Review of Documentary ‘Earthlings’

‘An hour of meaningless animal Gore’ probably best describes my feelings about ‘Earthlings‘. The Documentary attempts to show the viewer why we should become vegetarians by means of graphic scenes of animal cruelty. It relies primarily on emotional appeal, and lack logical appeal. They appeal to the people’s sense of sympathetic duty, rather than on the rational morale that one should keep.

In the beginning, The Narration tells us that we are all equal as ‘Earthlings’. That no one being’s interests are more important, or less important, than another being’s interest. Therefore, animals’ and human interests should be considered equal. Then, it goes on to show the cruelty that is done on animals by humans for research, food, and sport. The movie continues to throw the question, ‘would you still eat meat, when it’s been produced with these bad methods?’ The answer, for me, was ‘Yes.’

I did appreciate how the Film questioned the sources of our food, and showed that the food that we ate were prepared through animal cruelty. It was shocking to know that the animal produce that reach our tables were prepared by committing such atrocities. It did give me a chance to think about the morality of human beings. However, the logical conclusions that I reached were quite different from what the film had intended me to reach, through its emotional appeal.

The movie itself mentions an alternative method of producing meat, called ‘Kosher’. Though the movie then goes on to show that some ‘Kosher’ meat aren’t ‘Kosher’ at all, because in some slaughterhouses, they continue to cause cruelty onto the animals, necessarily. Therefore, the movie suggests, there is no such thing as meat produced without animal cruelty. Here, I couldn’t help but disagree. If Kosher regulations and rules are already existent, the method of solving animal cruelty during the production of meat, the natural solution would be to start enforcing such regulations, and spread the Kosher method further. The fact that some slaughterhouses that are supposed the practice the Kosher method don’t actually meet Kosher guideline does not mean that all slaughterhouses that follow the Kosher Method all do the same. Rather, it means that we need to strengthen the enforcement of the rules are necessary.

Another point that I could not accept was that humans are the only species that exploit other animal species. What about the predators of the wild? Do they not eat meat? Do they have to carry moral issues? Then why are humans considered exceptions? As I watched the movie, I did agree that human exploitation, and cruelty to other animals, can be extreme, and in some cases, horrendous. However, again, this is a problem to be solved my more careful monitoring of the slaughterhouses, of exteneding the Kosher method of Slaughter.

The Last point that I couldn’t agree with was the part about animal experiments. The Movie states confidently that ‘Vivisection never taught us anything about humans. They only taught us about the animals’, and that ‘(Vivisection) is an insult to real science’. However, the movie does not give any thought to the viable alternatives to animal testing. Without animal testing, there would be no way of ensuring the basic safety needed to go on to human testing. Critics of this argument point to penicillin, which turned out negative results from animal tests, and the infamous Thalidomide, which passed all animal tests with flying colors. However, what we must remember is that behind these failures, there are countless drugs out there, stopped during the animal testing procedure, which would have had terrible effects on public health if they went to sale unchecked. Furthermore, it is important to note that most research centers have moral guidelines about the prohibition of cruelty towards the test animals. Cruelty affects test results, as stress hormones are released into the subject’s body, and therefore is carefully prohibited. The graphic images they show of vivisection, such as burning a pig alive, are isolated incidents that do not happen in modern laboratories. Here’s a website that gives more reasons on why animal testing should be continued

‘Earthlings’, the documentary, was nothing more than a typical promotion of vegetarianism, through provoking graphic images and feelings of pity towards the animals that are being killed for us. However, the issue of inhumane treatment of animals can be solved without adopting vegetarianism, and going against vivisection. In that sense, Earthlings was an unimpressive movie, that left graphic images in my mind, but it was a movie that failed to persuade me to see its argument.

Here’s a video that has a similar theme with ‘Earthlings’. By the way, it was the only result in Youtube that wasn’t aged restricted, under search term ‘Vegetarian advertisements cruelty’

Here’s another Documentary film from the same organization that made the video right above, ‘Mercy For Animals’, ‘Foul Play’