Thoughts About Veganism
Golden Drops of Bare Truths - Part 1
George Cheyne (1671-1743)
"To see the convulsions, agonies and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference, on the foot of natural reason and equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on (other) animal flesh, except custom and example." (Essay on Regimen)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
"... the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef-tea or mutton, even under medical advice, I would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism. I would love to think that all of us who called ourselves vegetarians should have that basis. There were thousands of meat-eaters who did not stay meat-eaters. There must be a definite reason for our making that change in our lives, for our adopting habits and customs different from society, even though sometimes that change may offend those nearest and dearest to us. Not for the world should you sacrifice a moral principle. Therefore the only basis for having a vegetarian society and proclaiming a vegetarian principle is, and must be, a moral one." (Address to London Vegetarian Society, 20 November 1931)
Kavi Yogi Maharshi Shuddhananda Bharat (1919-)
"From grass to Godmen are all equal souls sensitive to joy and grief. A plant fades in the hot sun and smiles in the cool breezy evening. It cheers up when watered well. It weeps when the bud is violently plucked. Animals have fine senses and man six senses. The intelligent mental man must treat plants and animals with tender love and compassion. Man as the most evolved soul, as the paragon of living beings, is obliged to practise noon-violence in thought, word and deed. Soft mercy marks the human from the beast. The lion and tiger are carnivorous by instinct. Man is not a human tiger. The man who kills screaming life for food is dead to mercy and compassion. The cow and goat give milk. The oxen draw carts and plough fields. The horse carries man. The faithless man whips and rips them and gluts his stomach with their flesh. A cut animal is dead; its flesh stinks. Man eats it and makes his stomach the graveyard for poor dumb creatures. Natue gives man clean sweet vegetables; but unrefined man cuts the throat of crying animals and gluts his stomach. His heart becomes hard and the hand that cuts animals cuts tomorrow the throats of brother men in the battlefield. If war must stop in the world, blood-soaked food must stop and men must become vegetarians." (The Vegetarian Way, XXIV World Vegetarian Congress, 1977)
Ernest Bell (1851-1933)
"Vegetarianism is not a fad. It is a great and essential part of the religion of humanity. It is a step into a higher, because a less selfish, plane of life. It makes progress possible, and both individual and social development is at present seriously blocked by the meat habit and all that it implies and involves."
"As long as we treat other living, sensitive creatures with like feelings as ours only as carcases for the market, and meat to be consumed, we must shut our eyes to the real kinship of all living things, and thus loose an essential factor in learning to understand, even in some degree, this mysterious world in which we find ourselves. Social progress is blocked no less than individual development. In a dozen ways this barbarous habit, inherited from savage ancestors, stands in the way of practical reforms which are much needed." (Ibid.)
Adela P.
"Vegetarian cookery is tasty, nutritious, different, and exciting! And respects the legitimate right to live of all other beings!"
Unknown
"U.S. taxpayers will be forced, in the near future, to spend one full trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) on 'health care'. This, coming from a country which boasts of its superior medical care/technology..."
Ruth Gelhert
"Killing animals hardens humans hearts! Eating animals hardens humans arteries!" (The Humane Crusade)
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
"Last year over a million people left the same suicide note: 'SHOPPING LIST: butter, eggs, mayo, potato chips, ham, bacon...'"
Dick Gregory (Long time peace activist)
"If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I can't justify either one!"
Quoted in PETA's Animal Times
"Millions of people all over the world are starving, while raising food for a meat diet uses 8 times as much water and 17 times as much land as growing fruits/vegetables/grains! Carnivores like wolves/lions/dogs/cats/etc. have unique characteristics that set them apart from the vegetarian animals including humans. Our anatomy/digestive systems show we evolved for millions of years living on fruits/nuts/grains/vegetables... Let's come back to nature!!!"
CONTACT Magazine
"Minnesota health officials say cheese is an overlooked major source of salmonella."
George Bernard Shaw
"Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak! Almost all meatless beginners eat too much under the erroneous and very dangerous impression that they have to make up in quantity for an imaginary loss in quality!"
Dr. T. Colin Campbell (Nutritional Biochemist, Cornell University)
"In the next 10 to 15 years, one of the things you're bound to hear is that animal protein is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered."
Dr. Dean Ornish, Medical Advisor to Bill Clinton
"Eating meat causes impotence because it blocks the arteries to all vital organs, including the penis."
Albert Einstein
"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."
Mahatma Gandhi
"I do not regard flesh food as necessary for us. I hold flesh food to be unsuited to our species. To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You have dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the distance of miles, there is complicity."
Rousseau
"The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures who harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service."
Robert Louis Stevenson
"We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of fear and pain."
Unknown
"Psychology of Vegetarianism: Carnivores kill their own prey and eat it in its natural state. Most of us must have our meat slaughtered by proxy, as we would be sickened if forced to kill the animals ourselves. Instead of eating an animal in its original state, we age/boil/fry/broil/tenderize/disguise it with sauces/ spices/ gravies. A carnivorous animal like a tiger or leopard, stalks and kills the prey with only fang and claw and eats it raw and laps up the blood - these beings are carnivorous by nature. On the other hand, a bowlful of grapes/ cherries/ peaches/etc. would make any normal human's mouth water; and even the prospect of picking and eating them fresh from the tree would convey no unpleasant or repulsive sounds/ sights/ smells/ thoughts... The same bowl of fruit would generally have no attraction whatsoever for the carnivore."
Dr. David S. Rosenstein
"Stomach cancer rates are highest in coastal countries with high fish consumption. Some of these countries are fish-eating Japan, Norway, Korea, Chile and Sweden."
Dr. David S. Rosenstein
"Caution: Even as a vegetarian you may be at risk from bacterial food contamination from flesh foods containing E. Coli bacteria which can cause strokes, seizures, red blood cell destruction, bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, other. Situations may be: home cooked meal by a non-vegetarian date or mom (if she is not a veggy), eating at a non-vegetarian restaurant, any food that has come in contact with raw flesh, utensils used to prepare them such as cutting boards/plates/knives..."
Plutarch
"But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time he had been born into the world to enjoy!" (Moralia)
Adela P.
"The bodies of 9 billion farmed animals are eaten annually in the US alone... The culmination of an existence of confinement and brutality... a life awarded no respect, compassion or dignity. Become a vegetarian/watch your health and radiance grow!!!"
Henry David Thoreau
"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual development to leave off the eating of animals as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with civilization."
