‘The Last Pig’ and ‘What the Health’: Two Absolute Must-See New Documentaries

The documentary ‘The Last Pig’ will get into you like nothing else. Doesn’t matter if you’re vegan or carnivorous. This one is going to grab you.

The documentary ‘What the Health’ is available now on Vimeo. It’s will be the best $9.99 you ever spent. On anything.

2017 is turning out to be the year of the life-changing documentary. With the release of ‘What the Health’ in March, and the Germany-based release of ‘The Last Pig’, 2017 is potentially the year of incredible films.

I must quickly tell you that ‘The Last Pig’ has been released in Germany and at a handful of festivals and independent theaters, but will not be released in the U.S. until July. But being a stealthy vegan activist means knowing other stealthy vegan activists, and this week, I had the chance to view the film.

Think for a moment about what it means to be a sentient creature with the power to kill other sentient creatures. We humans have taken that power for ourselves. ‘The Last Pig’ follows a pig farmer through his final year of slaughtering pigs for the food industry. After decades of raising and communing with pigs, bonding with them and discovering their beauty and intelligence, then slaughtering them for profit, he saw the absurdity of it all and decided to quit.

Call it a slow and steady realization over a long period of time that pigs, like everything sentient being, feel affection, devotion, connection, happiness, and community. They also feel sadness, fear, dread, terror, and pain. And like us, they don’t want to die.

This film raises questions about the sanctity of all life, the role of compassion in our relationships with others, and the psychological mechanisms we use to allow ourselves to completely love and care for some animals, and slaughter and eat others, then live with that insane duplicity.

The film’s production team bankrolled the film with their own funds and donations from supporters. I’ve enthusiastically joined their team of supporters.  You bet I put my money behind something like this film. I can’t think of anything better to give part of my paycheck to. Beats giving it to Wal-Mart. A film like this is priceless. I can’t say enough about it. Go here to check it out:

www.thelastpig.com

‘What the Health’ is a kick in the gut. It’s an expose of our corporate-controlled medical associations - like the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the Susan G. Koman Foundation – all of whom have taken billions in sponsorship dollars from corporate food giants like Tyson, Dannon, Subway, and Kraft.

These are the very corporations whose food products are giving us epidemic rates of coronary artery disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and dementia. It’s no surprise, and it’s completely despicable, that an entity like The American Diabetes Association, on its website and in its literature, offers recipes for diabetics that feature Tyson, Dannon, Subway, and Kraft products – foods laden with high-fat meats, bacon, cheese, milk, and eggs. But hey – those corporations make their paychecks possible.

Now try this on for size: the manufacturers of the millions of permutations of pharmaceuticals that people are plugged into each year would go bankrupt if Americans collectively woke up and stopped eating hyper-processed Tyson, Subway, Dannon, and Kraft products. Our rates of disease would drop dramatically, and our dependency on pharmaceuticals would wane to near nothing. That poses a dollar problem for every government entity and mega-corporation who profits from keeping us sick and taking their pills.

It's all about money. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, except that there remains a large segment of society that continues to believe that the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Cancer Society prioritize our welfare and safety. 

These groups may have gotten their start in the business of saving lives, but once corporate food giants got a whiff of what they were doing, they shook millions of sponsorship dollars in the faces, and that old demon - human greed -  took root. Now, profit is the priority, and the film ‘What the Health’ proves it once and for all. Stop everything you’re doing and see it.

You aren’t going to watch ‘What the Health’, and be happy. You’re going to be disgusted and furious. Hopefully, though, you’ll join in community with others who have taken a good look at society and found themselves inspired to act. At my age, I don’t think much about saving my own skin. I reflect on the generations to follow, and my responsibility to leave this Earth a less dangerous place than I found it. I think we can all agree that we owe children and children-yet-to-be-born that much.

Live in peace.