New film “Common Enemy” fingers factory farming, if anyone sees it

Factory farming lurks almost unmentioned behind many political issues

            OKLAHOMA CITY,  Oklahoma––The Humane League on March 7,  2024 released Common Enemy,  a free-to-view 35-minute online documentary exposé of factory farming in Oklahoma,  linked to every mention in this review.

The timing could scarcely have been worse.  Common Enemy,  released a week earlier to selected media,  debuted for the public only hours before U.S. President Joe Biden delivered the 2024 State of the Union address.

Former president Donald Trump two days earlier clinched the Republican nomination to run against Biden in a November rematch of the 2020 national election.

Oklahoma is a hard sell to non-Oklahomans

Those two political events might have upstaged any film release,  let alone a low-budget independent production featuring no participants who might be widely recognized either outside of Oklahoma or to people younger than late middle age.

Not helping is that the general topic of Oklahoma has not sparked a hit since the Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical Oklahoma debuted in 1943.

Among the quintessential flyover states,  Oklahoma has come to stink of pig,  poultry,  and feedlot steer manure from Arkansas west to New Mexico and Kansas south to Texas,  and to have become among the last bastions of cockfighting and dogfighting,  precisely because not many people not from Oklahoma notice or give a damn about it.

Factory farming is invisible omnipresent issue on national political agenda

Common Enemy filmmaker Adam Peditto no doubt hoped to put factory farming on the 2024 national election agenda,  especially factory farming in Oklahoma,  but Biden in his 2024 State of the Union address mentioned factory farming only in a passing reference to family-owned farms struggling under a heavy debt burden,  never mentioned Oklahoma at all,  and Trump,  in his entire political career,  has yet to discuss factory farming,  whether in Oklahoma or anywhere else.

Yet,  even if politicians shy away from explicit mention of the many environmental,  economic,  humane,  and social justice issues associated with factory farming,  they are all very much part of the 2024 political agenda,  whether or not voters realize the extent to which factory farming practices shape topics including food prices,  transportation and energy policy,  and immigration,  both legal and illegal,  lured by the demand of agribusiness for cheap,  easily exploitable labor.

Audiences don’t watch this stuff for fun

Will Common Enemy advance public understanding of how much factory farming practices directly affect ordinary citizens?

Much as ANIMALS 24-7 would like to say yes,  reality is that it will not.  It will be watched chiefly by the already persuaded.

Indeed,  Common Enemy does,  as Humane League promotional materials promise,  “offer a look at the sobering consequences of factory farms,  also known as concentrated animal feeding operations.”

Also true is that as the Humane League and Common Enemy both explain,  “The number of American farms continues to decline,  with 80% of domestic food production now controlled by a handful of major corporations.”

Cowspiracy was funny

But no,  learning more about this is not why anyone chooses to watch a movie devoid of entertainment value––unlike the 2015 breakthrough hit Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,  produced by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn,  whose not-so-secret weapons were suspense and a sense of humor.

Cowspiracy covered similar ground,  hitting far harder,  reaching millions of Americans,  because,  even as serious as Anderson and Kuhn were in exposing the reluctance of major environmental organizations to address factory farming,  they were funny,  and their conclusions did not come across as pre-ordained.

The “common enemy” comes in under the political radar

Contrary to the focal claim of Common Enemy,  “farmers,  environmentalists,  and animal welfare advocates” do not “find themselves united against one common enemy:  industrialized animal agriculture,”  even if they should.

Too much else divides these various sectors:  Trump vs. Biden,  urban vs. rural,  enviros vs. ruthless capitalists,  big business vs. small business,  vegans and vegetarians vs. meat-eaters who hunt and fish for sport.

Moreover,  the political support base for industrialized animal agriculture knows how to play these differences like a fiddle to keep voters dancing to the tune called by those who deliver the biggest campaign contributions.

“Firsthand accounts from Oklahoma residents”

“Common Enemy features firsthand accounts from Oklahoma residents pushing back against industrialized animal agriculture,”  says the promotional literature,  “including Pamela Kingfisher, a member of the Cherokee Nation and director at Green Country Guardians, former district attorney Drew Edmondson,  Dr. Lesa Staubus, DVM,  Denise Deason-Toyne, president of Save the Illinois River (STIR),  and Deacon Jones,  a former hog farm employee.”

No,  that is not Deacon Jones the pro football Hall of Famer.  And Drew Edmonson is probably best known as former Oklahoma attorney general.

With all due respect for the relatively obscure Common Enemy lineup and their accomplishments,  the players appear to have been chosen more in pursuit of “intersectionality,”  a politically correct term for trying to be all things to all people,  than for their rabble-rousing voices––or perhaps their remarks were edited to remove anything potentially offensive to anyone,  including specific naming of individual names in a state notorious for corruption.

From Dustbowl to reforestation

A paradox,  incidentally,  that may be noticed only by those of us old enough to remember 1950s newsreels of Oklahoma recovering from the Dustbowl years is that while the many Common Enemy aerial views show how windbreaks planted in the late 1930s have not been well maintained,  and illustrate how the contour plowing that was introduced then has been neglected in recent decades (although still evident),  what in the mid-20th century were miles of open fields are now subsumed by extensive woodlots.

Oklahoma today may have more woodlands than even in the era of vast herds of free-roaming bison,  who tended to keep the trees nibbled and trampled down.

These young woodlands appear to be fed by the same leaking effluent that Common Enemy shows turning the Illinois River and tributaries into cesspools.

Darkly polluted cloud

Reforestation,  from one perspective,  might be the silver lining in a darkly polluted cloud.

But in times of drought,  more and more common due to global warming stoked by greenhouse gas emissions from the manure of more than 200 million factory-farmed animals in Oklahoma alone,  reforestation––despite an abnormally slow 2023 fire season––is also making the state more vulnerable to wildfire.

Ironically,  when Oklahoma was first settled,  including by the forcibly displaced Cherokee who arrived along the “Trail of Tears,”  the settlers lived in sod houses and heated with buffalo chips,  because there so few trees around that wood could only be used for rafters supporting roofs of hides and sod.

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