Jed and Susan Civic
"A recent survey shows that 12.4 million Americans consider themselves vegetarian, and as many as 500,000 consider themselves vegan (totally complete vegetarian!)." (The Vegan Traveler)
Geoffrey L. Rudd
"The vegetarian philosophy is not perfect. Its practice may leave something ethical to be desired. Vegetarianism is, in fact, not a philosophy but an aspect of a more perfect way of life. It is a relatively small step in a beneficial direction, a step which, if not taken, can nullify other efforts, for it is doubtful if any worthwhile system can be worked on a basis of cruelty and ruthless exploitation. In the last analysis we must be judged by what we do and not by what we believe. We are as we behave, with a very small margin of credit for our unmanifested vision of how we might behave if we could take the trouble." (The British Vegetarian)
Dr. David S. Rosenstein
"Fish are living magnets for toxic chemicals, accumulating up to 9 million times the level of PCBs as the water in which they live. Fish have very long food chains. Half of the world's toxin-rich fish catch is fed to livestock. Ingesting PCBs is considered one of the chief reasons for the 30% decrease in sperm count among American men. For further information see report on fish in Consumers Report magazine of February 1992." [Still very much up to date. A. Pisarevsky]
Dick Gregory, Long Time Peace Activist
"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. If you had to kill your own calf before you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it. To hear the calf scream, to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from its momma, and to see the look of death in the animal's eye would turn your stomach. So you get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you." (The Shadow that Scares Me)
Diogenes
"We might as well eat the flesh of men as the flesh of other animals."
Pythagoras
"If men with fleshly morals must be fed, And chew with bleeding teeth the breathing bread; What else is this but to devour our guests, And barbarously renew Cyclopean feasts? While Earth not only can your needs supply, But lavish of her store, provides for luxury; A guiltless feast administers with ease, And without blood is prodigal to please."
Tolstoy
"A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism."
Plutarch
"Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? I, for my part, marvel at what sort of feeling, mind, or reason that man was possessed who was the first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of the murdered beings; who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as his daily food what were but now beings endowed with movement, with perception, and with voice. How could his eyes endure the spectacle of the flayed and dismembered limbs? How was his taste not sickened by contact with festering wounds, with the pollution of corrupted blood and juices? Man makes use of flesh not out of want and necessity, seeing that he has the liberty to make his choice of herbs and fruits the plenty of which is inexhaustible; but out of luxury, and being cloyed with necessaries, he seeks after impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the slaughter of living beings; by showing himself more cruel than the most savage of wild beasts." (Essay on Flesh Eating)
Ed Pape
"Live simply so that others may simply live!" (Think Again Brother Man)
George Bernard Shaw
"Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battered on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that. While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth??? ... We are the living graves of murdered beasts, Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. We never pause to wonder at our feasts, If animals, like men, can possibly have rights. We pray on Sundays that we may have light, To guide our footsteps on the path we tread. We're sick of war, we do not want to fight - The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread, And yet - we gorge ourselves upon the dead! Like carrion crows, we live and feed on meat, Regardless of the suffering and pain We cause by doing so. If thus we treat Defenseless animals for sport or gain, How can we hope in this world to attain The PEACE we say we are so anxious for. We pray for it, o'er hecatombs of slain, to God, while outraging the moral law, This cruelty begets its offspring - WAR!"
Unknown
"Eat beans - not beings!"
Peter Max
"If we live in peace and love, we will not kill our fellow creatures for any reason, even to obtain food. There is no need to do so when other foods are available to us that are both healthful and delicious."
Farm Sanctuary
"Humane slaughter??? People have been led to believe that animals are now slaughtered 'humanely' thus removing any humanitarian objection to eating flesh. Unfortunately, the entire life of a captive 'food animal' is unnatural: artificial breeding /vicious castration/ hormone stimulation/abnormal fattening diet (including own excrement and cement!)/ long rides to slaughter while in intense pain... Then, the holding pens/electric prods/tail-twisting/the terror/the fright/the accidental misses of the 'humane' slaughter stunning device are still a part of the most 'modern' animal raising/shipping/slaughtering. To accept all this and oppose only the callous brutality of the last minutes of the animal's life is to debase/corrupt the very word 'humane'! All these cruelties in the animal's life remain the same. You can't tell how your meat was raised/shipped/murdered..."
T. Casey Brennan
"Poor animals! How jealously they guard their innocent bodies... that which to us is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself."
Farm Sanctuary
"Downers: After years of brutal treatment at the factory dairy farm, worn out/debilitated dairy cows are trucked to slaughter but they're so sick/injured they can't even stand. The industry calls them 'downed animals' or 'downers', yet, they prod them with painful instruments/they still can't get up so they drag them with chains/ pull them with forklifts causing bruises/abrasions/ fractures/ torn ligaments... They lie for days without getting their most basic needs. Many die slowly... Survivors become ground beef!"
Ralph Waldo Trine
"The only consistent humanitarian is the one who is not a flesh eater."
Isaac Bashevis Singer (Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature)
"For some time now he had been thinking of becoming a vegetarian. At every opportunity, he pointed out that what the Nazis had done to the Jews, humans were doing to the animals." (Enemies, A Love Story)
PETANEWS
"A 'milk-fed' veal calf is torn from his mother (a dairy cow) at birth/dragged to auction/to a dark barn on a veal farm/chained by the neck, in a tiny wooden crate, in a bare slatted floor, unable to turn around, stretch, groom himself, forced to lie on his own excrements... he will never feel sunlight or chew on sweet grass, kick up in playfulness, stretch out quietly on the grass... He's force-fed a diet to make him anemic to keep his flesh tender/ white (but fattening)/laced with excessive antibiotics to make him survive despite these abominable conditions! For 16 weeks he suffers loneliness, maternal deprivation, fear, despair, inability to move, physical and mental pain, anemia, respiratory disorders, diarrhea, until dragged from his dungeon to his slaughter, sick with pneumonia/'scours'/ barely able to hold up his fattened body on wobbly/unused legs. YET, he's poked/prodded with painful instruments... to his death!!!"
Isaac Bashevis Singer (Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature)
"I became a vegetarian not just for my own health... but for the health of the chickens."
Henry S. Salt
"The Animals, you say, were 'sent' - For Man's free use and nutriment. Pray, then, inform me, and be candid - Why came they aeons before Man did, To spend long centuries on earth Awaiting their Devourer's birth? Those ill-timed chattels, sent from Heaven, Were, sure, the maddest gift e'er given - 'Sent' for man's use (can man believe it?) When there was no Man to receive it!"
Adela P.
