‘I made Netflix documentary which turned people vegan - you won't believe what I saw making it'

Kip Anderson’s conspiracy theories have shaken the world since his first documentary landed in 2014, with viewers claiming his Cowspiracy film will “convince” you to decide to become vegetarian or vegan.

Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret was the debut documentary from Anderson, which saw him take on the secrets behind the meat and dairy industry. It all started with a 2006 UN report that made one huge claim: “Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars.”

It was this statistic that struck a chord with Anderson and led him to investigate animal agriculture's impact on climate change and understand why some of the world’s leading environmental organisations were silent on the issue. After doing some digging, he quickly learnt that many of these groups received funding from businesses involved in the agriculture industries.

Ten years on from the launch of Cowspiracy, he shared some of the darkest things he saw while investigating these farms. The filmmaker said: "One of the hardest things I’ve done is look the animal in the eye, right before you know they're going to get killed."

"But as far as what you see in the film Cowspiracy, to this day, when we went to that organic dairy farm, that was the worst. I thought, ‘Ok, maybe an organic dairy farm - they're grass-fed, they can roam around. This is the best one, and maybe dairy's not that bad.’ And then when we got there, there were like 250 cows, and the energy was just heavy.”

The documentary showed an 'organic' dairy farm in the U.S where Kip saw around 100 small containers of baby cows, penned in and separated from their mothers. Anderson was surprised at this because, in his understanding, organic was supposed to be "the best of the best" when it came to this type of farming.

“A dairy cow is sad; it is sadder than a big animal getting killed for meat or any other animal because it's a mother that got forcibly raped, then it had a baby, but then it got the baby ripped away from her. And then not only that, her milk that's supposed to go to her baby is getting taken by someone else.

"You cannot come up with a more horrific story in the world. And then to top it off, this mother does this three or four more times. Recalling this mother cow, after she can't produce, she just collapses; she gets lifted onto a forklift and killed for hamburger meat. And then her skin is used for leather.”

Another scene in Cowspiracy saw Anderson, alongside his videographer Keegan Kuhn, visit a duck farmer who raises and kills the ducks himself at home. Recalling his visit to the farm, he said: “What's interesting about that scene is that when we went there, the guy was really nice. We thought we were going to not like him because he was killing ducks, and then we walked into his house, and there were stuffed ducks all around his house.

"He loves ducks, he is obsessed with ducks, and then it just transformed the way I look at hunters. Because he was taught that you kill ducks and you eat them, when really he just wants to be around ducks. And so I feel in hunting, people want to be close to some of these animals, but they don't know how to connect other than killing.”

Anderson has since dedicated his entire life to uncovering the truths behind animal products and lives a vegan lifestyle. After countless research projects, he has since created other documentaries, including Seaspiracy, What The Health and his most recent project, Christspiracy.

Many people put their own vegan diet down to watching his documentaries. One Rotten Tomatoes review even claims: "Whether this movie helped begin the conversation or not, I cannot say, but it certainly caused me to question my own diet and the effect it may be having on the planet."

The filmmaker has received his fair share of backlash and finds himself faced with people who aim to dispute the claims made in his documentaries. Anderson shared: “A nerve that it strikes with people I feel the most is guilt. Because why do you get so triggered about it? I think deep down, inherently, they know it’s unethical.

“People like to say, ‘No, you’ve got to eat animals because of protein,’ and ‘Jesus said so.’ When in reality, you know that they know deep down it's just not right.”

His passion for climate change helped to fuel the making of their 'bare bones' documentary, paired with £40,000 of their own money to help bring it to life. Although the activist joked that half of that money was just spent on paying his fellow filmmaker Keegan's rent.

“Then we did a Kickstarter; PETA found the film, and they loved it, and they sent it to a couple of their celebrity friends," he explained. "One of them was Darren Aronofsky (director of Black Swan, The Whale, and Noah), and he was like, ‘Oh, my friend Leo is working on Don't Look Up, and he was having trouble on how to make the film. So we got to watch it, and we loved it.

His famous friend, Leo, just happened to be Leonardo DiCaprio, who helped to take the film to new heights and onto the streaming service Netflix. Anderson said: “It’s funny because in the movie (Don't Look Up), Leo’s wearing a hat (a signature look of Kip’s), which he never does, and doing these little things that I think we influenced him on how to do it.

"But it was a massive impact on him, and he wanted to jump on it. The film was already made; he said, ‘I want to be an executive producer; I’ll take it to Netflix,’ and that happened; it was surreal. We talked on the phone with him, and he’s genuinely such a nice, passionate person. So that was super exciting.”

Although a downside to this process did mean six months of relentless "fact checking" with the A-list actor's lawyers. "His lawyers made us have triple sources for every fact," Anderson shared. "That’s why when people say, Ii any fact isn't true… you have no idea. It was so locked tight. If any of these facts were not true, we would be getting sued.”

The filmmaker believes that the answer to reducing the consumption of animal products is down to the U.S. government cutting down on subsidies. This is a sum of money from the state towards an industry or business which helps to keep the price for their products or services low.

He said: “If subsidies were erased and we really focused on putting subsidies towards education and using this money elsewhere, it would benefit. And nobody’s really tried that hard. And I think that's a realistic way to focus on the movement. Because when a hamburger costs $15, they’re not going to eat it."

Anderson's latest endeavour, Christpiracy, tackles similar issues, but this time, with a focus on the truths about 'animal cruelty in the name of religion'. Its tagline states: "Christspiracy: The Spirituality Secret is a thrilling, eye-opening documentary revealing the most explosive cover-up in 2,000 years."

To learn more about animal agriculture and the potential benefits a vegan lifestyle could have on the planet, Cowspiracy is available to stream on Netflix now.