10/07/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JHYrQr8k2/
A new documentary follows Dutch poultry farmer Ruud Zanders as he grapples with a dilemma most of the industry refuses to name. He raises chickens for food and eats a fully plant-based diet himself.
The Vegan Poultry Farmer, directed by renowned photojournalist Kadir van Lohuizen, trails Zanders over two years as he travels the globe meeting food systems experts to ask whether animals are still necessary in the food system. The film was commissioned by The Food Revolution Foundation with support from the Barth-Misset Fund.
Zanders grew up on a large-scale family poultry operation in Limburg before a bankruptcy forced him to rethink everything. He went on to found Kipster, a smaller-scale operation marketed as among the most animal-friendly and climate-conscious poultry farms in Europe, which has since drawn international attention. He also co-founded RESPECTfarms, a cultivated meat company, and chairs Caring Farmers, a Dutch sustainable farming group.
In the film, Zanders is unusually frank for someone still inside the system. "Personally, I would say, stop exploiting farm animals," he says to the camera, before adding that producing eggs or other animal products in a genuinely animal-friendly way is "very complicated."
The documentary avoids easy answers. Zanders is still a farmer. He still ships eggs. The question the film leaves open is whether reform from inside industrial animal agriculture is possible, or whether it is a slower road to the same conclusion vegans have been making for decades.
