Vlees Verlangen
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Why do we feel an oppressive sense of guilt when we eat a generous animal protein-based meal? How come a conceptual gap exists between an animal and the abstract slice of meat we buy at the supermarket?
It is to answer questions like these that Marijn Frank, a young mother in Amsterdam who is trying to become vegetarian, working as a volunteer in an abattoir and undergoing psychological therapy, embarked on a personal survey that led her to meet scientists–neurologists and developers of in vitro meat, hundreds of thousands of battery hens and a very sexy chef – and ultimately to taste her daughter Sally’s vegetarian dishes.
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About the Movie Need for Meat
Marijn Frank has a conflictual need for meat and at once a desire to be respectful towards animals. She achieves emotional catharsis when she visits a farm that raises a cattle breed on the verge of extinction. The animals love their calm, peaceful existence in the fields and the owners are proud to be playing an important role in conserving the breed, whose meat is particularly prized. However, as one chef suggests, if you respect an animal when it is alive and do your best to honor its existence, you should not feel guilty when it is on your plate at the end of the day. The documentary offers no easy answers, of course, and the director herself never ceases to feel inner conflict over the question. She goes on eating meat with the idea of respecting each animal she consumes, but in a bittersweet finale we see her change her behavior, albeit with a gesture that may seem very minor in the great scheme of things. The conclusion she offers is incisive enough to inspire hope for a more human future in which people can grow to have a greater awareness of the environment. (www.novellamag.com)
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Creative Europe Media Program. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.