Toronto's annual Planet In Focus Environmental Film Festival (Oct 24 – Oct 28, 2007) included several films that focused on food and animals:

Cow vs Clown (Meat your maker) – A cow that escapes the chopping block in a meat processing plant seeks revenge on the evil corporate clown! This animated film is part of the children's Program. 

Fridays at the Farm – Through a personal visual diary of his experience on a community farm, filmmaker Richard Hoffmann examines the natural practice of food production. Using a digital still camera, Richard took roughly 20,000 pictures of vegetables and herbs, insect life, and human activity on the farm with the hope of staying connected to the food he and his family eat. (View the entire 19 minute film at the film's website).

Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil – The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 drew Cuba into an economic catastrophe. Overnight, the country lost more than half of its oil imports and 80 percent of its food capacity. Against all odds, the country coped remarkably well by creating a sustainable local economy focusing largely on organic agricultural methods. (See trailer at the film's website).

Sludge Diet – Some call it poison others hail it as environmentally friendly. Who’s telling us the truth about Fertile Residual Material (FRM) aka sludge and who’s lying? The continued use of sewage sludge in agriculture and regulating its use to prevent harmful effects on soil, vegetation, animals and people - is an ongoing debate.

[Update: the filmmakers told me that most sewege sludge is applied to feed crops used for farm animals, but it is also used for some human crops, such as potatoes. After the film came out, Montreal banned the application of "bio solids" on crops. Now they burn the stuff. Most of Toronto's sludge is landfilled. There are ways to avoid sludge-grown food: eat organic, avoid food grown in the U.S., and eat low on the food chain. NOW Magazine has an excellent article about this debate. –Steve]

Planet in Focus also had a community Eco Exchange (Sat and Sun). We were invited to set up a Veggie Challenge table (see photo below). Other tables include: World Wildlife Fund, Windshare, Bullfrog Power, Greenpeace and Merchants of Green Coffee. The Eco Fair took place in the same building where many of the films were being shown: Innis College at 2 Sussex Ave (map).