On this day in vegan history · February 9, 2020
Joaquin Phoenix Takes His Oscar Speech to a Slaughterhouse
Hours after telling the Academy Awards audience how the dairy industry treats mother cows, Joaquin Phoenix walked into a Los Angeles slaughterhouse and carried a newborn calf out of it.
The facts
- Date
- February 9, 2020, Phoenix wins Best Actor for Joker at the 92nd Academy Awards; the rescue follows the next day
- Location
- Manning Beef, a cattle slaughterhouse in Pico Rivera, Los Angeles County
- The animals
- Liberty, a three-year-old Wagyu cow, and her newborn calf Indigo, born about a week before the rescue
- Organizers
- LA Animal Save and Farm Sanctuary; this was the fifth mother-calf rescue LA Animal Save had secured from Manning Beef
Accepting the Best Actor Oscar for Joker on February 9, 2020, Joaquin Phoenix used his speech to describe how the dairy industry artificially inseminates cows, takes their calves away, and sells the milk meant for those calves. The next day he went to Manning Beef, a cattle slaughterhouse in Pico Rivera, California, with Rooney Mara, both their mothers, LA Animal Save founder Amy Jean Davis, Earthlings director Shaun Monson, and Farm Sanctuary co-founder Gene Baur. There they collected a three-year-old Wagyu cow who had given birth on the property days earlier and her week-old calf, and drove them to Farm Sanctuary instead of the kill floor. Phoenix named them Liberty and Indigo.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that's intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.
Joaquin Phoenix, Best Actor acceptance speech, 92nd Academy Awards, February 9, 2020
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Why it still matters
It turned a line from an awards-show speech, easy to applaud and forget, into a specific cow and calf with names, living proof that the industry Phoenix described a night earlier has a face. Manning Beef itself closed for good in 2025, the last cattle slaughterhouse in Los Angeles County to do so.
Sources
- The Hollywood Reporter
- Rev, Joaquin Phoenix Oscar Acceptance Speech Transcript
- Farm Sanctuary, Joaquin Phoenix Rescues Mother Cow and Newborn Calf Day after Academy Awards Win
- CBS News, Joaquin Phoenix rescued a mother cow and her calf from a slaughterhouse the day after winning an Oscar
- Farm Sanctuary, Manning Beef's Closure Should Mark a New Chapter for LA's Cows
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