"Poultry (not only chickens) and Eggs: Over 8 billion birds each year in the USA alone permanently confined/bizarrely tortured from birth to their murders for our taste buds!!! YET, see what poultry food is: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted in 1991 that each week 'millions of chickens leaking yellow pus stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumors, skin conditions... sold to consumers'! Poultry has as much cholesterol as beef. US Government studies found 90% poultry carcasses contaminated with salmonella bacteria! Male baby chicks: (useless for egg production) 300 million per year made to slowly suffocate in garbage cans/ground up alive/drowned/decapitated! Female baby chicks: beaks seared off with fire-knife to prevent pecking/ cannibalism (because of unbearable overcrowding)/ cutting through nerves, blood vessels/mouths blistered/soft tissues torn/ many die from the trauma/ repeated when the chick grows bigger. Layers: 5 in one 18 inch mesh floor cage/no room to turn or sit/ nails grow around the wires/ no sun/no stretching wings/all day/everyday until egg production falls then to slaughter! Broilers: 9 birds in one square foot: frustration, stress, aggressive behavior! Fattened up for yet bigger and quicker profits, fed a mix of few grains and their own/others' excrements, gizzards, paper, cement! Their tender/ mistreated legs can't support their overstuffed chests/overcrowding spreads disease by which 200+ million chickens die. Out to slaughterhouses in tiny wire cages stacked on top of each other in open flat bed trucks/freeze in winter/suffocate in summer/as trucks move many birds' legs get trapped through the wire mesh cages/when pulled off the trucks, birds' legs are torn off! At slaughter, birds hung upside down on conveyor line/heads dragged through electrified water/throats slit/plunged into boiling water... many times heads miss the electrified water/many times throats not slit! Farm animals are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act and the Humane Slaughter Act, especially poultry, being the most abused of any other group of animals!"
PCRM "Good Medicine"
"The American Association of Feed Control Officials lists dried poultry manure/dried broiler litter/dried cattle waste/pigs waste, as approved feed ingredients. 140 billion pounds of processed/ raw animal remains were sold for animal feed in the U.S. in 1995." (Quoted in CONTACT Magazine)
The Holy Bible, Genesis 1:29
"And God Said, 'Behold,.. I have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be as meat.'"
A World of Love
"Horrid that millions defenseless animals die to feed humans! Animal products come from factory farms - nightmarish death camps where cramped/inhuman quarters and brutal techniques make every moment an agonizing eternity!"
Ancient Chinese Verse
"For hundreds of thousands of years the stew in the pot has brewed hatred and resentment that is difficult to stop. If you wish to know why there are disasters of armies in the world, listen to the cries from the slaughterhouse at midnight."
Dr. Dean Ornish (Medical Advisor to President Clinton)
"Eating meat causes impotence because it blocks the arteries to all vital organs, including the penis."
Factsheet No. 10 (PETA)
"Honey producers, among other horrors, cut off the queen bee's wings so she can't leave the colony and artificially inseminate her in a bee-sized version of the factory farm 'rape rack.' They take all the honey instead of leaving the 60 pounds or so that bees need to get through the winter. They replace their rich honey with a cheap sugar substitute that's neither nutritious nor tasty. In colder areas, they consider it too costly to keep the bees alive through the winter so they burn the hives but are also often killed by tearing off their wings and legs or by haphazard handling. To produce one pound of honey, bees must get pollen from 2 million flowers and must fly more than 55,000 miles! Since early 20th century, humans turned bees into factory-farm animals. HEALTHIER/ BETTER REPLACEMENTS INCLUDE rice syrup/molasses/sorghum/ barley malt/maple syrup/dried fruit/ fruit concentrates."
Scientific-American Magazine
"Bees avidly gather maple sap from troughs in the 'sugar bush.' The bees' labors are but half performed when the liquid is collected; it must be 'boiled down,' to reduce it to keeping consistency then it must be dried. They must vibrate their wings vigorously to pass air currents over the honey to accomplish this!"
Octavio Jiménez
"Since ancient times it's a common practice to make wine/beer/ other alcoholic drinks with any or all: animal blood/milk/egg whites/gelatin from bones or deodorized fish/Bentonite/Poly-Clar, as clearing agents." (Bodegas de Santo Thomás, S.A. de C.V.)(Also in the Encyclopedia Britannica)
PETA
"Millions of people all over the world are starving, while raising food for a meat diet uses eight times as much water, and 17 times as much land as growing fruits/vegetables/grains!"
Unknown
"There's still another killer that threatens to destroy as much wildlife as the merciless and illegal poachers - the steady conversion of wilderness into farmland!"
PETA
"Many leading environmental and conservation groups refuse to take a strong position on such clear abuses as the factory farming of animals despite the enormous environmental consequences of these farms. Pollutants from them are among the top causes of air and water contamination."
Rabbi Aryeh Ben-Shemer
"The Commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' (Exodus XX, 13) is a general principle which does not specify human beings or other creatures. Forty years ago I decided my body should henceforth be a 'temple for a soul' instead of a portable cemetery for dead creatures. I have been a vegetarian ever since."
Rynn Berry
"While Judaism, Christianity and Islam present the injunctions against taking life as the sixth of the Ten Commandments, four of the existing vegetarian religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Taoism, make this prohibition their first commandment and include animals and insects in its purview. They show reluctance to keep companion animals. Jainism contains a tacit prohibition against keeping them because they do not believe in interfering in the lives of other creatures, let alone turning them into domestic playthings." (The Four Vegetarian Asian Religions and Their Impact on the West)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature)
"The suffering of animals makes me very sad, that's why I'm a vegetarian. When I see how little attention people pay to animals, and how easily they make peace with man being allowed to do with animals whatever he wants because he keeps a knife or a gun, it gives me a feeling of misery and sometimes anger with the Almighty! I say, 'Do you need your glory to be connected with so much suffering of just innocent creatures who would like to pass a few years in peace???'"
The Holy Bible, Genesis 1:29
"And God Said, 'Behold,... I have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be as meat.'"
PETA's Animal Times
"Rabbi David Golinkin, Chair of the Conservation Movement's Law Committee in Israel, urges Jews to boycott veal and pate de foi gras (chopped liver), because the cruel way calves, geese, ducks, etc. are treated violates Jewish Law."
