Need for Meat

Marijn is a young mother from Amsterdam attempting to kick her addiction to meat by becoming a slaughterer’s apprentice and getting counseling from a psychologist. Why does being a meat junkie leave you with a nagging sense of guilt? And why is there such a conceptual gulf between the animal and the abstracted slice of meat that comes from it? In her search for answers, TV director and food journalist Marijn Frank embarks on a personal, eye-opening, funny and courageous quest on which she encounters neurologists, in vitro meat developers, 100,000 broiler chickens, a sexy chef and her daughter Sally’s meat-free plate. New impressions start reverberating around her mind as she daydreams about meat, mashes up her daughter’s food or bites into a meat sandwich while on the move. The two leitmotifs running through the film are her weeks as an intern at an abattoir – where she rises up the deboning hierarchy – and the subsequent sessions with her psychologist about the progress she’s making. Then the day comes that Marijn has to take up the cattle gun and decide once and for all where she stands. This film examines moral values, hypocrisy and the symbolic value of meat – and stops to think about the 500 million animals slaughtered in the Netherlands each year.