A vegetarian with a beef farm faces a life-altering moral impasse

After his father died in 2011, Jay Wilde inherited his family’s small beef farm in the English county of Derbyshire, and quickly found himself in an excruciatingly difficult position. A vegetarian for more than 25 years, his deep concern for animals only increased as he spent endless hours with his herd. Coming to recognise them as individuals with rich inner lives rather than just ‘units of production’, Wilde eventually found the emotional burden of sending his cattle to the abattoir too crushing to bear.

In 73 Cows (2018), Wilde and his wife Katja recall how they came to make the logistically and financially challenging choice to transition to vegan-produce farming. Melancholic yet stirring and gently hopeful, this short documentary by the UK director Alex Lockwood deftly traces the complexities of Wilde’s decisionmaking process. In doing so, it reaches far beyond the English countryside, grappling with questions of morality and ethics that anyone who has faced a difficult, potentially life-altering decision can likely relate to.