Unknown
"Jesus Christ on Animal Rights: In 1937 there was published a Gospel entitled The Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ by the disciple John, edited by Edmond Szekely, and 'translated directly from the Aramaic tongue, spoken by Jesus and his beloved disciple John,' the translation having been made by Edmond Szekely and Purcell Weaver. In his Foreword the Editor says: 'The content of this book is only a fragment of the complete manuscripts which exist in Aramaic in the library of the Vatican, and in ancient Slav in the Royal Library of the Hapsburgs' - such Aramaic and ancient Slav texts having been compared by the editor. This 'fragment' deals for the most part with 'the healing works of Jesus,' many of which were effected by methods now known as nature-cure. It is therein recorded that Jesus said: 'He who kills, kills himself; and who so eats the flesh of slain beasts, eats of the body of death. For in his blood every drop of their blood turns to poison... and their death will become his death.' The command against killing is insisted on throughout, and the eating of all dead food is condemned.... We also find in this Gospel a command of Jesus that we 'Love one another and all the creatures of God' - God being in all creatures. Children are to be 'brought up in the ways of righteousness, neither eating flesh, nor drinking strong drink; nor hurting the creatures which God hath given into the hands of man to protect.' That Jesus came into the world to put an end to bloody sacrifices and flesh-eating is explicit: 'For this end have I come into the world, that I may put away all blood offerings and the eating of the flesh of the beasts and the birds that are slain by men'. 'I am come to end the sacrifices and feasts of blood.'"
CONTACT Magazine
"Bruce Harris, a strict vegan bus driver for Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) chose to be suspended rather than consent to distribute coupons to his riders for free Carl's Jr. flesh hamburgers. OCTA contracted with these restaurants to raise money!!! Court had OCTA pay him $50,000 and his job back!!!"
Adela P.
"What to Answer??? People throw challenges at us... (to mitigate their guilt?) Ch.1: 'Bible permits flesh-eating'. Also permits slavery/human sacrifice/more! BUT also says: 'Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.' Ch.2: 'Plants suffer too'. There are only 2 types of food on this planet: plants and flesh. Plants are Nature's only food designed for vege animals of which humans are a part. Plants are sensitive but lack the complex nervous system all animal species have by which pain is felt. If Nature wanted plants to feel pain, She would've given them legs/wings/fins to escape danger... So use them ONLY/ EXCLUSIVELY for food/healing, NOT as decorations. Ch.3: 'Animals eat one another'. Only carnivores are physically/ mentally born to eat flesh/chase their FREE preys who often escape! Caught ones are ill/old/injured; Nature's fine balance prevails: Carnivores eat flesh - veges eat plants. If humans think they are superior to animals, why do they imitate them??? Ch.4: 'Animals will eat us if we don't'. Most world's animals are veges. If not tampered by humans, Nature balances itself with incredible wisdom so there's no fear of being eaten by the animals! Especially if we do not intrude in their territories!!! Animal overpopulations are due only to man's greed/ cruelty who breeds them artificially into profitable slaves! Eat an animal: it's the end of h/her. Eat fruits/veges/bury the seeds: MORE food/ clean air/ health/shade/beauty... Consider fruitarianism too for the (near?) future! Veges find more/new ways to spare trillion lives including humans'; flesh eaters find excuses for more gore/spare NONE. Ch.5: 'Animals can't have rights/ can't vote'. Neither can minors nor many humans... yet, every being on Earth has inalienable birthrights not to be subjected to mental and physical pain, fear, deprivation, confinement, enslavement ever! Ch.6: 'You should help humans instead...' We have big hearts for both despite that animals are the very last down at the bottom in the pile of exploited beings."
EarthSave Long Island
"Being vegetarian SAVES our waterbolded: U.S. livestock produce 250,000 pounds of excrement every second, most of which ends up untreated in our waterways."
The Internet Magazine (Animal Place Sanctuary)
"WHAT EATING FLESH DOES TO YOUR WORLD: Wildlife: When 'farm' animals graze on public lands, ranchers (especially sheep ranchers), indiscriminately practice predator control: trapping/ poisoning wildlife to protect their livestock feeding grounds. Coyotes/wolves/other wouldn't be poisoned/shot if people didn't eat steak/lamb/other. Environment: slaughterhouses/feedlots major polluters of rivers/streams filling them with poisonous residues/ animal waste/greatest producers of sewage wastes in the U.S. A hen factory housing 60,000 birds produces 82 tons of manure per week; 'farm animals', 2 billion tons of manure per year, 10 times the human population! It goes into ground water/streams/rivers/ lakes. Water: Millions of gallons of water used every day in just ONE plant to process chickens (which among other things are fed cement to boost their weight!) which could service instead a community of 25,000 people. It takes 25 times more water to produce ONE pound of meat than ONE pound of vegetables! Rainforests: Meat industry destroys them at the rate of 35 acres per MINUTE! The rainforests are the lungs of the earth because of its oxygen-producing function. Bulldozers clear huge tracts of rainforest to plant grazing grasses for the cattle. The fast food outlets graze cattle there and sell the cheap meat to America to create the unhealthy American burger. Rainforests CANNOT be replanted and millions of birds/ monkeys/snakes/other species lose their homes and die! Heart Disease: Leading cause of death in the U.S. Risk of death from a heart attack for the average American man is 50% - for the average American man who is a vegan (total vegetarian) is only 4%!!! Cancer: Risk of many forms of cancer is reduced when one stops eating animal products. There's direct correlation between meat consumption and cervical/prostate/ colon/breast cancer."
J.H. Tilden M.D.
"The diseases of old age are not due to old age; they are due to wrong life!"
Mervyn G. Hardinge, MD
"Harvard University nutritionists assured Americans during the food crisis of Word War II that 'as long as this country has access to a plentiful supply of calories and a variety of whole-grain cereals and legumes, it is most unlikely that impairment of health from protein deficiency will ever occur."
Hippocrates
"Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food."
"Are You Confused?"
"But, much that goes under the name of 'food' today is closer to suicidal poison than to the health-restoring medicine."
Unknown
"Tofu (soybean curd) is new to Americans, but it's been a staple of the Chinese diet for centuries with a special place in Chinese literature/folktales. National Geographic magazine says that in Chinese literature a person who sells tofu is poor with a good heart. A girl who is beautiful but poor is a doufu-xishi (a bean curd beauty). And when a man takes a woman for granted, he is said to be 'just eating her tofu.'"
Vegan Action
"Bill Clinton's first daughter, Chelsea Clinton, is a vegetarian! And an activist at that! At a press luncheon in Tanzania, Chelsea reportedly kept urging the photographers to try the vegetarian dishes she was eating." (Vegan News "All The News That's Fit to Eat")
Maribeth Abrams-McHenry
"Animals deliberately raised for food outnumber humans three to one worldwide." (Vegetarian Voice)
Vegan Action
"The Ipswich Chronicle (Mass) reported 100 gallons of sour milk was spilled on the streets as it was being poured into a garbage truck. City officials worked quickly to clean up the spill, worried it might get into storm drains. The City Fire Chief said milk is considered hazardous waste and would have killed fish had it contaminated the river. A City Health Agent concurred adding: 'The spectrum of diseases you can catch from milk are in the millions!'" (Vegan News "All The News That's Fit to Eat")
Adela P.
