posted July 21, 2007 01:31 PM         

I need to know if anyone knows of any videos that show how animals get torture in order to get to our dinner table.
I want to show my kids the reality of the problem and change our diet to a more vegetarian diet, but it is hard because they are so use to drinking milk and eating meat.

So, maybe by showing them this inhumanity act and what animals go through they will want to give it a try and change their eating habits.

posted July 21, 2007 04:36 PM         

the following reading material will provide answers to your concerns in full...and much more! excellent resources ~

Star Signs
written by Linda Goodman

The Food Revolution
written by John Robbins

John Robbins' website ~

posted July 21, 2007 04:43 PM         

here is a website that features a lot of different dvds and other material ~

http://www.all-creatures.org/book/review.html

posted July 21, 2007 04:59 PM         

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
-Pythagoras, mathematician

"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."
-Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist

"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
-Romain Rolland, author, Nobel Prize 1915

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
-George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925

"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
-Jeremy Bentham, philosopher

"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought."
-Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978

"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."

"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty."
-Leo Tolstoy author

"I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished."
-Henry David Thoreau, author

"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"

"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."
-0George Bernard Shaw

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
-Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher

"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
-Mark Twain, author

posted July 21, 2007 09:42 PM         

Naiad
Except for a balance......No real answers(not in those books, sorry) to the dilemma in my opinion. Thanks anyhow.

Humans are omnivores. We are not cud chewers, nor simply carnivores either. Some folks cannot be vegetarians. They must eat meat.
And our pets, especially cats; must have animal protein. That is a fact.

posted July 21, 2007 09:54 PM         

quote:

---

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-Thomas Edison, inventor

---

quote:

---

"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."
-George Bernard Shaw

---

posted July 21, 2007 11:13 PM         

i've stated what's truth to me, as have you stated yours. i will re-post here what i posted in the other thread in response to your words regarding farming. thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Ecology and the Environment

Raising animals for meat has its consequences. It leads to rain forest destruction, global heatrising, water pollution, water scarcity, desertification, misuse of energy resources, and world hunger. The use of land, water, energy, and human effort to produce meat is not an efficient way to use the earth's resources.
Since 1960, some 25% of Central America's rain forests have been burned and cleared to create pasture for beef cattle. It has been estimated that every four ounce hamburger made from rain forest beef destroys 55 square feet of tropical rain forest. In addition, raising cattle contributes significantly to the production of three gases which cause global warming, is a leading cause of water pollution, and requires a staggering 2464 gallons of water for the production of each pound of beef. It only takes 29 gallons of water to produce a pound of tomatoes, and 139 gallons to produce a one pound loaf of whole wheat bread. Nearly half of the water consumed in the United States goes to the growing of feed for cattle and other livestock.

Many more people could be fed if the resources used to raise cattle were used to produce grain to feed the world's population. An acre of land growing oats produces 8 times the protein and 25 times the calories, if the oats are fed to humans rather than to cattle. An acre of land used for broccoli produces 10 times the protein, calories and niacin as an acre of land producing beef. Statistics like these are numerous. The world's resources would be more efficiently utilized if the land used for livestock production was converted to raising crops to feed people.

Eating a vegetarian diet allows you to "tread more lightly on the planet." In addition to taking only what you need and reducing excess, it will feel better when you know that a living being doesn't have to die each time you eat a meal.

---------------------------------------------

"Modern meat production involves intensive use - and often misuse - of grain, water, energy and grazing areas," says Durning. He cites the following examples:

* Water pollution: the manure and sewage from stockyards, chicken factories, and other feeding facilities can pollute water supplies.

* Air pollution: thirty million tons of methane - a gas that contributes to global warning - comes from manure in sewage ponds or heaps.

* Soil erosion: nearly 40 per cent of the world's - and more than 70 per cent of US - grain production is fed to livestock. For each pound of meat, poultry, eggs and milk we produce, farm fields lose about five pounds of topsoil.

* Water depletion: an estimated half of the grain and hay that's fed to beef cattle is grown on irrigated land. It takes about 390 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef.

* Energy Use: it takes almost ten times more energy to produce and transport livestock than vegetables.

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/001851.html

posted July 22, 2007 01:40 AM         

The Union of Concerned Scientists says that the two things that people can do which will most help the environment are (1) to drive a fuel efficient automobile (that means, not a SUV or a truck), along with a decision to live near to where you work. That recommendation is indeed important. Anything you can do either in what you drive or where you live is important. The 2nd thing the Union of Concerned Scientists proposed that people could do which also would have dramatically good consequences for the environment: to not eat beef.

I'm going to go one step farther than UCS: I suggest that you refuse to eat any animal or animal product produced on a factory farm. And I'm going to tell you why.

In 1990, when I first read, that 10 people could be fed with the grain that you would feed a cow that would be turned into food for one person, I was impressed. But I was not moved. The reason was: if 10 people would be fed because I gave up meat, I'd give it up. But, I thought, if I give up meat, it won't have that impact: it probably won't have any impact on anything at all, except me.

I was wrong. If I had known that for every pound of beef I did not eat, I would save anywhere from 2500 to 5000 gallons of water - you heard it, for every pound of beef, 2500 to 5000 gallons of water, I would have been moved. It's a good idea to save water; we are depleting our underground aquifers faster than we are replenishing them. The largest one, the Ogallala, which covers a vast part of the country from the mid-west to the mountain states, is being depleted by 13 trillion gallons a year. It is going to run out. Northwest Texas is already dry. They can't get any water from their wells.

