Author Archives: ngpf

Yesterday, July 13th, Meat the Truth was screened at the European Commission in Brussels (Belgium). Managing director of the NGPF and project manager of Meat the Truth was invited to introduce the film and answer questions of the audience afterwards.

The Environment Sub-Committee (ESC) for the European Commission Stagiaires organized the evenening, after seeing Meat the Truth at the United Nations in Brussels on May 26th. Organiser Adrien Lantieri: “We are highly impressed by the quality and clarity of the message delivered, filling the huge gap left previous documentaries, furthered by your enthusiastic and motivational talk at the end of the screening. We easily convinced other sub-committee members to the utmost necessity of screening MEAT THE TRUTH to stagiaires. Indeed, the ESC’s mandate is two fold: raising awareness amongst the 600 fellow trainees and fostering a sustainable future for the EU. A screening of the movie would perfectly achieve both aims”.

On June 2nd, the Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation will release English-written, “Meat the Truth, Essays on Livestock Production, Sustainability and Climate Change”. The book Meat The Truth is the continuation of the same titled documentary that was presented in London in 2008, which is now available in 13 languages and 16 countries. Meat the Truth was the first documentary to address the link between livestock farming and greenhouse gas emissions.

The anthology Meat the Truth, Essays on Livestock Production, Sustainability and Climate Change, contains contributions from many scientists, such as Geoff Russell, John Powles, Every Stehfest, Danielle Nierenberg, Barry Brook and Harry Aiking. Researchers from Wageningen UR, who reviewed the calculations of the film, by request of Dutch Minister Verburg and Marianne Thieme, also contributed to the book. Opinion leaders like Mark Bittman (New York Times), Tobias Leenaert (EVA) and Dirk Jan Verdonk have also delivered a contribution to the book.

The DVD of the English spoken version of the documentary Meat the Truth is included in the book. Meat the Truth marks the shift in thinking taking place in relation to the production of animal protein. Al Gore never mentioned livestock farming in his An Inconvenient Truth but now he is very much in favor of reducing meat, as is Herman Wijffels and 700 scientists who signed “call for a sustainable livestock” document, on the initiative of Roos Vonk.

The Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation wants to contribute to the contribution to the social debate about the consumption of animal protein in relation to the climate problem.

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Meat the Truth, Essays on Livestock Production, Sustainability and Climate Change
Paperback – 240 pages – ISBN 978-94-90034-03-0 – price € 19,95 – Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation

Would you like to order a copy of Meat the Truth, Essays on Livestock Farming, Sustainability and Climate Change? Click on the button “buy now” below.

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Almost 200 people attended the screening of Meat the Truth on Thursday the 17th of December during the climate summit in Copenhagen. The climate film screened at the Klimaforum09, the people’s climate summit, and was greeted by the audience with great interest. The film addresses the enormous impact of livestock farming on global warming, a fact that is often ignored by policymakers and therefore an important message to stress during this summit. Marianne Thieme was present to answer questions from the audience after the screening, which was highly appreciated.

Dutch climate film offers a fresh view on the climate issue

Copenhagen, 15 December 2009 – Meat the Truth, the very first documentary on livestock farming’s contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases, was invited to the KlimaForum09 in Copenhagen, on December 17th. Marianne Thieme, Member of Parliament in The Netherlands, will be attending and will be taking part in a debate after the screening.

Meat the Truth, presented by the Dutch Party for the Animals’ leader Marianne Thieme, forms an addendum to earlier documentaries on climate change, which failed to address one of the biggest causes of global warming. Numerous reports produced by renowned scientists from the World Watch Institute, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the Profetas project and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), were translated by researchers at the NGPF and the VU University Amsterdam into a concise visual document, which explains the impact of meat consumption on climate change, the use of natural resources and hunger in the world.

The film acts as an erratum to earlier films on climate change, such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which while convincingly drawing attention to the issue of global warming, failed to mention one of the most important causes thereof. Meat the Truth demonstrates that worldwide the livestock industry is a far greater cause of global warming than all of the cars, trucks, planes and ships added together. The issues of the impact of livestock farming on water shortages and the unequal distribution of food resources are also raised in this documentary.

At the end of the film, practical solutions to tackle climate change at the level of the individual consumer are presented. The solutions have been calculated by scientists at the VU University Amsterdam and make it pertinently clear just how simple it could be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in large amounts. Here is just one example: if all people in the US decided to eat no meat for three days a week, then they would save almost 300 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. This would have a greater impact on the climate than replacing all US cars with Toyota Prius models. Even if people in the US didn’t eat meat for just one day a week, that would make a huge difference. It would save 99.6 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. This would save 46 million return flights from New York to Los Angeles and back from Los Angeles to New York.

The NGPF is the scientific bureau of the Party for the Animals; the worlds’ very first party for ‘non-humans’ to be represented in parliament. For the documentary Meat the Truth, the producers filmed in Washington DC, Norfolk (Virginia), Seattle and Amsterdam. Many celebrities participated in the making of the film such as Pamela Anderson, Bill Maher, Emily Deschanel, Tony Denison, James Cromwell, Elaine Hendrix, Kate Flannery , Debra Wilson Skelton, Joy Lauren, Esai Morales, Wayne Pacelle, Howard Lyman, and many others. Meat the Truth was produced by Claudine Everaert and Gertjan Zwanikken of Alalena Media Productions. The documentary has been screened all over the world, in countries such as Taiwan, Australia, New-Zealand, Ecuador, Canada, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Singapore, Portugal and the UK, and was translated in 9 different languages: Dutch, Chinese, French, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Slovenian and Italian. At this moment Korean, Turkisch, Gujuradi and German translations are being produced.

The Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation believes that the film will make a valuable contribution to the social discussion about a transition to a more plant-based and thus also a more humane society. The NGPF also hopes that the film will provide a showcase for prominent scientific reports, which have thus far proved inaccessible to the general public.

After the screening of MEAT THE TRUTH, Marianne Thieme will take place in a discussion panel. For more information: www.klimaforum.org

MEAT THE TRUTH @ KLIMAFORUM09
Date: December 17th 2009
Screening times: 21:00h
Location: DGI-byen, Green Hall
Address: Tietgensgade 65, 1704, Copenhagen
Website: www.meatthetruth.com

Meat the Truth, the very first documentary on livestock farming’s contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases, was invited to the KlimaForum09 in Copenhagen, on December 17th. Klimaforum09 is a climate summit, the global civil society counterpart of the official UN conference (COP15) in the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Marianne Thieme, Member of Parliament in The Netherlands, will be attending and will be taking part in a debate after the screening.

The documentary has been screened all over the world, in countries such as Taiwan, Australia, New-Zealand, Ecuador, Canada, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Singapore, Portugal and the UK, and was translated in 9 different languages: Chinese, French, Turkish, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Slovenian and Italian. At this moment Korean and German translations are being produced. And there are plans for a Slovenian version.

The Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation believes that the film will make a valuable contribution to the social discussion about a transition to a more plant-based and thus also a more humane society. The NGPF also hopes that the film will provide a showcase for prominent scientific reports, which have thus far proved inaccessible to the general public.

After the screening of MEAT THE TRUTH, Marianne Thieme will take place in a discussion panel. For more information: www.klimaforum.org

MEAT THE TRUTH @ KLIMAFOUM09

Date: December 17th 2009
Screening times: 21:00h
Location: DGI-byen, Green Hall
Address: Tietgensgade 65, 1704, Copenhagen
Admission: FREE!
Press requests: m.vandijk@ngpf.nl