Veganism
Health
Environment
Ethics
Humane Meat Myth
Go Vegan! for the animals, for your health, and for the environment.
What does it mean to be a vegan? Veganism is a form of vegetarianism.
Vegetarians abstain from all flesh foods. This includes all cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and sea creatures. Basically, vegetarians avoid all carcasses.
Vegans eat a 100% plant-based diet. In addition to abstaining from flesh foods, vegans avoid dairy (mammary secretions) and eggs (reproductive excretions from chicken menses cycle). The underlying principle of veganism is compassion, love, and respect for all life. In addition to avoiding animal products in food, vegans seek to avoid causing suffering to animals in all areas of their lives.
This means avoiding products tested on animals; refraining from patronizing places of animal confinement and abuse including circuses, zoos, and rodeos; purchasing clothing and shoes made of non-animal materials, and seeking to live a life that does no harm to others.
Health
A healthy lifestyle and vegan diet is the best way to improve your health and prevent disease in the future. The human body thrives on a plant-based 100% vegan diet.
Read more about health here: www.pcrm.org
Environment
Adopting a vegan diet is the number one thing you can do for the environment.
Water Usage
•Average meat-eater’s diet uses 4,000 gallons of water per day
•Average ovo-lacto vegetarian’s diet uses 1,200 gallons of water per day
•Average vegan’s diet uses only 300 gallons per day.
(Source: Food Revolution by John Robbins)
Fossil fuels
Plant-based diets require significantly less fossil fuel than omnivorous diets. Animal agriculture consumes 1/3 of all fossil fuel in the United States.
To learn more about the environmental impact of animal agriculture read Food Revolution by John Robbins or visit http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/environment.html
Ethics
Many of us have had the opportunity to get to know animals as individuals.
Maybe you had a pet cat or dog. Perhaps you shared a special encounter with a wild animal. Whatever it may be, we see that animals have personalities and are individuals. They have preferences for comfort, likes and dislikes just like humans.
All animals feel pain, emotion, and have complex social systems.
Given that our bodies don’t require animal products we must question the morality of killing other sentient beings just for our palate. Ask yourself if it’s right to kill someone just because you like how she tastes. If you eat animal products, you are paying someone to kill an animal for you. Consuming animal products directly contributes to animal cruelty, abuse, suffering, and death.
Animals used for meat, dairy, eggs, and all other animal products are not free to live out their lives naturally. Their natural impulses and behaviors are controlled and manipulated.
Humane Meat Myth and Abolition of the Animal Trade
Even in family farms and so called free range facilities, the animals needs are not the top priority – profit is. The living conditions for animals on free-range, organic, and cage-free farms are often atrocious. And all animals suffer a terrifying death.
Animal products are never humane, because if these animals had a choice, they would choose to be free of human influence. It is simply not humane or kind to kill another being – no matter how “gently” you do it.
We are proponents of the ‘abolitionist approach’ to animal rights, as so eloquently put by Gary Francione.
Please visit humanemyth.org and http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/ for more information on this topic.