"Cheese is made with [not only] cow's milk BUT also from the lining (rennin) of the baby cow's stomach! 'Rennetless' cheese is made with a vegetarian rennin BUT, it's also made with milk! So-called 'soy cheese' is made with casein, extracted from cow's milk with great/prolonged torture to the animals!"
Vegan Action
"The Population Reference Bureau and the Worldwatch Institute recently issued a joint study showing that worldwide increases in meat and milk-based diets cause unprecedented and potentially dangerous depletion of grain resources which could be used to feed people directly instead of feeding animals to feed to people! 'If everyone adopted a vegetarian diet so that no food were wasted, current world food production would feed 10 billion people.'" (Vegan News "All The News That's Fit to Eat")
Mervyn G. Hardinge, MD
"Henry David Thoreau, a 19th century writer and philosopher, visited a farmer plowing his field with a team of oxen. As the 2 walked behind the plow, they talked about the kind of diet best suited to build strong bodies. The farmer said, 'You cannot live on vegetable foods solely, for they furnish nothing to build bones with.' Thoreau mused, 'All the while he talks, he is walking behind his oxen which with vegetable-made bones jerk him and his plow along.'"
Unknown
"Our Natural Instinct? It's obvious our sensibilities are not inclined towards flesh food. All flesh-eaters (other than the scavengers: vultures/hyenas/etc.) kill their own prey and eat it in its natural state. Most humans have flesh slaughtered by proxy as we'd be sickened if forced to kill the animals ourselves. Instead of eating flesh in its original state, we age/boil/ bake/ fry/broil it making sure the flesh is first suitably 'tenderized' and well disguised with sauces/spices/gravies. If we observe a tiger or leopard stalking its prey, killing and ripping it apart with only fang and claw, eating it raw and lapping up the blood, we may deduce this animal has a carnivorous instinct. Most humans would become sick at the prospect of killing and eating an animal. On the other hand, a bowlful of grapes/cherries/peaches would make any normal human's mouth water; even the prospect of picking and eating them fresh from the tree would convey no unpleasant or repulsive sounds/sights/ smells/thoughts! The same bowl of fruit would generally have no attraction whatsoever for the carnivore!"
Dr. Karen Davis
"Referring to Farm Sanctuary: 'Imagine living your life in a small, filthy cage constantly in pain, unable to stand or lie down comfortably. After months of agony, your torture finally ends, but not at the slaughterhouse. Instead, two gentle hands reach down to lift you out of the darkness, and bring you to a safe, loving place. For the first time in your life you can stretch your wings and legs and feel soft straw and cool grass beneath your feet.'"
Kathleen A. Forde
"Professor Leslie Clarkson and Dr. Margaret Crawford, of Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, stated that the Irish people used to be a much healthier lot when over 3/4 of their dietary intake consisted of potatoes. Since the potato is no longer the center of the Irish diet their nutritional standards have declined/life expectancy has fallen/ the incidence of diseases such as diarrhea and dysentery have risen." (Vegetarian Times)
The Evolution of Desire
"Vegetarianism SAVES relationships: According to evolutionary psychologist David Buss, 'hunting opened wide gaps in scrutiny because men went off for hours/days/weeks to procure flesh.'" (Quoted by EarthSave Long Island)
Maribeth Abrams-McHenry
"The Federal Register reported last year 75% of E.Coli 0157:H7 infections resulted from eating meat. From the 25%, only a small portion came from eating contaminated produce. Obviously, there's a significantly reduced risk by consuming only plant-based foods." (Vegetarian Voice)
Unknown
"If you plan for one year, plant seeds. If you plan for 10 years, plant trees. If you plan for 100 years, educate a person. Giving away food, you feed someone for one day; teaching someone to sow, you feed someone for life! Treat your guest as a guest for 2 days; on the third day give h/him a hoe."
Shel Silverstein
"Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless, Christmas dinner's dark and blue When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view! Sunday dinner isn't sunny Easter feasts are just bad luck When you see it from the viewpoint Of a chicken or a duck! Oh, how I once loved tuna salad, Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view." (Where the Sidewalk Ends)
The Farmer's Exchange
"Tom Turkey's Wish. Tom Turkey strutted proudly In quite carefree mood, Till up came Billy Bowan The boy who brought his food. Another boy was with him And Turkey heard him say, I hope you'll share the wishbone With me Thanksgiving Day. Oh-oh, this sounds suspicious Tom Turkey told himself, And so instead of eating He roosted on the shelf. It looks as if I'm headed For Someone's dinner table, So since it's still my wishbone I'll use it while I'm able. Wish for something noble My Mother always said, And so I'll put it this way May I never lose my head. The day before Thanksgiving Along came Billy's Dad, With Billy right behind him And, oh but he looked sad. He grabbed his Father's coat-tail I hope you won't be mad, I just can't let you do it I've grown to like him, Dad. Bills' father listened then took him by the hand, Let's go tell the family I think they'll understand. Tom Turkey watched them leaving His bosom swelled with joy. He breathed a sigh and gobbled I always liked that boy. Tom Turkey kept his wishbone And his head is on to stay. The Bowans ate spaghetti and Tom gave thanks all day!" (Quoted by Central New Jersey Vegetarian Group/sent them by Cindy Schroeder)
PETANEWS
"Fishes. When it comes to the ability to feel pain and fear, fishes aren't much different from mammals; they are so exquisitely sensitive to stimuli that any pain they experience is especially acute. Sensory hairs on their backs register vibrations, electric sensors on their skin detect electric fields, and many fishes can see better in darkness than cats. Their lips and snouts as well as their throats contain taste buds and their sensitivity to odors is unsurpassed. Fishes are also highly responsive to touch. If anglers could get inside fishes' skin for a few short minutes, they'd find hooking and 'playing' their prey a lot less 'relaxing' or 'sporting'. Anyone who eats fishes for 'health' reasons should think again, too: fishes' flesh can accumulate up to nine million times the concentration of toxins (like PCBs and DDT) in the waters they live in, and the flesh of some sea beings, like shrimps and scallops, has higher levels of cholesterol than beef. Fishes on farms are also fed antibiotics, such as oxytetracycline, which are passed on to humans, impairing the immune system."
