CUTTING-EDGE FLASH MOVIE THE MEATRIX ENCOURAGES CONSUMERS TO VISIT THE EAT WELL GUIDE
Innovative email advocacy campaign features humorous Matrix-like scenario putting farm animals against factory farm machine to protect dream of sustainable food
(New York, NY), October 7, 2003 – A wittily amusing 2-minute Flash™ movie called The Meatrix will hit thousands of email inboxes nationwide on November 3 as part of an email advocacy campaign led by GRACE to entertain and educate the public on the environmental and health risks of factory farming while encouraging support of sustainable food production. At the end of the movie viewers are encouraged to peruse the Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org) – a free, national online guide to sustainably-raised meat. The Meatrix was created by Free Range Graphics (www.freerangegraphics.com), a design firm serving non-profit advocacy groups, as part of its annual Free Range Graphics Flash Grant, which was awarded this year to the GRACE Factory Farm Project.
The Meatrix, which is a humorous spin off of the trend-setting motion picture The Matrix, features Moopheus, a shadowy cow character in sunglasses and trench coat, and Leo, a happy pig living on a small family farm. Leo's dreamlike world of open pastures, fresh air and good food crumbles when Moopheus reveals that his idyllic, pastoral world is not real, but a fabrication we like to believe is real. Moopheus goes on to uncover the "real world," The Meatrix, a panorama of greedy agribusiness corporations replacing small family farms; of unhealthy conditions, in which animals are raised in cramped barns with no light or fresh air; of antibiotics used routinely to promote unnatural growth; and of thousands of tons of waste that endanger land, water, and air. At the end, Moopheus says that the most important way to oppose the factory farm machine is to support smaller, sustainable farms. Viewers are encouraged to enter their zip code to access the Eat Well Guide, where they can acquaint themselves with small farms, stores, and restaurants in their areas that offer sustainable meat.
"We plan to send this terrific animation to our email lists nationwide," says Diane Hatz, Director of Marketing and Communications for GRACE. "We think it will be so much fun and so engaging that people will forward it to colleagues and friends, helping to spread the word about the dangers of factory farms and the importance of supporting small, local farming for a more sustainable food supply."
Email advocacy campaigns through animated movies are an increasingly popular tool for non-profits to get their message across. Flash™ advocacy movies are 1 to 2-minute shorts that encapsulate an organization’s message within an amusing and entertaining story line, sometimes ending with a clickable call to action so users can act on what they’ve just seen. These movies also introduce Internet users to a new world of web entertainment. While most web content is flat and static, Flash™ films are fully animated and enhanced with voices and sound effects.
The Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org) is a project of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and GRACE providing a convenient, searchable directory of producers, grocery stores, restaurants, and mail-order outlets that offer sustainable meat, including organic.
The GRACE Factory Farm Project (www.factoryfarm.org), a division of GRACE, works to eliminate factory farming in favor a sustainable food production system which is healthful and humane, economically viable and ecologically sound.
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