Earthlings, a documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, is an expose on animal rights. Mankind’s use and abuse of animals is revealed, from husbandry to hunting, from pets to zoos and circuses.
   It is difficult to find the words to describe the feelings this film evoked. Revulsion? Yes. Pity, anger, disgust? No words can describe the horror I felt watching this film. I tried to force myself to watch every frame, but the truth is, I hit an emotional overload and had to fast forward through many of the brutal images.
   I am a born-again vegetarian and had been for a few months before watching this film; thank God for small mercies. For the last ten years or so I had blithely convinced myself that restricting my meat eating to organically raised animals exempted me from guilt. I had actually convinced myself that the animals I ate had not suffered. What a lie. Had I known the truth, there is no way I would have waited so long to eliminate meat from my diet.
    While I enjoyed my prime rib, I repressed the knowledge that eating off the top of the food chain was harmful to our planet. And of course, no matter how humane their treatment, I knew I did not truly have the unalienable right to kill sentient beings just because I liked their taste. While we could debate these truths, there is no justification for the inhumanity we as a society ignore each and every hour of every day.
   I will never lose the images of piglets whose ears and tails are clipped so their crazed overcrowded brothers and sisters do not eat them, or the beaking of birds so they do not peck each other to death. Think of it - animals raised with no exercise, no room to walk or run, chained or confined every day of their miserable existence. And the slaughter—birds stomped to death, steers and pigs each hoisted by one leg to have their throats slit, the long slow painful deaths and the gutting that is done when animals are still alive! Even in our nation’s largest kosher slaughter house, where humane death is supposed to be guaranteed, atrocities are practiced.
   Everyone should watch this film. We all need to band together to put a stop to these practices. In the same country where a citizen faces years of imprisonment for animal cruelty, we look the other way as poultry workers and slaughter house workers find sport in bashing in heads and disemboweling live animals. Trust me on this, there is no turning back. You will never again order a steak with the same sense of entitlement. 

Review by Allene Edwards