McCorkell, Don. A River Of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms. Burbank: Cinema Libre Studio, 2009. HD, 92 min.
A heart-stopping 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. The damage documented in today’s factory farms far exceeds the damage that was depicted in Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, a book written over 100 years ago. Some scientists have gone so far as to call the current condemned factory farm practices “mini Chernobyls.” The European Union stands virtually alone in establishing strong health and environmental standards for the industry. In the U.S. 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, and focuses on the individual lives damaged and destroyed. In 1906, public outrage at the scandal exposed by Sinclair led to major reforms that cleaned up a corrupt and dangerous system. It is the hope of the filmmakers to mobilize a similar public outcry for reform. (Source: Official Film Website)
© 2009 Cinema Libre Studio. Trailer used with permission.
This film is available at the Rachel Carson Center Library (RCC, 4th floor, Leopoldstrasse 11a, 80802 Munich) for on-site viewing only. For more information, please contact library@rcc.lmu.de.
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- Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Modern Library, 2006.
