The slaughter of livestock is compared to the Holocaust in a shocking new documentary – which also claims Jesus Christ was crucified for condemning the killing of animals for food in a secret 2,000-year coverup.
Christspiracy: The Spirituality Secret, the follow up to Seaspiracy and Cowspiracy, documents a wealth of somewhat bizarre claims in an attempt to lay bare the cruelty humans inflict on animals in the name of religion, as filmmakers Kip Andersen and Kameron Waters hunt out an ethical or spiritual way to kill.
A child forced to slaughter a young deer as part of a Christian initiation, the mass sacrifice of cows at a Hindu festival in Nepal, and prisoners tasked with killing 3,000 cows a day are just some of the uncomfortable scenes that feature.
Dog rescue activist Marc Ching also directly compares the killing of animals for food to the Holocaust, which has been condemned as ‘inappropriate’ by the Anti-Defamation League.
Dog rescue activist Marc Ching directly compares the killing of animals for food to the Holocaust in the shocking documentary film Christspiracy: The Spirituality Secret
The documentary sets out to expose truths about animal cruelty in the name of religion
‘People all over Asia come to this city to eat dogs and we’ve rescued thousands and thousands of dogs,’ he says in the two hour documentary.
‘I started going undercover into these slaughterhouses. It was so shocking and so devastating and it’s sad that it’s pushed me into making a connection that there’s no difference between a cow or a pig or a sheep or a dog.’
Breaking down in tears, he adds: ‘A lot of people don’t know, but I don’t just do dogs. I go into pig slaughterhouses and cow farms, but every time I rescued one, I saw myself dying there.
‘In that moment when an animal is being pushed to their death, there’s no hope. There’s no chance of a better life, there’s no tomorrow, no divine intervention.
‘I don’t know what I am now, but definitely not religious.
‘I think we’re living through the modern day holocaust. I think that is the atrocity of the 21st century: eating animals.’
Holocaust survivor Alex Heshaft agrees, and claims that children are indoctrinated to believe that certain types of animals are raised as pets and others are raised to die for our food consumption.
‘After the war, eventually I went to work for an environmental consulting firm at their slaughterhouse and I was walking around taking notes and I suddenly came across dozens of heads, hearts, hooves, and animal bodies,’ he tells the filmmakers.
The documentary aired clips of the mass sacrifice of cows at a Hindu festival in Nepal
A young boy is forced to slaughter a deer as part of a Christian Youth Hunting Club initiation – and has to wear the animal’s blood on his cheeks until the following morning
‘My first reaction was remembering the body parts that I saw in Auschwitz: The Jewish victims, the members of my own family that perished in those camps.
‘The use of cattle cars to transport my people to their death camps. The housing, in tight wooden crates.
‘And identifying the victims by a number, the deception, so that people outside the walls didn’t really know what was going on.’
Six million Jewish people were systematically murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Filmmaker Kip voiced his uneasiness over the explicit comparison.
‘It felt uncomfortable to compare the Holocaust to killing animals, but Alex told us that the word Holocaust originally referred to a Jewish animal sacrifice which meant barbecued on the altar, a common practice from the temple which Jesus called the Den of Thieves,’ he says in a voiceover.
The comparison was condemned as ‘inappropriate’ by the Anti-Defamation League, who told DailyMail.com in a statement: ‘The Holocaust, the intentional slaughter of six million Jews and millions of others at the hands of the Nazis, was an event unparalleled in history and for which there are few – if any – points of comparison.
Whistleblower Rob Munro claimed that Jesus was crucified for calling out the killing of animals for profit and consumption
Dr Andrew Linzey claims that Paul the Apostle was famously anti-vegetarian and helped spread this message as Christianity grew
‘We urge animal rights activists to avoid Holocaust analogies, as concern for the welfare of animals is an issue that should stand on its own merits, rather than relying on inappropriate comparisons to the Nazi’s systematic murder of Jews during World War II.’
