Let me ask you some questions to help us come to a conclusion.

Were the Nazis bad because:

1. They tortured/killed human beings en mass?
2. They tortured/killed beings that were able to suffer?

Meaning, if they had tortured/killed brain dead humans (who were not able to feel pain/fear) would it have been just as bad or would it have been forgotten by today?

And if they had tortured/killed millions of monkeys who were able to feel the same amount of pain as the Jews, would it still be remembered today?

If humans are animals, and if human intelligence is unrelated to the ability to feel pain, which is shared equally amongst most animals, then why is it so shocking to torture a human but not an animal?

How is it that our intelligence grants us the right not to suffer? Isn’t that like saying that our sight grants us the right not to be shouted at? Are these qualities connected in any way? Can a person with high IQ suffer more than one with a low IQ? In fact, can’t children, who are unable to rationalise their pain, seemingly feel more pain than adults?

Why has the holocaust stuck in our minds for so long because of a few million tortured Jews but the hundreds of billions of animals who were since equally tortured for food are not remembered?

And would the holocaust have been any less shocking if the Nazis didn’t kill Jews because of hatred, but simply because they enjoyed the taste of Jewish meat and killed them to feed their families? Equally, would it have been just as shocking to you if the Nazis had tortured and killed millions of cows because they hated cows? If not, why not?

Is it the reason for unneeded torture (hatred, taste, convenience) that makes it horrific or is it simply the torture itself?

So why is it that we grant rights to some but not others?

Was it relevant to the Nazis that Jews were humans? How about the slave masters and the blacks, did they care about their species or was race only deciding factor to them?

You, I assume, care about all humans regardless of anything, so long as they are human. But why do you stop there? Why do you not care about all animals regardless of species?

One is black, the other white, one has fur the other not, one can write poems the other cannot. But are those attributes relevant to the right not to suffer? If so, should a severely retarded human be stripped of their rights?

And under what logic should the right not to suffer be based on color, gender, race, height, religion, sexuality or species? Would it not make more sense if the right not to suffer was based on the mere ability to suffer?

I would appreciate it if you could share your logic on the subject and explain why you believe you are better than the Nazis/slave masters and deserve not to be compared to them.

Animals taste good and since I am more powerful I feel I have the right to eat them. Animals are inferior beings, they don’t have our level of intellect so I don’t see anything wrong with eating them. They were bred for this purpose so their suffering is non-important as long as I get meat on my plate. Our society has eaten animals for hundreds of years, it’s a part of our culture and I’m not the one who’ll change that.

Dear thousands of cows, chickens, fish, shrimp, pigs and insects,

I paid someone to hold you captive in tight quarters. To remove your genitals, your beaks, your tails and to brand you, all while wide awake and without anesthesia. To forcibly impregnate you and keep you that way all your life. I paid them to remove you from your children and from your parents at birth. And finally to kill you. I paid them to treat you as a commodity, a slave, as an object that existed only for my benefit. As if you could not suffer, or as if it didn’t matter if you could or not. All of this when it was unnecessary to do so. I did this solely for my own pleasures. A tasty meal, a full belly. You gave me comfort, you gave me a way to fit in with others and with the crowd. You gave me a center piece around which I and my family could celebrate. You were there to fill an empty space when I had a longing that I didn’t know how to fix. You made me feel safe. I know you can’t answer me directly, but I want to make this right. I feel I do not yet understand how to do this fully. Until then I will do what I can.

I love you,
Eric

If you eat meat you’re a bad person.

And you’re probably deluded too, desperately clinging to quasi-sensical rationalizations that are supposed to justify your cruel and filthy habit.

Yup, you guessed it — I’m through being Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to dealing with meat eaters. I’ve passed a personal tipping point, so to speak, mostly on account of my having to suffer through far too many dinner conservations in which I’m exposed to ridiculous and unfounded arguments intended to support the practice of eating flesh.

Ultimately, when it comes right down to it there is no excuse for eating meat.

Let me repeat that.

There is no excuse for eating meat.

All justifications for doing so – including those rare arguments that actually manage to make sense – are weak to the core. There’s no possible excuse that outweighs the damage and suffering caused by consuming meat.

