Drake, P., 2016.

Approaches to cinema and politics: Introduction

This chapter focuses on a number of traditional and new media formats promoting awareness of animal issues: films produced by animal welfare organizations, including footage shot undercover by animal activists, and feature-length animal rights (AR) documentaries. In 1940, the Council of Justice to Animals and Humane Slaughter Association produced a film promoting the use of the bolt gun in so-called humane slaughter in Britain. Laconic in tone, the film is a series of set pieces demonstrating the killing of pigs, sheep, and calves with and without the use of the bolt gun. In 2014, Mercy for Animals (MFA) released a video shot undercover in a Turkey hatchery in North Carolina owned by the Butterball Company. The video depicts birds having their sensitive toes and beaks cut and burned off without any painkillers, workers callously throwing and dropping these fragile animals, and sick or injured birds being thrown into a pit to be ground up alive.