The Meatrix is a humorous 3-minute Flash animation on the American meat machine, and, in general, on the global factory farming methods. The Meatrix shows the life of a pig, Leo (a sort of parody of Keanu Reaves in the more famous Matrix movie), who lives on a pleasant family farm... or so he thinks. Leo is approached by a trench coat-clad cow, Moopheus, who shows him the ugly truth about agribusiness, complete with a send-up of the ‘stop-motion’ camerawork immortalized by the Matrix. At the end of the movie, viewers are directed to an ‘action page’ where they are encouraged to eat sustainable meat and support local family farmers. Launched in November 2003 by the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE), The Meatrix has been seen by well over 2.5 million viewers worldwide in only 6 weeks: an unprecedented triumph for an online advocacy film! Moreover, it has been picked up by outlets ranging from USA Today and CNN Headline News, to The Guardian (UK), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NPR and MichaelMoore.com.
As a result of this enormous international success, GRACE - whose work consists of opposing factory farming and promoting a sustainable food production system - received many requests for Meatrix t-shirts so they decided to respond to this popular demand by creating a funny and varied line of Meatrix merchandise.

Products: T-shirts, caps, mugs, bags, lunchboxes, mouse pads and other items reproducing the characters of The Meatrix.

Special features: all the proceedings from the sales of The Meatrix merchandise will go to FARM AID that, within the Saving Family Farms Program, provides immediate and effective support services to farm families in crisis; emergency grants to small farms threatened with hunger and loss of heat or electricity, and program grants to family farm organizations that work locally to strengthen family farm.