I would now like to take the time to debunk some of the more common fallacies I’m forced to listen to (and supposedly tolerate) on a regular basis:

Fallacy #1: “Humans evolved the capacity to eat meat, so it’s justified”

When a person tells me this I get the urge to smash tofu in their face.

This is the oft used appeal to nature. Advocates of this view – whether they realize it or not – are essentially suggesting that ‘might makes right’ – that because humans sit atop the food chain they can pretty much kill and eat whatever they want. I’ve even heard guys use this argument to uphold their sense of masculinity – as if eating defenseless animals who were killed by machines that dip them in electrified pools of water somehow affirms their manliness.

Funny, I have a different measure of what makes a man.

Looking at this argument another way, the appeal to nature asserts that evolved traits are inherently good. The line of thinking goes like this: Evolution is natural, and what is natural is good; and because humans evolved the capacity to eat and digest meat, the practice of eating meat must also be natural and subsequently good.

This is the naturalistic fallacy and it leads to all sorts of problems. Given this line of thinking we should also condone other human traits that came about through evolution, namely rape, murder, pedophilia and cannibalism. Obviously we’re not about to do this any time soon. We know very well that many people cannot be left to their own hard-wired devices; this is why we have self-corrective memes (i.e. ethics, laws, etc.) and why we need to have police and penal systems.

More to the point, however, is the acknowledgment that overriding our evolutionary baggage is part of the human mission. Having Darwinian processes guide our moral compass is sheer lunacy. Where is the morality in ‘survival of the fittest?’ Evolution may have helped us describe how we got here, but it most certainly won’t help us move forward as a compassionate species.

Fallacy #2: “Humans evolved the capacity to eat meat, so it’s a necessary part of a healthy diet”

Yeah, right.

That’s why heart disease is the leading cause of death; hundreds of thousands of people die prematurely each year because of too much saturated fat from meat and dairy products. It’s no secret that meat consumption promotes heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and every other major degenerative disease. The Western meat-obsessed diet is a major contributor to the host of health problems currently endemic in our society.

Meanwhile back at the tempeh ranch, not only do humans fare very well without meat, they actually thrive without it.

A number of dietitians are now claiming that human physical performance peaks when people go off meat and other animal bi-products. Carl Lewis said his best years as a sprinter came after he transitioned to a vegan diet. Word of this is slowly getting out and an entire sub-culture has emerged around this revelation.

Philosopher Peter Singer hit the nail on the head when he said that if alternative means of survival exist, one ought to choose the option that does not cause unnecessary harm to animals. And as Charles Eisenstein has said, “It is just plain wrong to take another animal’s life unnecessarily; it is bloody, brutal, and barbaric.”

Makes sense to me. We don’t need meat to survive or to remain healthy. Consequently, we have no business raising and killing animals for food. The ongoing practice of doing so is pure extravagance.

Fallacy #3: “Being a vegetarian is too difficult and I’d never find anything to eat”

In other words, you’re lazy, unimaginative and you have the taste buds of a 5-year old.

Get over it. A chunk of meat does not reside at the center of the Universe. There are plenty of other options.

Which brings to mind another infuriating but common misconception – the twisted notion that vegetarians only eat vegetables. What nonsense. How about a good old fashioned plate of pasta and thick tomato sauce? Or a pizza covered in mushrooms and hot peppers? A plate of nachos and refried beans, anyone? How about meatless lasagne, stir-fries, curries, chillies and casseroles? Pancakes covered in syrup, sweet potato soup, and a fresh blueberry pie…

In fact, I’ve never eaten better since becoming a vegetarian five years ago. I now eat a diverse array of foods and I’m much more competent and knowledgeable in the kitchen.

Moreover, even the most meat-centric of us (my old self included) can find worthy substitutes. I often enjoy fake ham sandwich for lunch. For dinner I like to throw a veggie patty on the barbecue and slather it with HP and Tabasco sauce. I also enjoy burritos stuffed with simulated ground meat. Add the right spicing, condiments and marinade to this stuff and you’re practically there.