PETA
"Spread the word that 'farmed animals' are as individual, charming, worthy of kindness as dogs and cats and don't deserve to be abused or killed!" (1998 Calendar)
Jim Mason
"Rape/Pillage in a turkey breeding factory: I got myself hired as an artificial inseminator. Workers forced 5-6 birds at a time into a chute opened to a pit sunken into the floor. Two men in the pit grabbed the birds from the chute. I was put in the pit grabbing/ 'breaking' hens (holding their breasts/legs down/tails up so their cloacas or 'vents' opened/the inseminator sticks/pushes his thumb right under her vent to open it further to insert the tube and deliver a 'shot' of semen). 'Breaking' hens is hard/fast/ dirty work; I had to dodge their panic-blown excrement, breathing the dust stirred up by the terrified birds who frantically beat their wings/ struggled in panic! The semen came from the 'tom house': on a bench a man clamped the tom by his legs/put his leg over the tom's head and neck to hold him/he squeezed the tom's vent until it opened up and the white semen oozed forth into the sucking tube. Having been thru this constantly, they fear the chute/balk/huddle up but the men kick them into it in order to terrify at least some who'd squawk/beat their wings in panic so as to terrify the others, creating such pain/terror behind the birds that it forced them to plunge ahead to the pain/terror they knew were in the chute and pit ahead! At the end of their cycle they're killed. The dead/dying birds before their cycle are just pitched out the door!" ('Animal Factories' - Quoted in Animals Agenda)
Unknown
"Tigers don't eat lettuce, Men weren't meant for meat; Monkeys, men or tigers - We are what we eat."
Dr. Benjamin Spock
"Ever since I wrote my first edition of Baby and Child Care in 1946, I have always put the emphasis on the need for eating lots of vegetables/fruits/whole grain cereals. But due to the fact that dairy products and meats have been considered ideal foods for so long, I was hesitant to talk about their hidden disadvantages. In fact, I was not entirely convinced, until recently, that all parents should be alerted, and in some cases made to feel guilty, when they continue to give these foods to their children." (Quoted in The Vegetarian and Vegan Association)
Vegan Outreach
"Farm animal handlers react to the animals with impatience/ callousness/even blatant, overt cruelty. In the 'Meat and Poultry' trade magazine, livestock consultant, Dr. Temple Grandin, reported numerous cases of 'deliberate cruelty' - workers who 'enjoy tormenting and killing animals on purpose', taking 'sadistic pleasure from shooting the eyes out of cattle,' striking them in the head, and electrically shocking the animals in sensitive areas of their bodies."
CONTACT Magazine
"Every second in the United States, 240 animals are raised in misery, transported in pain, and brutally killed for human consumption!"
PETA's Animal Times
"'McDonald's cruel', says British Judge! He agreed with activists that the burger giant is culpably responsible in the cruel treatment of chickens and pigs. Witnesses testified chickens raised to make McNuggets are bred for weight so their legs can no longer support their bodies. Crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds and get less space than a folded sheet of paper. Heart attacks/respiratory disorders/other diseases are common. The eggs in Egg McMuffins come from hens crammed into small wire cages/stacked in buildings with 1000s of other birds/unable even to stretch a wing or stand on solid ground. Their transport to slaughter is so cruel about 1/3 of laying hens suffer broken legs. McDonald's also uses breeding sows kept in such small stalls that they cannot turn around."
Brigid Brophy
"In all probability, animals feel more sharply than we do any restriction on such instinctual promptings as the need, which we share with them, to wander around and stretch one's legs every now and then; and terror or distress suffered by an animal is never, as sometimes in us, softened by intellectual comprehension of the circumstances... No more can we tolerate factory farming, it is as indefensible as the slave trade, and it is our business to make it as unthinkable!" (Unlived Life-A Manifesto Against Factory Farming)
Brigid Brophy
"That I like the flavor of mutton no more entitles me to kill sheep than a taste for roast leg of human would entitle me to kill YOU! To argue that we humans are capable of complex, multifarious thought and feeling, whereas the sheep's experience is probably limited by lowly sheepish perceptions, is no more to the point than if I were to slaughter and eat YOU on the grounds that I am a sophisticated personality able to enjoy Mozart, formal logic and cannibalism, whereas your imaginative world seems confined to True Romances and tinned spaghetti. The point is what your life and perceptions are worth to you, not to me, and what the sheep's life and sheepish perceptions are worth to the sheep." (Animals, Men and Morals)
Clementine Homilies (2nd Century)
"The unnatural eating of flesh-meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its unpure feasts, through participation in which a man becomes a fellow-eater with devils."
Steve Lustgarden
"Shrimp fishing is particularly indiscriminate. For every pound of shrimp sold, upwards of 20 pounds of other sea creatures are caught and returned to the sea dead or dying. Catching tuna is now more dolphin-friendly, but they still ensnare/kill thousands of sharks/turtles/ billfish. (They also kill tuna, majestic creatures that reach 1000 pounds and speeds of 55 mph). For every king crab that reaches the fish case, 5 or 6 others (mostly juveniles) are caught/tossed overboard! As disturbing as these figures are, the magnitude of the waste is significantly more since much 'bykill' is never reported." (EarthSave Long Island)
Dr. Neal Barnard
"Omega-3s in fish oils are highly unstable molecules which tend to decompose and in the process, unleash dangerous free radicals. Researchers from the University of Arizona and Cornell University addressed this problem in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, reporting omega-3s are found in a more stable form in vegetables/fruits/beans which also provide antioxidants to help neutralize the free radicals. The body needs only a tiny amount of omega-3s. They concluded, 'Significantly, the consumption of green leafy vegetables and fruits is consistent with these criteria.' Free radicals have been associated with over 50 diseases including heart disease and cancer." (Food for Life) (EarthSave Long Island)
Steve Lustgarden
"According to a 6-month investigation by Consumers Union (publishers of Consumer Reports magazine), by far the biggest source of PCBs in the human diet is FISH! PCB is a synthetic liquid once widely used for industrial purposes but outlawed as carcinogenic in 1976. As PCBs linger in the environment, their composition changes and they gradually become more toxic... which are found in fish. PCBs accumulate in body tissue. The PCBs you eat today will be with you decades into the future. Consumers Union found PCBs in significant percentages in salmon/swordfish/ whitefish/other. Other pollutants in sea creatures: mercury (damage the brain/nervous system), lead (impair behavioral development in children), and pesticides. Fish and shellfish can also harbor a number of naturally occurring toxins, none of which can be detected by sight/smell or destroyed by cooking." (EartSave Long Island)
Annie Besant (1847-1933)
"I appeal, particularly, to my own sex, because women are supposed to be rather the standard in the community of refinement/ gentleness/compassion/tenderness/purity. But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer... We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no direct part in it." (Speech)
Vegetarian Voice
"An unexpected ingredient in some fruit-flavored beverages is cochineal extract [an insect] to give pink/red hue to fruit drinks like Snapple/Fruitopia/Ocean Spray! During their egg-laying season they are brushed off plants/boiled alive/dried. Industry calls this ingredient 'natural'. ANIMAL-FREE DYES: Extracts of red cabbage/grapeskin/beet/more."
