Joaquin Phoenix & Rooney Mara to Produce Docu on Factory Farming

It's no secret that Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara are passionate about spreading knowledge about a vegan lifestyle and how we as humans can live more compassionate lives toward ourselves, the planet, and animals. In May, the two partnered with Beyond Meat to support those experiencing food insecurity, and in February, Phoenix used his Oscar speech as an opportunity to ask attendees and viewers to ditch dairy.

Now, Hollywood's favorite vegan couple is teaming up with Cowspiracy and What the Health filmmaker Keegan Kuhn and 73 Cows director Alex Lockwood to executive produce a documentary about factory farming and the harms this industry poses, like the potential to spread zoonotic diseases, which could threaten the world with another pandemic.

Titled The End of Medicine, the documentary is set to cease production at the end of 2020, and could not be timelier: Although the film began production in Fall of 2019 before the international lockdowns, the COVID-19 coronavirus has forced the world to reckon with the fact that deadly viruses can take the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and change the world in an instant.

“We hope that The End of Medicine is an eye-opening call to action and ignites a spark of willingness to change our habits. The science is irrefutable. Modern animal agriculture will continue to make us sick if we don’t radically change our patterns of consumption,” said Mara and Phoenix in a joint statement.

This documentary looks to be a cautionary warning about ending the prevalence of factory farms, which serve as a hotbed for death, disease, and the spread of illness. A recent study by ProVeg asserted that factory farming is the "single most risky behavior" that could land us in the midst of another pandemic.

Dr. Michael Greger, author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, explained why factory farms are such a high risk for the spread of illness, saying, "When we overcrowd animals by the thousands, in cramped football-field-size sheds, to lie beak to beak or snout to snout, and there’s stress crippling their immune systems, and there’s ammonia from the decomposing waste burning their lungs, and there’s a lack of fresh air and sunlight — put all these factors together and you have a perfect storm environment for the emergence and spread of disease.“

Look out for The End of Medicine, which is set to wrap production in late 2020, and will likely be released in 2021.