Fallacy #4: “Taking the life of an animal isn’t cruel because they’re worthless, stupid and probably not even self-aware”

Again, patent nonsense. These are the lies that people tell themselves as they bite into a sirloin steak – the kind of re-assurance they need to convince themselves that what they’re doing is not evil.

It’s also a sign of our speciest tendencies. As humans, we don’t kill each other because we know that other humans do not want to die. The same should hold true for our relationship with non-human animals. They don’t want to die either, but they’re given no choice and no protection.

Indeed, the de-valuing of animals is a lie. Farm animals are remarkably intelligent and emotional. As professor of animal husbandry John Webster has said,

“People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic, sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are motivated to seek it, you only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English summer’s day. Just like humans.”

Yes, animals deserve an experiential life free from suffering and torment. We, as the dominant species on the planet, have to pay particular attention to their needs.

Biologist Marc Bekoff has noted, “When animals are seen as automatons with no emotions, it is easy to treat them as mere property with which humans can do as they please.” Exactly — and we need to move away from this sort of parochial thinking as quickly as possible.

Along these lines I highly recommend the book, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.

Fallacy #5: “Livestock aren’t treated poorly”

People who make this claim are either terribly misinformed or just plain ignorant. The reality is that modern farming practices are an absolute travesty.

Pigs are typically kept in stalls so small and narrow that they can never turn around or rest properly. Many develop respiratory problems and neurotic coping behaviors such as repetitive bar biting and sham chewing (chewing nothing). Chickens and turkeys are often packed twenty to a cage and pumped with antibiotics. Their beaks have to be clipped to prevent them from pecking at one another. And as for cows, well, read this excerpt from an April 2001 Washington Post article which describes typical slaughterplant conditions:

The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t.

They blink. They make noises, he said softly. The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around. Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. They die, said Moreno, piece by piece…

“In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis,” said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. “I’ve seen it happen. And I’ve talked to other veterinarians. They feel it’s out of control.”

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you’re getting the point and you’d probably get more by reading other accounts of how pigs, cows, chickens and other farm animals are mistreated. I also recommend the book, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail A. Eisnitz.

Fallacy #6: “Eating meat isn’t that bad for the environment”

Guess again. Raising meat is environmentally nasty and an inconvenient truth.

Given the climate change hysteria currently gripping the planet, one would think that maintaining hordes of livestock would be a hot-button social and political issue. But it’s not. That would be too inconvenient. The ongoing practice of raising animals for food is being ignored as a subset to the larger environmental catastrophe currently in effect.

Animal protein, for example, requires tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy—eight times as much as for the same amount of plant protein. The average meat consuming diet burns the equivalent of a gallon of gas per day. All the livestock in the U.S. consumes five times as much grain as its human population. Americans are outnumbered by their farm animals by a ratio of 25 to 1.

In terms of land use, one-sixth an acre of land can feed a vegetarian for a year, while three acres are required to provide the grain needed to raise a year’s worth of meat for the average meat-eater.

The toll on water resources is just as bad. Grain-fed livestock consume 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food they produce; this compares to 2,000 liters required for soybeans. The meat industry accounts for nearly half of the water consumption in the U.S. – 2,500 gallons per pound of beef compared to 25 gallons per pound of wheat.

And what goes in must come out; 1.6 million tons of manure gets sent back into the environment every year in the U.S. In addition to this, residues of antibiotics and synthetic hormones are increasingly showing up in municipal water supplies.

And I have only scratched the surface.

So, as you’re heading off in your hybrid car to get solar panels for your home, just remember that as a meat eater you’re only being partly environmentally conscious.

Fallacy #7: “Eating meat is my personal choice, and since I respect your desire not to eat animals, I would appreciate your respecting my preference”

Sorry, I will do no such thing.

As Colleen Patrick-Goudreau has retorted, “The problem with this justification is that it assumes there is no victim, no other. It implies that the meat-eater’s desires, traditions, culture, or taste buds are superior to anything — or anyone — else and that because of this, he or she is absolved from the harm eating meat causes.”

Remember, this is not about you.

