What is a vegan? A vegan is someone who doesn't eat or use any animal products such as meat, milk, eggs, honey, fur, leather, wool, silk, etc. Why Vegan? - For your health Animal products are disastrous to our health. They can cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other illnesses. Eating fish and seafood can cause seafood poisoning, which can ultimately lead to death. Meat and Dairy are high in cholesterol and saturated fats, and contrary to those "drink milk for strong bones" ads, milk can actually cause osteoporosis instead of prevent it. This is because the high protein content of milk and other animal products leeches calcium out of the body. Green leafy vegetables are a much better source of calcium than cow's milk. Compare humans with carnivorous, omnivorous and herbivorous animals. We have no sharp teeth or claws to rip up prey, we have to chew our food carefully and can't swallow meat in large chunks like carnivores and omnivores, we can't eat raw meat or we'll get sick, and we just don't have the instinct to gobble up a freshly killed animal on the road. Instead, most humans need to have their meat disguised before they eat it. As well as that, humans and herbivores have long intestines to enable us to digest the fibre from our foods, whereas carnivores and omnivores have short intestines to enable the meat to travel through the body quickly before it starts to rot. All this information suggests humans were made to be herbivorous rather than omnivorous. Humans may have "evolved" to eating meat, but our bodies haven't. In the early ages a human's diet was mainly plant-based. They would only eat meat in times when plant foods were scarce, in order to survive. We do not need meat to survive now, and can get all the nutrients we need from a vegan diet. - For the animals Every year, billions of animals are slaughtered just to satisfy our taste buds. Animals raised for meat live short, unhappy lives. When it's time to be sent to slaughter, they are cramped up inside a truck and taken to the slaughterhouse. Many animals die of stress on the way. At the slaughterhouse, it is terrifying for the animals. They feel fear and pain in the same way we do. Cows and pigs are shot in the head, hung up by their legs, then their throats are slit and they are skinned, most fully conscious through the whole painful process. Chickens are hung on shackles, which often break their sensitive legs, and their throats slit. Pigs and chickens are thrown into scalding hot water for hair and feather removal, many still alive and conscious when they reach it. So what's wrong with dairy and eggs then? Dairy cows, like all mammals, need to give birth to produce milk, so they are continually kept pregnant. Shortly after birth, the calves are taken away from their mothers. Cows are very maternal animals and this separation is very stressful to both the mother and the calf. Mothers can be heard crying for days for their lost babies. Male calves are either sold to the veal industry - where they chained inside a small veal crate without sunlight, alone and afraid, for 14 to 17 weeks before they are slaughtered - or raised for beef. Female calves will either replace their worn-out mothers, or are killed soon after birth for the rennet in their stomachs - a product used in cheese. Naturally cows can live up to 25 years old, but dairy cows are killed when they are only 5-7 years old - when they start producing less milk. They are sent to slaughter and sold for cheap meat or pet food. The same thing happens with free-range and organic dairy farming. You can not drink milk without causing pain and suffering to these animals. You are probably aware of the problems with battery-farmed eggs. What about free-range? In order to have laying hens, you need fertile eggs. Half of these hatch into unwanted cock chicks, who are killed almost immediately after struggling out of the egg. When they're less than 10 days old, hens may get their beaks trimmed with a hot blade or laser - without any pain killers at all - to stop them pecking at each other. Imagine what it would feel like if the sensitive part of your finger nail was cut off. A hen's beak is very sensitive and debeaking causes extreme pain and suffering to the birds. Battery-farmed, organic, free-range or cage-free, when hens stop laying their eggs they are sent to slaughter. The best way to prevent cruelty to laying hens is simple: stop eating and using eggs. There are many egg substitutes out there.
- For the Environment Deforestation. Extinction of animals. Loss of fertile land. Water and air pollution. Global Warming. Animal farming is a major contributor to all of these things. We are destroying the world because of our increasing demand for animal products. Thousands of hectares of forests have been destroyed to make room for crops to feed animals and room to farm them. This causes millions of native animals who used to call these forests home to go extinct or endangered. 70 per cent of the Amazon rain forest has already been destroyed due to animal farming. And it doesn't stop on land. Over-fishing has caused 90 per cent of large fish populations to go extinct. Fish are quickly disappearing from our oceans due to our love for fish. Animal farming also wastes a lot of energy. Growing, producing and transporting feed, transporting animals, transporting meat to treatment plants and then to the supermarkets, the list goes on. In fact, meat production alone emits more greenhouse gasses than all the cars, trucks, planes, ships and trains in the world combined. It is the number one cause of global warming. Water is also being wasted. It takes over five times the amount of water to feed an omnivore compared to that used to feed a vegan. This is largely because of the amount of food that has to be grown and processed for animal feed. You need over 2,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat. You could save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for a year! So if you're trying to reduce your car use and limit the amount of water you waste to lessen your environmental impact, you should look at what you eat, as well. - For the Hungry Farming animals wastes food. Crops grown for animal feed could be used to feed the people who really need it - the thousands of people who starve to death each day - instead of the animals. If the food was grown to directly feed humans instead of farmed animals, we'd have more than enough food for the world's population. A varied Vegan diet used just one fifth of the land needed for a typical European omnivorous diet.  |