Latest news with #Cowspiracy
India Today
16-07-2025
- General
- India Today
True compassion begins on your plate: Acharya Prashant
In spiritual circles, we often hear about personal growth, stress relief, and calming of thoughts. Rarely does anyone bring up our daily treatment of animals. But one spiritual teacher has made it a key part of his work: Acharya Prashant. Acharya Prashant says that any path that ignores the pain of animals cannot be a real spiritual compassion and non-violence are often spoken of in a moralistic sense, he ties them directly to our daily actions: what we eat, how we act, how we treat others. He believes our treatment of animals shows a mirror to how much we truly understand ourselves. When that understanding becomes real, we won't feel the need to hurt others, including animals. True compassion begins on your plate: Acharya Prashant advertisementHe doesn't always say things that will please the listener. His way of speaking is simple, clear, and often even uncomfortable. But it comes from the center of honesty. For him, concern for animals isn't something additional to be done. It comes on its own when one begins to see things as they are. He brings to the center the rights of the voiceless who can't speak for AND ON-GROUND WORKPETA recently gave Acharya Prashant the 'Most Influential Vegan' award. In 2025, his foundation got an award for being the Best Animal Welfare Organisation for helping people live a more compassionate life and reducing the suffering of is the only Indian spiritual teacher shown in the popular award-winning documentary Cowspiracy directed by Kip Andersen. He has also been featured in many other documentaries and conversations about animal cruelty and living with had a widely seen discussion with Maneka Gandhi, a well-known animal rights figure in India. Before the 2023 Gadhimai festival, where lakhs of animals are slaughtered, he went to Bihar and met officials and media to support steps to reduce the killing of has spoken at more than 200 universities and colleges, including premier institutions like IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, BITS, and the University of California. In these sessions, he frequently asks students to look at not just the environmental impact of their food and lifestyle choices, but also the effect that they have on their own inner talks and videos about the dairy and meat industries, and practices that involve animal cruelty, have reached over 80 million of his online followers and 2024, over 50,000 families chose to go vegetarian after engaging with his work. That shift helped save more than one million animals in that year HE STANDS OUTAcharya Prashant's words come from deep Vedantic clarity. He doesn't promote superficial causes or trends. He says that when we stop acting from habit or inner confusion, caring for animals comes explains that seeing animals as objects of consumption is often a result of strong body-centeredness. As that tendency loosens, our actions also become more compassionate on their own, without explicit has often mentioned that spirituality is not just about some quiet time or ritualistic worship. It should be visible in our daily choices, we eat, what we support, and how we behave, these are all a part of it. One cannot claim to live in truth while turning away from the suffering of fellow isn't asking for small changes. He's asking people to look at themselves honestly and make choices from that honest after influencing millions of people towards more compassionate living via his talks and writings, he frequently shows up on ground if the situation so the Gadhimai event, he didn't just speak, he travelled, met officials, and took concrete steps. All of this shows his deep sense of harm is often accepted without much thought. It is seen as normal, often even Prashant asks people to stop and question all pre-existing notions and traditions. He doesn't ask them to follow anyone or oppose anything for the sake of it. He just asks them to feel pain. That's a fact. Ignoring that is avoiding truth. Through both inner clarity and outer effort, Acharya Prashant is helping more people see this. He's not just talking, he's helping change the way we think and live.- Ends
Daily Mirror
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
‘My Netflix documentary turned people vegan and you won't believe what I saw'
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT: The filmmaker and animals rights activist behind the 'groundbreaking' Netflix documentary shares the horrors that he uncovered 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.