The truth hurts

As for me personally, I do not profess to have achieved any semblance of moral perfection. You don’t need to remind me of my hypocrisies and inconsistencies; I am very much aware of them and I am my own worst critic. I am not vegan, for example, but I hope to transition to that diet eventually.

But at least I’m trying; I’m making an effort to live a life in which I mete out as little suffering as possible to other living creatures. I’m also trying to reduce my global footprint. And if that means giving up meat, which I used to eat with great delight, then so be it.

And yes, I’m on my high-horse now — but I’m sincerely trying to make a difference. If my tone pissed you off then I succeeded in my goal. I’m deliberately trying to cajole you so you’ll reconsider your eating habits.

And in my own naive way I’m hoping that some of you will now actually consider a vegetarian diet.

Read more by George on his follow up post: http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/08/struggle-to-make-vegetarianism-new.html

Now, since we do not need meat to survive, and in fact are healthier without it, then shouldn’t treating animals with such disregard and killing them so callously be considered a doubly barbaric act?

Until we are collectively able to use our intelligence to care about the well-being of all others and stop thinking solely about ourselves and our superiority,  it doesn’t matter whether we’ve been to the moon, built pyramids or iPhones –  we’re still no better than beasts.

Ideal Diet.pdf

We don’t usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people – these acts are obviously relevant to our moral character. So too, most people would say, is our involvement in community activities, our generosity to others in need, and especially our sex life. But eating – an activity that is even more essential than sex, and in which everyone participates – is generally seen quite differently.

The way food is sold an advertised today doesn’t help. Despite the recent upsurge of farmers’ markets, in the developed world almost all food is purchased from supermarkets. Shoppers are not presented with relevant information about the ethical choices that surround food. Instead, the world food industry spends more than $40 billion annually trying to make us eat their products – a figure greater than the domestic product of 70% of the world’s nations. That buys an avalanche of advertising that sweeps down on us from all sides but tells us only what the advertisers want us to know.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, it’s often said,  we’d all be vegetarian. That’s probably not quite true – some people can get used to almost anything. But transparency is increasingly recognised as an important ethical principle and a safeguard against bad practice. Consumers should be able to get accurate and unbiased information about what they are buying and how it was produced.

There is a broad consensus within both religious and secular ethics that an ethical life respects virtues like fairness, justice, and benevolence. At the heart of these virtues lies a more basic principle: I cannot reasonably claim that my interests matter more than yours simply because my interests are mine. My interests may matter more to me, but I cannot claim they matter more in any objective sense. From the ethical point of view, everyone’s interests deserve equal consideration.

Obviously, animals can’t have equal rights to humans. Animals can’t have equal rights to an education, to vote, or to exercise free speech. The kind of parity that most animal advocates want to extend to animals is not equal rights, but equal consideration of comparable interests. If an animal feels pain, the pain matters as much as it does when a human feels pain. Granted, the mental capacities of different beings will affect how they experience pain, how they remember it, and whether they anticipate further pain – and these differences can be important. But the pain felt by a baby is a bad thing, even if the baby is no more self-aware than, say, a pig, and has no greater capacities for memory of anticipation. Pain can be a useful warning of danger, so it is sometimes valuable, all things considered. But taken in themselves, unless there is some compensating benefit, we should consider similar experiences of pain to be equally undesirable, whatever the species of the being who feels the pain.

We don’t need to eat meat to live. We only continue doing so because we are accustomed to eating these animals products and can’t imagine a meal without them, or because we like the way they taste. And these are not ethical justifications, given the harm these practices cause.

• I ask you questions that you might not have asked yourself before.
• I tell you about my own experience being a vegetarian.
• I lay out all the good AND all the bad things about it.
• I present you with a challenge.

I genuinely hope to see you on the green side! ;-)

1. Do you get to have all that lovely tasty food?
2. Do the meat/veggie alternatives taste just as nice?
3. Do you have 10x as many choices in a restaurant?
4. Are there many places that serve food you actually like?
5. Do you have as much variety in taste?
6. Is it nice to have to read the packets of everything to see if it’s suitable for vegetarians?
7. Is it nice not to be respected or understood in most other countries?
8. Do you like having no choice other than roast potato, peas and rice at some festive events?

