1. A vegan requires 1/6 of an acre for food per year. A lacto-ovo vegetarian 3 times that. A meat-eater 20 times that.
2. A vegan’s food uses 300 gallons of water a day. A lacto-ovo vegetarian 4 times as much. A meat-eater 14 times as much.
3. In the U.S. animals raised for food create 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population.
4. This pollutes the waterways and kills aquatic life.
5. Farming animals requires more than 1/3 of all greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels in the U.S.
6. And has detroyed 3/4 of the topsoil.
7. Even prisons aren’t as crowded as factory farms.
8. Everyone wants to be free.
9. Animals feel fear and don’t want to die.
10. When animals feel pain they scream too.
11.It takes a small person to kill a defenceless animal and a even smaller one to eat one.
12. Speciesism is the ‘most extreme’ form of racism.
13. No animal deserves to die for your taste buds.
14. You wouldn’t eat your pets.
15. No living creature wants to see their family slaughtered. Animals love their young and mourn their loss.
16. ‘Might doesn’t make right’ eventually people recognised that abuse of other humans is wrong, it’s time other species got some consideration.
17. Every year 40 million people die of starvation related causes. They could be fed by the crops exported to feed farm animals.
18. Nobody should have to kill for a living. Working in a slaughter house has the highest rate of injury and illness.
19. Eating animal products causes heart disease. A vegan diet can reverse this.
20. In every package of chicken there’s a little poop. 98% of chicken carcasses had detectable levels of E.coli.
21. Eating meat and dairy products makes you fat. 18% of Americans are obese, only 2% of vegetarians are.
22. You shouldn’t have to lie to your children about the food they eat. The violence involved would horrify a lot of them.
23. Commerce is no excuse for killing. The slave trade used to be profitable too.
24. ‘Meat’ is just a euphemism for a decomposing corpse used as food.
25. If you wouldn’t be able to kill the animal yourself, why should someone have to do it for you?
Veganism and animals
Recently, I’ve read a few posts in veganism communities, that lead me to believe that some, perhaps many, vegans hate animals like dogs, cats etc, and wouldn’t mind seeing them wiped out.
When I began considering becoming a vegan – when I was a child – it was simply because I love animals (all animals, or almost all) so much. It’s still just as important to me as the environment, solidarity or my own health.
If somehow being a vegan says ‘I hate animals’ I’m not sure if I want to tell the world I am one. It wouldn’t change my diet or my values, but I might get more cautious about how I label myself.
Good Quotes
I found these at a community for veganism at LiveJournal. Words of wisdom.
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There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties… The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. Charles Darwin
Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more. Franz Kafka
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places. Leonardo DaVinci
As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love. Pythagoras
It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind. Albert Einstein
Flesh eating is unprovoked murder Benjamin Franklin
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. Paul McCartney
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other Henry David Thoreau
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. Gandhi
I became a vegetarian out of concern for animals, but I wasn’t a vegetarian long before I realized there’s something to that. I don’t think I would have worked for the past five years probably were it not for my vegetarian diet Bob Barker
I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law. Christopher Walken
I admit to having worn suede and leather pants myself for a while, but you just never feel clean, and it’s degenerate, anyway, to wear animal skins…. So I went back to bluejeans after my degenerate period. Andy Warhol
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. bibelcitat: Matteus 5:7
The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature…We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters…and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult. Jacques Cousteau
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t…The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. Mark Twain
Since visiting the abatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat Vincent Van Gogh
He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm to his wit. Shakespeare
To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. Buddah Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.’ Elie Weisel
The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different Hippocrates
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. Abraham Lincoln
One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Shame on such a morality that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun. Schopenhauer
What are you made of?
“If we weren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made of food?”
That’s what it said in the creep’s signature on a site I’m a member of.
He didn’t make it up himself. I’m pretty sure it’s a quote, probably translated into Swedish from English. From the Simpsons, I think. I don’t watch the show, even if I like Lisa a lot, so I can’t tell if it’s true or not. Whoever said it the first time, I’d like to suggest a little experiment, that is if you agree with the creep with the signature.:
Take a razor and cut yourself straight across the palm of your hand. Put your hand inside a cage inhabited by a polar bear. The polar bear can be exchanged for a tiger, lion, snow leopard or a shark in an aquarium, whichever is more convenient for you.
When you’re done, and you’re screeching and yelling and wondering if you want decorations on your prosthetic hand or if you’re even going to survive, ask yourself what your hand is made of. Go on. Ask the polar bear (tiger, lion, snow leopard or shark).
Think about it. What are you made of?
Response to article in the New York Times
Maybe you guys have already seen this, but I thought I’d pass it along anyway. I found it in the veganism community at LlveJournal.
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007other/nytimes.html
Feel free to forward and crosspost if you like.
Discrimination Against Girls
Relatively recently, I read that in some context or other, a Swedish woman had written that it wasn’t true that thirld world countries were discriminating against girls. The reason that we have so many adopted girls from the third world here, is because we want daughters so badly. In other words, no discrimination against girls in the third world, but discrimination against boys here.
That woman didn’t seem to have any scientific material to base her claim on. It looked as if it was merely her personal opinion, nothing more.
Anway, today, on BBC News Asia, I read about a report that was published recently. It comfirmed what I’ve been suspecting all along. Some children are born discriminated against, just because of their gender. Others aren’t even allowed to be born at all. Some people believe that as many as 100 million girls are killed before they’re even born. They’ve been deselected simply because they were girls, nothing more.
For those who are actually allowed to be born, the discrimination continues all through the life they are allowed to have. I’ve read elsewhere that these girls are pulled into this discrimination of other girls, by helping to kill unwanted daughters and grand-daughters.