Elsewhere Kip and Kameron discover that prisoners on parole are allegedly being forced to slaughter animals as a form of ‘slave labor’ for FPL Foods, a processor of meat products which prides itself on being a ‘humane slaughterhouse.’
Speaking anonymously, an FPL employee claims that the laborers kill between 2,000 and 3,000 cows a day.
‘It’s really mentally disturbing,’ he says. ‘Sometimes you can have nightmares just dreaming about slaughtering and all that. And there’s always possibilities that you might just snap. 85 per cent of them have been in prison.
‘It’s just really a bad idea for a person that’s been locked up for a long time to even carry knives. And blood everywhere, killing them cows or being around that.
‘They give you a job and you have no choice not to work it. You have to do what they tell you to do and if you don’t, they send you back [to prison].’
According to the filmmakers, staff are paid as a low as 93 cents a day which they brand ‘slave labor with PTSD.’
Another chilling moment sees a young boy forced to slaughter a deer as part of a Christian Youth Hunting Club initiation.
Christspiracy follows the 2021 documentary film Seaspiracy, and 2014’s Cowspiracy
‘The film explores the answer from many of the world’s religions and exposes unforgiving truths about animal cruelty in the name of religion’
After shooting the animal, the man accompanying him wiped its blood onto his cheeks, telling him that it should remain on his face until tomorrow morning.
‘When I saw the deer dead, I felt… I don’t know how to explain it. Just kind of bad,’ the young boy admits. ‘I just went along with it.’
Perhaps the most bizarre revelation in Christspiracy, however, is the claim that Jesus was supposedly crucified because he took a stand against the killing of animals for food and profit in a ‘2000-year coverup.’
Whistleblower and Pastor of the Humanitarian Church, Rob Munro, claims that the Bible’s Den of Thieves story from Matthew has been misrepresented for centuries.
Widespread translations state that Jesus had scorned people in the temple for turning it into a ‘den of thieves,’ but according to Christspiracy, the word ‘thieves’ is a mistranslation – with the true Hebrew translation meaning ‘violent one.’
This, the film implies, suggests that Jesus not only laid down his life for humans, but for animals too.
Speaking in the documentary, Rob says: ‘The church will tell you that the story of the den of thieves was about Jesus Christ knocking over the money changer’s table. That’s not the case.
‘The truth of the story is, Jesus Christ was striking at the root of all there is to this evil of oppression of people, the construct of war in one fell swoop.
‘He was crucified for disrupting the culture from the time, which was killing animals for profit and eating them for food.
‘If we look close enough, we can see the hints in paintings, in scripture, it’s just that it’s easier to cover up the truth than to talk about it.’
Filmmaker Kameron Waters (pictured) set out to answer whether there is an ethical or spiritual way to kill an animal along with Kip Andersen
Jesus had called the people in the temple ‘violent’ for the sacrifice of animals for profit
The new documentary will have a limited global cinema release on March 20 and 24
Speaking to Oxford theologian Dr Andrew Linzey, Kip asks: ‘How has this truth about Jesus been covered up for 2,000 years?’
Dr Andrew replies: ‘Because of course, the meat eaters won!
‘As it’s often been said, history is the province of the winners – and now we’re living with the consequences.’
He further explains that Paul the Apostle strongly opposed Jesus’s vegetarianism, and following his crucifixion was able to advocate for meat eating.
‘What we do know is that Paul was famously anti-vegetarian and his influence has undoubtedly influenced the direction of Christianity, especially during the first century,’ Dr Andrew claims.
Christspiracy follows the 2021 documentary film Seaspiracy, and 2014’s Cowspiracy.
Joaquin Phoenix, the Oscar-winning actor who previously worked with Kip and Kameron, said: ‘Christspiracy… takes us on a philosophical journey to find out the truth in relation to Jesus and the animals.
‘The film explores the answer from many of the world’s religions and exposes unforgiving truths about animal cruelty in the name of religion.’
Christspiracy: The Spirituality Secret is in cinemas on March 20 and 24.