WHY WOULD YOU BECOME ONE?
Not as easy to chew on…

1. Does farming badly affects the environment?
2. Does it make you cringe watching/thinking about an animal being slaughtered?
3. Do you agree you wouldn’t want that same fate on yourself?
4. Do you accept you wouldn’t be able to comfortably slaughter the animal yourself?
5. Do you agree you couldn’t eat your cat or dog who are no different to farm animals?
6. Shouldn’t we as superior beings treat all inferior sentient creatures with respect?
7. Can you live a healthy life without eating any meat?
8. Could we consider meat a commodity; a guilty pleasure that could be avoided?

I fully understand that we’re in a society where eating meat is just common practice. We grew up doing it. We have learned to enjoy it. We have learned not to think about it all. It’s become a habit to us. And as we all know, habits can be very hard things to give up, no matter how bad they are! (i.e. smoking, drinking, nail biting)

So I agree that becoming and staying a vegetarian is not easy. I suffer daily don’t you think that I don’t! However welcoming the UK is to us veggies it’s still not easy. Being easy is not what turning into a vegetarian is about. However hard it may be, it’s a comparatively small sacrifice to your life that spares hundreds of others from actual sacrifice: suffering and death. And once that is realised it becomes an easy choice to make.

In soon enough time you get accustomed with the difficulties. It becomes a habit again and before long you discover new things that you enjoy eating and just don’t take much notice of it. And in contrast, you will be safe in the knowledge that every night when you go to bed, no blood was spilt to keep you alive. No suffering was caused under your name. Safe in the knowledge that you’ll be doing something indisputably right in so many ways. And it’s that knowledge and that feeling being selfless and doing what’s right as supposed to what’s convenient and pleasant to you, that makes all the disadvantages of being a vegetarian seem trivial in comparison.

So, before having your next meal I challenge you to question yourself:
WHY DO YOU EAT MEAT?

1. Is it because you truly believe and are proud to say that it is the most absolute rightful thing to do?
2. Is it because of a relentless habit; a guilty pleasure that with a bit of effort could and should be changed?

I myself am of many faults and have lots of bad habits that I am yet to correct. I just think it’s extemly unfair to keep a habit that hurts others. So despite loving meat, despite all the inconveniences, that’s why I stopped eating it. And that’s why I believe that, no matter how hard, all of us that are intelligent, kind and warm-hearted people should do the same.

1. To refrain from taking life (non-violence towards sentient life forms)
2. To refrain from taking that which is not given (not committing theft)
3. To refrain from sensual (sexual) misconduct (not committing rape, etc)
4. To refrain from lying (speaking truth always)
5. To refrain from intoxicants which lead to loss of mindfulness (specifically, drugs and alcohol)

Number 1 on that list is the one thing that over 95% of the world don’t do. Their morals stop with no hurting humans as if they were somehow more capable of feeling pain and more deserving of being respected.

1. UNESSENTIAL: WE DON’T NEED MEAT TO SURVIVE
   Humans don’t need meat to survive and live a healthy life. They eat it because it tastes good. That alone is not a good enough reason to put animals through suffering.
2. HYPOCRISY: YOU COULDN’T KILL, GUT AND CHOP IT YOURSELF
   Most people don’t like the sight of an animal being killed, let alone could they do it themselves. Eating them is therefore hypocrisy.
3. COMPASSION: ANIMALS FEEL PAIN AND FEAR TOO
   Farm animals feel pain just like us and just like your pets. Electrocuting/cutting their throats is barbaric and inhumane. Farm animals are treated like a product and not like sentient beings that they are. They are fed hormones, are beaten and thrown about and live in confined spaces with complete disregard for their well-being.“Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself”.
4. COWARDICE: LIKE BABIES, ANIMALS DON’T HAVE A VOICE TO FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS
   Slavery was once legal. Women once didn’t have right to vote. Gays don’t have the right to marry in some places. But they all have a voice to fight for their rights. Animals can’t beg for their lives or freedom but that is not enough reason that they should be stripped from those rights. In the same way that killing an innocent and voiceless baby is the most horrific act of violence, so is killing and mistreating an animal.
5. HEALTH: VEGETARIANS ARE HEALTHIER
   Vegetarians live longer and have 40% to 70% less chance of getting cancer and other diseases than meat eaters.
6. ENVIRONMENT: ANIMAL FARMING IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
   Half the rainforests in the world have been cleared for grazing; methane from livestock causes global warming; soil is eroded by cattle; slurry poisons waterways; and the seas are laid to waste by overfishing. The global appetite for meat and the industrial techniques of the meat industry are destroying the Earth. Farming contributes to 18% of all greenhouse gases produced by humans. That’s more than all forms of transport put together.
7. HUNGER: GRAIN THAT’S BEING FED TO ANIMALS COULD GO TO STARVING PEOPLE
   While 750 million people go to bed hungry every night, one-third of the world’s grain is fed to farmed animals. A typical Western meat-based diet can only feed 2.5 billion people: a plant-based diet will feed every one of us.

