Meat is murder: Mother and Greenpeace unleash the monster in the kitchen

A new campaign from Greenpeace takes aim at deforestation across South America, with help from a young boy and an angry jaguar, which has been displaced from its natural habitat in Brazil in order to make room for grazing cattle and animal feed plantations.

The film, narrated by Brazilian actor Wagner Moura (Pablo Escobar in “Narcos”) and featuring a cameo from Paul McCartney, drives home the point that meat is the single biggest driver of deforestation worldwide.

It takes a similar approach to a previous animated film by Mother and Greenpeace, “There’s a Rang-tan in my bedroom,” which warned against the environmental damage caused by palm oil production.

That film was famously co-opted by another Mother client, Iceland, for a Christmas campaign in 2018. It was banned before it could be broadcast, but secured a lot of publicity for both the charity and the retailer. Having removed palm oil from its own-label products, Iceland could pull the stunt with impunity, but it’s unlikely to jump onto this one – unless its animal production standards are unexpectedly high.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Our relentless desire for meat on ever-increasing industrial scales is having lasting consequences for the health of our planet and ourselves. Everyone can make a difference. But it is the retailers and suppliers of meat who can have the most dramatic impact by cleaning up their supply chains.”

Ana Balarin, partner at Mother said: “The impact of industrial meat production in South America is so vast and challenging, to visualise that we chose to bring it to life through a human story, which makes the issue more relevant to our audience’s lives and offers them tangible action for positive change.”

The film will run in paid social and in cinemas globally.

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About Emma Hall

Emma Hall is a journalist and editorial consultant and is the former Europe Editor of Ad Age, where she covered European marketing advertising, digital and media stories. She has written for newspapers including the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and the Telegraph, and was previously a section editor at Campaign. Emma started her career in New York as a researcher for a biography of Keith Richards.