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Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

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Breakthrough or Bull?
Is that fair to blame everything on the cows? The documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, directed by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn, reveals the main cause of climate change. The massive changes in climate were not down to cars and oil after all, but it was in fact caused by cows. Anderson and Kuhn prove their claim by providing experts’ opinions and relevant data. According to them, animal agriculture is the most harmful thing to the Earth; therefore, we should go vegan. Their argument has good use of ethos, pathos, and provides interesting evidence; however, it also has hasty generalization and stacking the deck fallacies. The first strength is using pathos to persuade the audience. They use a lot of emotional …show more content…

They try to establish their credibility by doing interviews with environmental experts, but it just doesn’t work. Most people chosen to interview are one-sided. After doing some research, I found out many figures in the movie such as Howard Lyman, Dr. Will Tuttle, Dr. Richard Oppenlander, or Dr. Michael A. Klaper are vegan themselves. Howard Lyman, according to his own published book, is an American farmer and animal rights activist known for promoting vegan nutrition and organic farming (“Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from The Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat” 3). Dr. Michael A. Klaper, a physician in True North Health Center, is similar; he has been a vegan for 32 years (“Vegetarian Physician Debunks Dietary Myths”). How even-handed is it to interview vegans about eating meat? Not so much!
Moreover, the filmmakers also create hasty generalization in their movie. They jump to the conclusion that “animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat destruction” (“Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret”) while they have too-limited evidence. The numbers brought out to prove this claim come to nowhere. There is no reliable source to back up this data. The number really impress the audience, but at the same time, it raises a question in viewers’ minds about its credibility and

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