Have you seen the new documentary series You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment on Netflix? If so, you may have spotted Mercy For Animals president Leah Garcés and Transfarmation™ farmer Craig Watts.
You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment follows four sets of identical twins who participated in a Stanford University study comparing the health effects of a nutritious vegan diet and a nutritious omnivorous diet. By studying identical twins, researchers could help control variables like genetic differences and upbringing.
The study found that a vegan diet improved overall cardiovascular health, but You Are What You Eat doesn’t stop at health benefits. The four-episode series also explores animal welfare, environmental justice, food apartheid, food safety, and worker’s rights. In episodes 3 and 4, Watts shares his experience raising chickens for a major meat company.
“They crammed 30,000 chickens into 20,000 square feet—meaning that is 0.67 square feet per bird. That is a sheet of notebook paper. They’re crawling all over each other, and they’re scratching each other and opening up wounds. Bam. Enter bacteria. You had issues.”
—Craig Watts, Former Factory Chicken Farmer
After meeting Garcés and with the help of The Transfarmation Project®, Watts started converting his now-empty chicken sheds into spaces for growing mushrooms.
In episode 4, Garcés describes how her unlikely partnership with Watts began.
“By every measure, he was supposed to be my enemy. … But Craig hated the system as much as I did. And he was a victim of the system. After he decided he was closing his doors to factory farming, we started thinking about how we could use these [chicken] houses for something else.”
—Leah Garcés, CEO and President of Mercy For Animals
You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment is now streaming on Netflix! Looking for other inspiring things to watch? A global survey just revealed the top documentaries that have encouraged people to go vegan!
