorial tension to the investigation but minus a showboating Louis Theroux or Michael Moore. The evidence - from bird flu to antibiotic resistance - stacks up persuasively, and as the westernised diets of India and China join this global race to the bottom, one expert concludes, "We can't feed the world's population with chickens running around in a field." Pass the nuts, please.