Eating Animals: Film and Q&A

If you haven’t read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, our guess is that after watching the new film you’ll pick up the book. You’ll want to know more—you’ll need to know more—about where our meat, eggs, and dairy comes from. We’ll also wager that after watching the documentary, which opens in Denver early next month, you’ll ponder the cost of modern-day agriculture on the environment and animal welfare and humanity itself.

The film, which was directed by Christopher Quinn and narrated by Natalie Portman, is visually and morally intense. It will leave even the most conscious consumer reeling and feeling complicit, but that’s the point: It’s meant to start a conversation and a revolution. “People kind of need to be shocked,” says Kate Kavanaugh of Western Daughters Butcher Shoppe. “The film forces you to ask yourself: Does this [way of eating] feel like it fits with my values?”

A prescreening of the film takes place tonight at the Mayan Theater, followed by a panel discussion with Quinn, Kavanaugh, and heritage turkey farmer Frank Reese (who is featured in the film). Alan Lewis of Natural Grocers will moderate. The event is not open to the public but to start the conversation, we asked Kavanaugh, who has long praised the notion of eating less meat, for a takeaway thought: “You have to set an intention for eating and live by it,” she says. “Set an intention about where your food comes from.”

If you go: Eating Animals will premiere at the Mayan Theater in Denver on July 6. Visit the Mayan’s website for tickets.