The Changing Range

Duration: 800 ft.

Creator: Environmental Protection Agency

Complete Record: Environmental Protection Agency film about the consequences of cattle waste from feed lots on the water supply. Family eating meat, meat in the markets, meat being cut up, butcher with large cattle carcass. Lots of shots of growing cattle industry, family farms to factory farming of cattle. Bulldozer pushing giant amount of manure. Waste going into rivers and streams. Shots of lots of dead fish as a result of pollution in streams and lakes by too much cattle manure. Shots of capitol of Kansas and the development of new law. Aerial shots of water treatment plants and large farms with up to 30,000 cows. Man talks about the new way of dealing with disposal of waste, water, and treatment plants to deal with too much manure and waste from the large scale consumption of beef and other animal products in the United States. Irrigation shots. Agricultural Engineers survey and design feed lots to reduce waste and conserve the land. October 18, 1972 congress passes important law on waste management for agribusiness’s. EPA director delivers very stilted speech that explains the streamlined new laws and techniques that apply to this problem. Holding ponds, reuse of waste, landscape of feeding lots, use of dirty water with animal waste to be used on the land as fertilized waters. Composting encouraged and organic gardening. New farms designed to enclose a feed lot so that weather does not hurt the product. Another official discusses the science and application of the new laws. Talks about research EPA is doing. More shots of family farms and discusses that today we need specialized farms. Aerials of farms and feed lots. The cattle in this film are treated and discussed as an investment and a product, not as sentient living beings.