Veganism/Vegetarianism
Speciesism Awareness
One person can make a difference. We live in a world full of violence, predjudice, discrimination, and apathy. Deforestation, pollution, systematic cruelty to non-human and human animals. None of the above are hopeless givens. None of the above are impossible to change.
Thousands of people across the country are standing up for humans, the environment, and animals by adopting a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle.
What is the difference between vegetarianism and veganism?
The term vegetarian encompasses lifestyles that exclude the consumption of meat.
Ovo-lacto
vegetarians (referred to as vegetarians) eat no meat, fish, or poultry, but do eat eggs and dairy products.
Pure
vegetarians (referred to as vegans) exclude all forms of animal products in their lifestyle, including meat, fish and poultry, eggs, dairy, gelatin, whey, refined sugar, and honey.
We use the term "vegetarian" to encompass both veganism and ovo-lacto vegetarianism.
The first impression of veganism is generally a daunting one. For inspiration, it may help to see that there are vegan celebrities and athletes, such as Alicia Silverstone (
actress
), Dick Gregory (
athlete who ran 3000 miles across the United States
), Woody Harrelson (
actor
), and James Cromwell (
actor
). And ovo-lacto vegetarians, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.
Perhaps the solutions to the world's problems lie within our power of choice. We can choose to avoid being racist. We can choose to avoid being sexist, speciesist, sexist, or anything else. We can choose to become vegetarian to:
save other individuals - animals - from the horrors of the slaughterhouses, dairy farms, or battery cages.
reduce pollution from factory farms.
preserve soybeans and grain for the millions of malnourished people in our hungry world.
benefit our own health.
By not consuming the products that come from animal exploitation, each individual is making a statement against inhumane practices, undertaking an economic boycott, and supporting the production of vegetarian products with their subsequent choices. These decisions, and the message they send to others, help to move society away from industries that use animals as a means to human ends.
The path each individual takes towards vegetarianism is a unique one. Some people follow a methodical process of cutting out foods in the order that they consider to be the most cruel, or the foods they find the most easy to avoid. Others, initially concerned with health, eventually cut out all animal products as they become more aware of the suffering involved in the production of these foods. Others go "cold-tofu", giving up all animal foods, donating their leather goods to charity, returning their Procter and Gamble products to the company, etc.
Animals
Vegetarians are motivated by empathy for suffering, compassion, and respect for other individuals. Both scientific fact and common sense tell us that other animals besides humans fear pain and death, and also feel happiness and pleasure.
Animals on a modern factory farm lead lives of unimaginable suffering and die cruel deaths before ending up on the dinner table. Intense competition drives farmers to value efficiency over the desires of these individuals. Animals are squeezed into ever smaller living quarters, even as new biotechnology is used to make animals grow bigger and produce more meat, milk or eggs. Lowering the cost per unit is the overriding goal.
Pumped up with hormones and drugs, dairy cows spend a few years in a concrete stall or filthy feed lot before they dry up and are sent to slaughter. Most calves born to dairy cows are quickly separated from their mothers, confined in tiny pens, and then killed for veal after only a few months of life. Chickens are crammed together in tiny cages and have their breaks clipped or burned off to prevent them from self-mutilating due to stress. Death is merciless and inevitable: a bolt gun through the skull or a knife ends a life spent in misery.
People
Vegetarianism also saves human lives. Diet is a major factor in three of the leading causes of death in America today. Preventative measures, such as a vegetarian lifestyle, reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Vegetarians also virtually eliminate the possibility of contracting e. coli, salmonella and spongiform encephalopathy (a fatal condition transmitted by the flesh of animals suffering from "Mad Cow Disease"). For more health information, see the
Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine
.
As for world hunger, animal agriculture is a grossly inefficient way of growing food: experts estimate that at least seven pounds of grain or soybeans are needed to generate one pound of meat. Food that could be going directly to hungry people is instead being inefficiently funneled into producing steaks and hamburgers for few. Animal agriculture also wastes staggering amounts of water and energy.
Environment
How we eat also affects the air, the water, the forests and the oceans. The production of meat has a devastating impact on the subtle web of connections that sustains life on our planet.
Read more in
Environmental Impacts
in our philosophy section.
All this damage to the earth, to animals, and to ourselves can be stopped.
For more information on how to become vegetarian, there's a short online booklet from Vegan Outreach:
W
hy
V
egan?
under construction
For now, see
Speciesism
in our philosophy section.
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