Adela P.
"A TV documentary showed the insect cochineal (alias carmine) exported from Peru. Interviewer was made to bite/taste the live bug's blood explaining it's used for just about every food that needs red coloring!!!"
The Internet Magazine
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has determined that at least 1/3 of U.S. chickens are contaminated with salmonella and/or Campylobacter bacteria." (Animal Place Sanctuary)
The Internet Magazine
"A vegetarian diet free also from animal products CAN prevent/improve, sometimes cure: arthritis/breast cancer/heart disease/kidney disease/osteoporosis/prostate cancer/stroke/colon cancer/salmonellosis/diabetes/impotence/asthma/gallstones/ obesity." (Animal Place Sanctuary)
The Internet Magazine
"CATTLE CREATED TO SERVE SINISTER PURPOSES: Dairy cows: Produce milk (ONLY after giving birth) to feed their young. She's forced to continuous pregnancies/her calf snatched away/her milk collected. Bizzarre/painful/manipulated breeding makes dairy cows to produce 2.5 times more milk than years past. Many made to produce 100 pounds of milk per day! This great stress causes serious/painful diseases in most cows/ confined in crowded yards/brought in 2 to 3 times a day to be milked with machines/ bred/milked 5 years then slaughtered. In a natural life, they live up to 20-25 years! 'Milk'-fed veal: Just like the male hens, the male dairy calves are 'worthless' because they can't produce milk. Yearly (or more] breeding of dairy cows for milk, produces thousands unwanted male calves each year and the so-called gourmet veal industry exploits this constant supply of 'surplus'. Over 900,000 calves raised in restrictive wooden crates 2x5'/fed an iron-deficient diet to make their flesh pale color/perpetually isolated depriving them from much needed social contact/at 16 weeks, to slaughter. Beef cattle: About 35 million cattle are slaughtered each year after castrated/dehorned with no anesthesia whatsoever! Sold to feedlot operators/remain there 4 months without shelter/fed a grain concentrated diet for the 'marbling' effect. Each time a calf changes hands h/she is branded with a hot iron on h/her face and made to endure many other unending tortures." (Animal Place Sanctuary)
The Internet Magazine
"All factory farm animals are crammed together/raised in close confinement so problems occur! To 'correct' them they give them lots of drugs plus antibiotics for everything! And/or, they mutilate the animals' bodies, lopping off parts causing the problems, with no anesthesia ever!"
Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize Winner (Author The Color Purple)
"As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought as I took the first bite... and spit it out!"
Carol M. Coughlin, RD
"The American Dietetic Association has updated its position to reflect the vast amount of scientific data verifying the health advantages of the vegetarian way of life: 'It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that vegetarian diets are nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.' The paper provides 44 scientific references for the positive relationship between vegetarian diets and risk reduction for coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, colorectal and lung cancer, and other diseases. Vegetarian diets are higher in folate, antioxidants, and phytochemicals, all of which have disease protective effects." (Vegetarian Voice)
Veggie Singles News
"Fish: Bad news for consumers who turned to fish to avoid antibiotics and growth hormones that taint red meat and poultry! Commercial fish feeds come laced with antibiotics with appetite stimulants/growth-boosting hormones/pigments to color the fish' sickly flesh. Other drugs are commonly added to the water. Also bad news is intensively farm-reared fish so many diseases plague them like parasite infestations, bacterial, fungal and viral infections rapidly spreading in the crowded fish farms causing hemorrhages, red, swollen, oozing gills, eroded skin, tails and fins, and degeneration of internal organs. Mortality from infection exceeds 50% within several days!" (From The Animal's Agenda)
Rhona Zaid, Ph.D. (The Civil Abolitionist)
"Revolting reports from New Zealand/Australia/Asia: Lobsters trying to crawl off plates while diners dig into their raw flesh. Also similarly served are prawns and shellfish. Asia restaurants serve 'drunken prawns': these live creatures are soaked in alcohol and set afire! They're also known as 'screaming prawns' because of their audible protests. As an historian who studies the 'barbarism' of the past, I can assure you that there is no authentic demarcation between 'then' and 'now'."
Veggie Singles News
"Do fish suffer? Both biochemically and structurally, the central nervous systems of fish closely resemble ours. Free nerve-endings register pain in vertebrates and fish possess these nerve endings in abundance! When injured, fish will writhe/ gasp/ show other signs of pain. Along with their other sensitivities, fish feel stress and pain. When chased, threatened, AND confined they react as humans do to stress with increased heart rate/accelerated breathing/ release of adrenaline. Subjected to prolonged adverse conditions as crowding/pollution, they suffer immune deficiency and damage to internal organs. Fish cry out in both pain and fear! Most sound-producing fishes 'vocalize' when prodded/held/ chased." (From The Animal's Agenda)
Veggie Singles News
"Fish Extinction? Intensive fish farming/ other commercial/ individual fishing decimates untold billions of fish each year and their deaths are neither quick nor painless! In purse seining, a boat encircles a school of fish then are drawn tight with a net. Hauled up, the fish are dumped into liquid brine kept below freezing! If they haven't already suffocated or been crushed, the fish die of thermal shock. Purse seining for yellowfin tuna has aroused public outrage on behalf of dolphins ensnared with the tuna but few people have cared about the tuna themselves! Motorboats and underwater explosives that herd the dolphins, cause terror and pain to the vibration-sensitive tuna as well. Pressure waves from an underwater detonation can burst a fish's swimbladder! 'Sports Illustrated' journalist Clive Gammon described fish pulled aboard after two days: many were 'eyeless/ finless/scaleless/eaten away by sand fleas!'" (Adapted from The Animal's Agenda)
Richard Schwartz, Ph.D.
