Oscars 2020: Joaquin Phoenix's Best Actor Speech Made Farmers Very Angry

Joker star Joaquin Phoenix's speech at the Oscars Sunday night provided an emotional moment, ending with a tribute to his late brother River Phoenix. However, not everyone was happy. Dairy farmers were angered by a part of the speech where Phoenix criticized their industry for taking newborn calves from their mothers and breeding cows.

Wisconsin dairy farmer Tina Hinchley told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newborns are taken from their mothers about 20 minutes after birth for their safety.

"If that mom had manure on her, we would risk that calf, our best genetics on the farm, getting contaminated with salmonella, E. coli or listeria, along with tetanus and all the other stuff that hangs out on the farm as well," Hinckley explained.

The calf is fed with colostrum from its mother, then bottle-fed with milk-replacement formula.

"Milk replacer is the best baby formula you can get," Hinchley explained. "It's powdered milk with all the vitamins and nutrients that a calf needs."

Hinchley admitted that a calf's mother will "moo for that calf a little bit," but said the mother does not charge at farmers.

"It's almost like 'Woo hoo, the babysitter is here. Now I can go eat,'" she explained. "And that is what she needs to do."

Carrie Mess of Lake Mills, Wisconsin published an open letter to Phoenix on her blog Dairy Carrie, and invited him to see the "natural world" outside Hollywood.

"Joaquin, you don't need to drink milk," Mess wrote. "You don't need to use or consume animal products. I respect your beliefs. But understand that there is no one more connected to the natural world than the farmers who are out here in the places you've never heard of, caring for the land and the animals. We've been sustainable and green since long before it was cool."

"I think that we've become very disconnected from the natural world and many of us, what we're guilty of is an egocentric world view — the belief that we're the center of the universe," the actor said as he accepted his Best Actor Oscar for Joker. "We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. And then we take her milk that's intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal."

"I think we fear the idea of personal change because we think that we have to sacrifice something to give something up," Phoenix continued. "But human beings, at our best, are so inventive and creative and ingenious, and I think that when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and to the environment."

The actor later admitted he has been a "scoundrel" himself, and thanked his colleagues for giving him a second chance.

"I think that's when we're at our best, when we support each other, not when we cancel each other out for past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow, when we educate each other, when we guide each other toward redemption. That is the best of community," he said. "When he was 17, my brother wrote this lyric. It said, 'Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow.'"

Phoenix played the title character in Joker, which is inspired by the Batman villain. Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for playing the same character in The Dark Knight.