With so many interesting books and movies out there that talk to the issues we’re all interested in, Kewaunee Cares is starting a new feature of Book and Movie Reviews.
NEW
CROSSING THE LINE • Air and water belongs to all of us to use, enjoy and protect equally. If they are misused, depleted or mistreated to enrich some more than others, the common interest is violated and something needs to be done. It takes courageous change-makers to hold polluters accountable. But these stories of everyday citizens are examples of how the legacy of Wisconsin’s environmental stewardship continues. Crossing the Line: Defending Our Environmental Commons was produced by Midwest Environmental Advocates, a non-profit environmental law center that uses the power of the law to protect our heritage of healthy water, air, land and government. Donated to the Algoma Library by Kewaunee Cares.
RIVER OF WASTE • An eye opening new documentary, A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms exposes a huge health and environmental scandal in our modern industrial system of meat and poultry production. Some scientists have gone so far as to call the current condemned factory farm practices “mini Chernobyls”. In the US and elsewhere, the industry is dominated by dangerous uses of arsenic, antibiotics and growth hormones and also by the dumping of massive amounts of sewage in fragile waterways affecting the nearby towns and its citizens. The film documents the vast catastrophic impact on the environment and public health, as well as focuses on the individual lives damaged and destroyed. Donated to the Algoma Library by Kewaunee Cares.
FRESH • This movie celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet. FRESH address an ethos that has been sweeping the nation and is a call to action America has been waiting for. Donated to the Algoma Library by Kewaunee Cares.
FOOD INC. • This thought-provoking movie lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry. It exposes how our food supply is controlled by a handful of large corporations who often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and the protection of the environment. Food Inc. reveals what we eat, how it’s produced and who we have become as a nation. Donated to the Algoma Library by Kewaunee Cares.
THE POWER OF COMMUNITY–How Cuba Survived Peak Oil • This is a film on Cuba’s crisis when it lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990s. Overnight Cuba was faced with feeding its population and creating a new low-energy society. This tiny island nation transitioned from large-scale, fossil-fuel intensive farming to small, less energy-intensive organic farms and urban gardens. Cuba’s transition from a highly industrialized society to a more sustainable one is an excellent example of how to address our challenge of reducing our energy use as the world approaches peak oil. Donated to the Algoma Library by Kewaunee Cares.
We started with a book entitled CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories.
Copyright 2010 Foundation of Deep Ecology in collaboration with Earth Aware.
CAFO features 400 pictures and 30 essays on food and agriculture by today’s leading thinkers. “Designed to be an invaluable educational resource in the battle to reform the tragic state of animal factory farming,” CAFO looks at the “serious moral and ethical concerns,” all of us share. It offers an alternative to the factory model that is healthier for animals, humans and the planet.
Thank you to Family Farm Defenders for donating this book to Kewaunee Cares. It has in turn been donated to the Algoma library. Check it out!
Kewaunee Cares 
The levels of animal cruelty that are documented in this book are absolutely appalling, immoral and downright sickening. The photos are not for the faint of heart, but if we take an animal’s life we should at least know HOW they had to live and how they had to die so we can eat beef, pork, turkey, chicken, fish, eggs, and dairy products. And of course CAFOs pollute our air and water at the same time. I regret all the money I’ve paid for products from CAFOs before I started buying organic and will make even more effort to not put another penny toward CAFO industry products.
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Educate, educate and educate some more. When the public learns the truth about what CAFO “food” means, I believe we will see a demand growing for healthy, organic food sources and a demand for humane treatment of animals of all species.
Thank you for the great link to the CAFO book…what an education!
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A book I read almost seven years ago really changed my perspectives regarding food, the environment, and how both these things directly relate to the health of human beings as well as the earth. It is a book by Dr. Jane Goodall titled, Harvest for Hope. I encourage all to check it out.
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My desire to support the industrial food industry has completely left my being–both physically ,and where I spend my food dollars at the grocery store. It is heartbreaking to watch the external costs these animal factories cost our community-seen in the contamination of our drinking water, beaches we cannot swim at, the stench of manure intermingled with the stench of the lakeshore. There’s a saying, that there’s three sides to every story…yours, mine and the truth. The land and water tell their story. “Got Milk?”…only from farmers who treat the land, their animals, and their consumers with values reflected in their stewardship, animal husbandry, and concern for their community and neighbors.
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Everyone needs to become educated by talking to local dairy producers, large and small, CAFO or non CAFO. That is the best way, not to watch or read a piece of information that tells you only “the bad”. Animals on CAFOs are treated with care and compassion. The only way to get to that size farm is to take care of your animals. It’s a simple concept, If you neglect your animals your not going to stay around for very long, so obviously the ones who are around treat them well…I know for a fact. Yeah there are some bad apples and they need to be taken care of but it’s extremely unfair to judge the masses when you become informed from a biased view. Stop falling victim to the typical media tactics!
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For an additional water and health issue, I enjoyed “A Chemical Reaction” which is focused on the green lawn care movement. Reviewed at: http://artofnaturalliving.com/2010/05/22/the-green-lawncare-movement-a-chemical-reaction-film/
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YOURDAIRYFRIEND……The cows in the CAFO barns live about 4 years….so how does that match up with the cows from a family farm…life span to life span…..? If your CAFO had 8000 milkers then you would have about 2000 cows leaving each year…..that’s about 5.5 cows per day moving down the food change….right…..? In my world quality means more than quantity….but BIG MONEY ALWAYS TRUMPS LITTLE MONEY…!
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