If you want more reasons follow these links:

http://philipngcc.homestead.com

http://www.watchearthlings.com

http://www.goveg.com

http://www.goveg.com/theissues.asp

http://www.meat.org

http://www.tinyurl.com/earthlingsdoc

It explains the term “specism” and shows what goes on behind the scenes of a few industries that use animals as if they were products and not like the sentient beings that they are.

If you can’t stomach it, then you shouldn’t stomach the resulting product either.

Eating meat is an unnecessary cruelty. We can live perfectly healthy lives (even healthier than meat eaters) without putting innocent creatures through pain and suffering – so why do it?

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
~Leo Tolstoy

1. Why are you a vegetarian?
   Because as any human being I do not need meat to survive and I disagree with making an animal be treated like a product and then be murdered just because it tastes good.
2. What if the animal died by accident, would you eat it?
   No, the thought of eating a carcass disgusts me no matter how it died. Of course, if someone puts a gun in my head and tells me to choose between eating an animal that died accidentally and one that was murdered I would choose the one that died accidentally – but by choice I still wouldn’t eat it – I don’t NEED it and that’s the point.
3. But other animals eat meat too, you can’t make a lion into a vegetarian.
   For starters, we’re not lions. Lions don’t have a conscience nor a choice, they have large sharp teeth, they eat meat raw, from an early age they display hunting instincts; put a human baby next to a rabbit and check if it kills and eats it like a lion cub would. If you force feed lions with a diet of potatoes and vegetables they won’t be able to eat it nor will they live very long because they were made to be carnivores. Lions also defecate in front of each other and kill the cubs that were not fathered by them – should you do that too?