"According to Worldwatch Institute, each pound of feedlot steak 'costs' about 35 pounds of eroded American topsoil. The number of wild animals on the American range has dropped sharply due to their inability to compete with cattle for food. Many species of plants and animals are disappearing annually because of the rapid destruction of rain forests. A meat-eater's diet requires over 4,000 gallons of water daily, a pure vegetarian's diet only uses 300 gallons. Just one edible pound of beef uses 5,200 gallons of water, a pound of tomatoes only needs 23 gallons. It takes about a hundred times more water to produce a pound of meat than it does to produce a pound of grain. Vegetarianism is an imperative for national solvency and global survival. We must shift away from a diet that is bankrupting the USA and the world, crippling and killing 1.5 million Americans annually with chronic diseases/ threatening the world's ecosystems/wasting scarce resources/contributing to world hunger/cruelly exploiting animals." (The Animals' Agenda)
PETA's Post Card
"How would you feel if a cow ate you? Caught you and bopped you And chopped you in two, Fried you or broiled you or put you in stew With carrots, potatoes, or an onion or two? So sometime at dinner when you're starting to chew, Put down your steak and ponder this through, How would you feel if a cow ate you?"
The Civil Abolitionist
"Survey by 'Consumer Reports' described by Associated Press writer Jim Fitzgerald, revealed two thirds of the chickens bought at stores around the country were infected with the campylobacter bacterium which was 4 times as prevalent as salmonella. 'Free-range' chickens were even more likely to be infected; they're still much too crowded! Campylobacter is blamed for up to 1000 human US deaths a year, millions of stomach upsets, and diarrhea, leaving victims with arthritis and Guillain-Barre syndrome which can lead to paralysis!"
United Poultry Concerns
"Don't just switch from beef to chicken: get the slaughterhouse out of your kitchen."
Victoria Moran
"When author Nathaniel Altman toured a slaughterhouse to research his book 'Eating for Life' (Vegetus), he noticed a bucket of animal parts. He asked if that would go into hot dogs and was told, 'That's too good for hot dogs - that'll be medicine.'" (The Animals' Agenda)
George Bernard Shaw
"... they (who stop eating flesh) will live longer. The average age of a meat eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85, and still at work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough, and am trying to die; but I simply cannot do it. A single beefsteak would finish me; but cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living for ever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism." (From his letter)
The VivaVine
"If intelligence were truly society's criterion for determining which animals are permissible to eat, a lot of humans would be on the menu. Pork fans who comfort themselves with the thought they are just eating 'dumb animals' beware! Studies of pigs reveal them to be thinkers and observants passing all tests with flying colors!"
Unknown
"'VEGETARIAN': it's not derived from vegetable, but from the Latin 'home vegetus' meaning a strong, robust, thoroughly healthy man!"
Dr. Steven Margolin
"It takes one bee's entire lifetime to produce a single tablespoon of honey from flower nectar!" (Midtown Resident Newspaper)
PETA's Animal Times
"'Dead meat should be buried, not eaten,' said Chrissie Hynde, the lively lead singer of the Pretenders, in an ad with her picture. She wants to continue to be of service to animal rights even after she dies so she revised her will, granting PETA permission to 'exploit my image in any way it sees fit in the event of my death.' She added she wants that ad to run the week of her funeral. Meanwhile, we're delighted Chrissie is a healthy, very much alive animal rights activist!"
Unknown
"Vegetarians are sprouting up all over!"
Talmud: Shabbath
"Most people die from overeating than from undernourishment."
Vegetarian Times
"What do two vegetarians say to each other when exchanging their wedding vows? 'Lettuce unite!' And a veggie punchline: 'Lettuce turn up on time so we won't be asked where we've been'."
Spanish Proverb
"Suppers have killed more than doctors have ever cured."
Suzanne House
"My resolution for the new millennium is simple, but oh, so powerful: a wholesome, nonviolent diet of grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits!" (From her letter to Tampa Tribune)
John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S.
"Hippocrates, called the father of medicine, who lived about four hundred years before Christ and who was a physician of great talents and extensive observation and research, says that 'in the beginnings, man subsisted on the spontaneous products of the earth, and received his food in the same simple and natural condition as the lower animals did.'" (The Natural Diet of Man)
Michel Eyquem DeMontaigne (1533-92)
"I want death to find me planting my cabbages."
"Are You Confused?"
"What are 'natural' foods? Foods grown on fertile soil under natural conditions and consumed in their natural state are natural foods. Foods grown in depleted soils with the help of chemicals and processed by heat, irradiation or chemical treatment, are NOT natural foods."
"Are You Confused?"
"Seeds, grains and nuts - most potent foods of all! The germ in seeds is our most important food, because the germinating power, the life-giving energy and the magic of the seeds is the source of dynamic energy and reproductive power of man. From the earliest primitive days of civilization, seeds have formed an important part of man's diet. Man ate seeds from fruits and wild plants, raw and untampered, even before he learned the art of cultivation. In every part of the world, by every nation and tribe, seeds and grains have always been valued as the staple foods. Asia: principal diet has always been rice. Scotland: oats. Russia and East Europe: rye and buckwheat. Middle east: millet and sesame seeds. Mexico and Central America: corn. Europe and North America: wheat. The long-living peoples of Hunza, Bulgaria and the Balkan countries rely heavily on grains, particularly wheat, millet and barley. All these grains plus peas and all kinds of beans have been the basis of human nutrition for thousands of years!"
Vegetarian Voice
"The U.S. Surgeon General stated 68% of diseases in this country are diet related. Because of meat- and dairy-based diets, many people suffer from degenerative diseases, and often their savings, accumulated through a lifetime of hard work and investment, are threatened by skyrocketing health care costs."
Dr. Bob Arnot, Medical Correspondent
"I believe that foods are the most powerful drugs we have." (NBC News)
Mahatma Gandhi
"The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork."
Harvard School of Public Health
"Limit milk and dairy foods... Calcium-rich non-dairy foods include leafy green vegetables and broccoli, both of which are also great sources of vitamin K, another key nutrient for bone health. Beans and tofu can also supply calcium."
GOLDEN DROPS OF BARE TRUTHS collected by Adela Pisarevsky
![Source: www.animalphotolibrary.com - Grazing cows [ 29.49 Kb ]](/data/image_2_2418.jpg "Source: www.animalphotolibrary.com - Grazing cows [ 29.49 Kb ]")
![Source: www.animalphotolibrary.com - chickens [ 60.71 Kb ]](/data/image_2_2419.jpg "Source: www.animalphotolibrary.com - chickens [ 60.71 Kb ]")
![Ostrich slaughter [ 25.23 Kb ]](/data/image_2_901.jpg "Ostrich slaughter [ 25.23 Kb ]")
