Jamie Berger, ’09, is a passionate environmental justice advocate, writer, and documentary filmmaker on a mission to end factory farming. In 2022, her critically acclaimed feature-length film, “The Smell of Money,” exposed the environmental, social, and economic injustices perpetuated by one of North Carolina’s most powerful agricultural industries. Now, she aims to ignite a global dialogue on justice and sustainability in our food systems.
FINDING PURPOSE
Berger’s journey to environmental activism began at Cary Academy in Upper School science teacher Heidi Maloy’s advanced environmental science class.
“Her class was the start; it opened my eyes to the state of the world and the way humans impact the environment. Sustainability felt like my calling.”
In 2009, Berger followed that call to the University of North Carolina, immersing herself in urban design and renewable energy classes as an environmental studies major. While her coursework was interesting and important, something was missing.
“Ms. Maloy’s class had taught me the incredible impact our food system has on the environment—but that wasn’t being addressed in my classes.”
Determined to fill the gap, Berger turned to UNC’s interdisciplinary studies program to create her own major—food studies—that focused on the politics of food production and its effects on the environment and public health. Her senior honors thesis delved into North Carolina’s powerful pork industry, examining its history, role in state politics, and its broad economic, public health, environmental, and animal welfare impacts.
OPENING EYES
A North Carolina native, Berger was shocked by what she uncovered—a world vastly different from her idyllic childhood home, just 40 miles down the road. “Pork production facilities in North Carolina are disproportionately located in low-income and Black and brown communities. I began to grasp not only the staggering pollution from the pork industry, but also its outsized effect on the communities least equipped to fight back.”
Strengthened in her resolve, Berger embarked on a career focused on dismantling the industrialized model of animal agriculture upon graduation. She secured an internship with a public health nonprofit in Washington, D.C., working in government affairs on issues related to nutrition and ending animal testing. The experience offered her a bird’s-eye view of the power dynamics at play in industrial food production.
In 2015, Berger joined the nonprofit Mercy for Animals. As she transformed raw footage from undercover farm investigations into powerful visual stories, she discovered a knack for video production. Her videos resonated widely, going viral and reaching millions.
MORAL IMPERATIVE
Emboldened by her success, Berger—a natural storyteller and gifted writer (she credits her love of writing to her time in former Head of Upper School Robin Follet’s English classes)—began to entertain a bold idea with a colleague: what if they created a full-length documentary that could raise awareness around pressing environmental issues and serve as an advocacy tool for change?
The decision to return to Berger’s undergraduate research and existing networks to focus their project on the pork industry—ideal in its encapsulation of the many intersecting and multidimensional issues that plague industrial farming—was an easy one.
“The Smell of Money” was born.
“Whether you look at factory farming from an environmental standpoint or a human health standpoint, whether you care about animal rights or workers’ rights, or farmers and rural economies, or want to preserve access to nature for future generations—all of these issues are wrapped up in this one industry,” shares Berger. “If you step back and look at it holistically, it’s very clear that no one is winning in this system other than these gigantic corporations that are profiting off multiple kinds of horrific exploitation.”
“Injustice, exploitation, oppression—these are built into the business model of this industry. It wouldn’t exist as it does if not for the fact that, in North Carolina in particular, it is quite literally built on land stolen from the family members of enslaved people, and the people who work in these facilities are still among the most vulnerable in our society. Worker exploitation and human rights abuses are critical to the way that this industry operates. That fires me up. That makes me angry. I see it as a moral imperative to try to shift our food system in a different direction.”
CHIPPING AWAY
Undoubtedly, Berger’s film is helping to make that shift. Since its release in 2022, “The Smell of Money” has won several awards at film festivals across the country and benefited from remarkable grassroots support and word of mouth. To date, it has had over 100 impact screenings nationwide, sparking a global dialogue that has raised awareness and inspired others to join her cause.
“It’s been inspiring and exciting to me to see how the film has been received. The best part has been seeing all kinds of advocacy organizations using the film to further their missions. Whether my film is being used for policy advocacy or constituent education, it’s helping to bring up a new generation of people who better understand these issues and who are fired up to take action.”
You can count on Cary Academy’s Middle School scientists as fired-up members of that next generation. Last spring, Berger screened “The Smell of Money” and hosted an impactful question and answer session for our eighth grade as part of their year-long interdisciplinary water planet and environmental justice curriculum.
As for what is next for Berger, she continues to tour and promote “The Smell of Money.” When not on the road, she consults for a new nonprofit startup that is working to hold major food corporations, particularly animal agribusiness corporations, accountable on a wide range of issues, including child labor abuses, animal welfare, climate justice, and environmental issues.
While Berger knows the fight ahead is a lengthy one, she is undeterred.
“I know that the fight to transform abusive and unsustainable food systems is going to take longer than my lifetime. But there is a mighty army of passionate activists working on these issues. If we work together, we can chip away at them, dismantle them, and show the world that there are better alternatives. We can build something better together.”