4. But these animals we eat are bread for it!
   How does that make it any better? Shall we start breeding slaves? Shall we start breeding dogs to use their fur to make teddy bears? Or breed humans to experiment on them. Breeding something for a purpose doesn’t make it right. These animals, whether they are bread for it or not, have feelings and deserve respect.
   Plus, salt-water fish are not bread for it, and as a result human’s over-fishing is causing HUGE imbalances in the ocean’s ecosystem.
5. They are just animals! They can’t think, they don’t care!
   Animals can feel the same amount of pain and fear that we can – they don’t want to suffer, they don’t want to die. Would it be right to kill a human with the mental capacity of a chicken? They DO exist, yet we spend millions with treatments to keep them alive and killing them would be considered murder and would put you in jail. This is called “specism” which a form of “racism”. The fact is that we are ALL animals, but we place higher morals and ethical values on our own species than on others – we somehow consider ourselves more worthy of being alive and being prevented from suffering SIMPLY because we are different species when in fact there is absolutely no reason for us not to apply the same morals to every animal other than the inconvenience it causes us from not being able to “taste” meat.
   It sounds absurd that we do it, but we do.
6. Didn’t humans evolve a larger brain exactly because they started eating meat?
   If that was true then one could ask why other carnivores are not even smarter than us. Plus, even if this statement was true it doesn’t mean that because of it we should remain with same habits we had 10 or 20 thousand years ago. We used to kill each other regularly, we used to live in caves, sacrifice babies in the name of gods, we used to die at the age of 35. I take pride in having evolved beyond that stage into a man who has compassion for all sentient creatures.
7. If you were stranded in an island and you needed to kill an animal to survive, would you do it?
   Yes, I would if it was absolutely necessary – being in that situation I would be removed from an environment in which I have a choice and would be put in one where in order to survive I would NEED to kill another animal to survive. That doesn’t happen on your day-to-day life – you always have a choice. Even if you’re at a friend’s house and they made a roast dinner, you wouldn’t DIE if you didn’t eat that day and you could always have the potatoes and I’m sure they would have other ingredients in their fridges to quickly make something different for you.
8. But then what do you eat?
   Of course your choices are limited because of the fact that most restaurants serve 90% of food with carcasses as an ingredient. But that is a small inconvenience to have to endure for stopping an animal from being unnecessarily killed to satisfy your palate. There are LOADS of options anyway, there are fake meats available, pasta, lasagne, omelette, potatoes, beans, vegetables, organic cheese, free range eggs… really, once you get used to it you don’t even miss meat at all.
9. Why do you not like to eat food that was near meat or touched meat?
   The best way I can explain it is by giving an example. Say you go to some village in China and they eat human featuses there – so you go to this restaurant and they have all these roasted human featuses on a tray and then some vegetables on another. Would you eat the vegetables?
   The thought of a carcass of an innocent animal being near my food disgusts me as much as that roasted featus would disgust you.
   Most vegetarians don’t feel that way and indeed by eating the vegetables only I am still not supporting the meat industry – so this is more of a “yuk” reason than a rational one.
10. What difference does it make? Everyone eats meat, so animals are still dying!
    What difference does it make to recycle, to save energy, to save water, to take public transport instead of driving a car, to not wear fur, to not buy from a company that uses child labour… by boycotting a practice you are doing your share and that’s all you can do really. If 100% of people ate meat in the UK there’d be an extra 50 million animals being killed every year to meet that demand – but about 8% of the people in the UK are vegetarians, and on average each vegetarian saves 100 animals from slaughter per year. It all adds up. Then one day there’ll be a tipping point – when 60-70% of the population turns vegetarian, the remaining ones will not have an option any more and then everyone will have to be vegetarians. Similar to when slavery was abolished – suddenly most people disagreed with it and the government forbade it – some people still wanted their slaves, but they could no longer legally have them. Now most people agree that slavery is a bad thing. Times change and with time are values are changing for the better.

    The biggest point is – we don’t need meat to live – and by becoming a vegetarian you are doing your part to slowly stop this horrible practice from going on.

I often do a lot of thinking, especially about the state of the world, humanity, the future, etc… so I was wondering, if there was a single word that could explain most of the problems in the world, what would that word be?

Selfishness

- Why do people eat meat?

Selfishness

They think about themselves and the momentary pleasure eating meat gives to them but they don’t think about the lives of those animals who suffer in order for them to have that pleasure.

- Why do people not offer their seats to others?

- Why are cars run by oil and not electricity?

- Why do people listen to loud music in public places?

- Why do people kill for money?

- Why do people steal?

- Why do people hunt?

- Why is there such inequality around?

- Why do people have their own kids instead of adopting?

- Why do people choose not to donate their organs?

Selfishness

Selfishness

Selfishness

Selfishness…

If people stopped thinking about themselves and started thinking of the world and its animals and people as equally important to them we would have no wars, no crime, no meat, no inequality, no global warming, no deforestation, and practically no bad things.

I am having an amazing opportunity creating a new business that I hope will bring me a great deal of money – my intention is to spend the bare minimum on myself and spend the rest creating charities that will help animals, people and the environment.

Gandhi said: You must be the change you wish to see in the world – I very much live by that and truly hope I have this opportunity to make a difference to this selfish planet.

It is written by a guy called Peter Singer who I now idolize. He writes so well and explains things in such a way that it is impossible to argue with him. Apparently most people who read this book turn vegetarians if they are not.

A passage of the book, quotes Jeremy Bentham when writing at the time when black slaves had been freed by the French but the British dominations were still being treated in the way we now treat animals.

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to caprice of a tomertor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, “can they reason?” nor “can they talk?” but, “can they suffer?”

Will leave you with that thought.