My suggestion is that people in these countries should be allowed to choose, by using IVF. Let them pick out one or two healthy boy embryos and allow them to be born, but if they do, they shouldn’t have any say in what happens to the other embryos. Healthy girl embryos can be ‘adopted’ by couples and women who want another child. Perhaps women who are suffering from some kind of fertility problems, or ones who simply wish to do something to save these unwanted children.
I wouldn’t mind adopting a girl embryo from India or China if someone would offer that option.
If all this means that those cherished boys who get to stay in their own countries can’t hope to marry when they are grown up, their parents can simply blame themselves. The boys might be able to get used to ‘marrying’ other boys? In any case, you can’t keep your cake and eat it too.
If you don’t have to ‘waste’ resources on rearing unwanted girls, you can’t expect others to do so either, so that your beloved, spoiled, overweight son can marry. You can’t have one without the other.
This might sound a bit rough, but it is, in my opinion, considerably more humane than what is going on now. People are killing babies. In the future, that might be avoided, even if an entire generation, maybe more, of men will end up without female companionship.
English 101 for bonobos
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2007-05-10-bonobo-studies_N.htm?csp=15
http://www.care2.com/news/member/845082801/371656
Those of you who are members of Care2, why don’t you note my news story? Just a little suggestion.:)
I found this article yesterday, and I thought it was incredibly interesting. How wonderful that you can now comunicate with our closest relatives. In fact, I’ve been communicating with our non-human family members for years, but the primates can actually reply to you in a way that you can understand. Of course, so do many of my animal babies too.
In any case, this article is about how these apes get to learn symbols. In the past, apparently, the scientists had made a mistake, and tried to teach the apes our language, rather like we learn a second language – like French or Spanish. The scientists discovered this when a bonobo baby suddenly turned out to know what the mother had learned, without anyone working especially to teach him. Good boy!
There were a couple of other things I paid special attention to. For instance, what the bonobos enjoy the most, (other than their special interest – see earlier post) are movies about themselves, other primates and humans.
The smart little kid who learned his mother’s lessons, has a favorite book, about a gorilla. How cute.
Of course it isn’t just cute. It also shows clearly that at least primates (in my opinion all ‘more advanced’ animals) should be allowed basic human rights. There’s even an ongoing court case going on in Austria (I think). People are trying to secure basic rights to a chimipanzee, as a ‘person’.
If you can read books and watch movies and understand what you’re seeing and hearing, that has to mean you’re a person, right?
One of our dogs, a golden retriever, loved horses. Little horses inside the tv. Maybe it was the sound of their hoofs. One day she got to see some real horses grazing. You could almost see how her mind was working overtime. Oh. They’re that big? Not quite as much fun.
One of these bonobos appeared concerned about an orangutan, who needed to be fed. She told one of the humans so that the orangutan would get help. Empathy too. Even more likely that we’re very closely related (at least the ones of us who are empathic).
There’s a lot more to read in that article, so take a look.
I just wish that someone would do some work with my special favorites, the gorillas. Kanzi (the bonobo baby above) will probably agree.
Meat
Yesterday I read about a demo/protest against meat production that had taken place in Stockholm. To me, it seemed to be a good way to catch people’s attention. Nowadays, you probably need to use shock tactics to make stressed out, apathetic people pay attention, and hopefully, think a little. Then I read a couple of comments about it. Most people were irritated and almost no one (with a few important exceptions) seemed to care. Instead, they seemed to take the whole thing as yet another excuse to hate us vegans.
The word itself seems to be a provocation to many meat eaters (or necrophages as I like to call them). Why is that? If they’re so convinced that what they’re doing is right, why don’t they ignore those of us who don’t eat meat? It’s up to each person to make these decisions.
I’ll admit that I haven’t discussed this topic with that many meat eaters. Unfortunately, almost right away their comments tend to degenerate into personal insults and petty teasing. So I can’t really say what’s causing their spitefulness. I’m guessing they feel guilty over not getting involved in any causes like I do.
Erotic Art?
Recently, I noticed a discussion in an online group I’ve joined. The topic was erotic art, dreams and the subconscious. To be perfectly honest, the dreams and subconscious didn’t tell me much, and the ‘erotic’ art – quite frankly it depressed me. As a heterosexual woman, I just don’t see how half-naked women can be considered erotic. Call me oldfashioned or whatever you like. It just doesn’t do anything for me.
Is it even supposed to be? Imagine this: a bunch of heterosexual men are expected to look at and enjoy art consisting of various representations of the nude male form. If these men found that ‘erotic’ art uninteresting, unmoving and perhaps even baffling, is it so strange?
I’m aware that I might be lacking in some sort of understanding or appreciation of what art really is, but I don’t think so. If I don’t like it, it isn’t art, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never been one to ‘appreciate’ what is trendy and hot, rather than ‘good’ or even appealing to me, as the ‘receiver’ of the message art is supposed to be.
I don’t listen to music I’m ‘supposed’ to like and I don’t go to the theater and watch plays I’m ‘supposed’ to like, and I certainly don’t read books, because ‘everyone else’ says they’re good. For me, appreciation needs to be based inside me and what I consider worthy of appreciation.
That’s all.
So the next time someone wants to interest me in a work of art, it had better contain some element I find artistic, be it a nude or semi-nude male, a landscape or something abstract. Otherwise, I’m not interested. Sorry. That’s how I am, take it or leave it.
101 reasons not to be a vegan (joke!)
You think that you are the last of the unicorns, and your heart flutters whenever someone says the word “vegan”. You think, “Maybe there are others out there…”
http://sbvdesigns.com/veg/reasons.html
I loved this. Most of those are only too familiar. Of course, it makes me realize how lucky I’ve been when it comes to my family. My grandmother only asked me the “when are you going to eat normal food again” question once. She knew I was serious.