Q&A screening with special guest Tammi Jonas
Tammi Jonas was tired of choosing between saving the world or savouring it, so figured out a way to do both. Having previously been a vegetarian, she is now the proprietor of Jonai Farms. She has gleaned her wisdom from a range of ethical US farmers (including farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface), in order to establish Jonai Farms, 69 acres at Eganstown, just outside the beautiful town of Daylesford, where she raises happy, tasty, heritage-breed pastured pigs. Tammi enacts food sovereignty, which asserts everyone's right to culturally appropriate, nutritious and delicious food grown in ecologically-sound and ethical ways, and our right to collectively determine our own food and agriculture systems. She is one of Australia’s leading advocates of sustainable food practices. After being the first farm in Australia to crowdfund major infrastructure in 2013 to build a licensed butcher’s shop on the farm, she succeeded again in 2014 and built a licensed curing room and commercial kitchen to make farmstead cured meats and a range of charcuterie, as well as bone stocks and lard-based soap, to ultimately deliver a full nose to tail no-waste offering. ‘Waste’ from the boning room includes bones after pate and bone broth making, which are then pyrolised into bonechar and used as fertiliser for our small commercial crop of garlic, taking us from 'paddock to plate' to 'paddock to paddock'.
Directed and produced by Christopher Quinn (Sundance award winner God Grew Tired of Us ), Eating Animals tells the story of the beginning of the end of factory farming. Produced with Academy Award winner Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer, the film is the feature - length adaptation of Foer’s critically acclaimed book of the same name that starts out with a simple question — where do our eggs, dairy and meat come from? Through the intimate narratives of several farmers dedicated to bringing their trade – and the way we eat – back to its roots, the film explores the notion of stepping away from the practices of the past 40 years that have polluted our environment, endangered our health, and caused us all to be complicit in the inhumane treatment of animals. Looking at the costs we’ve incurred as our country has become dominated by massive industrial complexes designed to feed the masses, Eating Animals paints a picture of a future where traditional farming is no longer a distant memory, but is instead the only way forward. Eating Animals is executive produced by the founders of Twitter, Evan Williams and Biz Stone.