John Robbins points out that in the 1980's and 1990's, to conserve water, most of us went to low flow showerheads. If we take a daily 7 minute shower, he says, and we have a 2 gallon per minute low flow showerhead, you use about 100 gallons of water per week, or 5200 gallons of water per year. If you had used the old fashioned 3 gallon per minute showerhead, I calculate you would have used 7644 gallons of water per year. So by going low flow, you saved almost 2500 gallons of water per year. Wonderful. But by giving up one pound of beef that year, you'd save maybe double that. By giving up one pound of beef, you'd save more water than you would than by not showering at all for six months! And that's just one of the environmental impacts you'd have.

The modern factory farming system is a prolific consumer of fossil fuel and a prolific producer of poisonous wastes. Up to 100,000 animals are herded together on huge feedlots. These animals do not graze on grass, as picture books tell us; they can't graze at all. They are crowded, filthy, and stinking places with open sewers, unpaved roads, and choking air. The animals would not survive at all but for the fact that they are fed huge amounts of antibiotics.

It is now conceded that the antibiotics fed to cattle are the main cause of antibiotic resistance in people, as the bacteria constantly in these environments evolve to survive them. The cattle are fed prodigious quantities of corn. At a feedlot of a mere 37,000 cows, 25 tons of corn is dumped every hour. It takes 1.2 gallons of oil to make the fertilizer used for each bushel of that corn. Before a cow is slaughtered, she will eat 25 pounds of corn a day; by the time she is slaughtered she will be over 1200 lbs. In her lifetime she will have consumed 284 gallons of oil. Today's factory raised cow is not a solar powered ruminant but another fossil fuel machine.

And she will produce waste. Livestock now produces 130 times the amount of waste that people do. This waste is untreated and unsanitary. It bubbles with chemicals and disease-bearing organisms. It overpowers nature's ability to clean it up. It's poisoning rivers, killing fish, and getting into human drinking water. 65% of California's population is threatened by pollution in drinking water just from dairy cow manure. It isn't just cows that produce this waste. Factory raised hogs produce 4 times the waste in North Carolina as the 6.5 million people of that state do. Cases of pfiesteria have broken out in that state and even here in Maryland - from water polluted from pig farms and chicken farms. Even the oceans are polluted: 7000 sq. miles of the Gulf of Mexico are a complete dead zone.

There are more environmental impacts. Cattle don't spend their entire lives in feedlots. When they are young, they graze. Where do they graze? Well, more than 2/3rds of the land area of the mountain states are used for grazing. 70% of the lands in western national forests are grazed; 90% of Bureau of Land Management land is grazed. These are public lands, lands that President Clinton didn't even try to save. These lands are trampled by the cattle, compacting the soil. When it rains, the land doesn't absorb the water. Instead, it runs off, taking away topsoil, forming deep gullies, and damaging streambeds. Your tax dollar subsidizes this activity. The government protects the cattle by killing off any creature which might threaten the livestock. They poison, trap, snare, den, shoot, or gun down the wildlife. Denning, by the way, is the practice by federal agents of pouring kerosene into the dens of animals and setting them on fire, burning the young animals alive in their nests.

According to Robbins, agents kill badgers, black bear, bobcats, coyotes, gray fox, red fox, mountain lions, opossums, raccoons, skunks, beavers, porcupines, prairie dogs, black birds, cattle egrets, and starlings using these methods. These activities are on public lands, which were created in large part to protect the environment!

I'm not done yet. We in the United States do not get all of our beef from the west. We import more than 200 million pounds of beef from Central America alone. Every second of every day, 1 football field of tropical rainforest is destroyed in order to produce 257 hamburgers. A 1/4 lb hamburger destroys 67 square feet of rainforest. Every time you destroy rainforest land, you destroy rich plant and animal life, varieties of life we don't even understand, and forms of which may provide the medicines we need to cure disease. Rainforests supply us with oxygen. They moderate our climates. When rainforests are destroyed, it's only a matter of time before the land becomes desertified. They absorb some of the carbon dioxide we are spewing into the atmosphere.

We humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 25%, compared to any other period when humans were on this planet. Most of that gain has taken place in the last 50 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, consisting of some of the best scientists in the world, says global warming is a fact. If uncontrolled, we will have ecosystem collapses, crop failures, weather disasters, coastal flooding, the spreading of previously controlled diseases, the death of coral reefs, and new insect pests. Some of these things are starting to happen already. Coral reefs are dying. Insect pests are spreading out of their range and killing off new kinds of trees. Weather patterns are changing. Some places have had extreme weather events, with billions of dollars of losses. Some island people have had to abandon their islands because rising seas have salinated their underground aquifers.

Carbon dioxide is largely produced by the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, and especially our use of inefficient vehicles for transportation. But not often mentioned is the fossil fuel used to raise farm animals. As I said earlier, a factory cow is a fossil fuel machine, not a solar powered ruminant whose wastes fertilize the fields to produce more grass for the cow to eat. When you eat beans, for example, you use 1/27th the amount of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of energy as you do when you eat beef. You get the same food energy producing only 4% of the carbon dioxide that a person eating beef does.

Another fact we don't talk about: cattle produce almost 1/5th of global methane emissions. Cattle fart. Big time. Their gas is methane. Methane is actually 24 times as potent as carbon dioxide in causing climate chaos.

There's another major environmental consequence of our factory system of animal raising: that's the matter of species extinctions. Now it is true that species die off all the time. Normally, the earth has lost 10 to 25 species per year. But in the billions of years of life on this earth, we have had 5 periods of major extinctions; the last one was 67 million years ago, when, possibly because of a meteor colliding with the earth, we lost the dinosaurs. But now there's a sixth extinction, and it is not caused by a meteor, but by human beings.

And this is a big one; we are losing several thousand species per year, and maybe tens of thousands. We think of mammals that are endangered, and 25% of mammalian species are endangered. But what's much more endangered, or wiped out already, are the plants, including varieties of plankton, fungi, bacteria, and insects, that are fundamental to all so-called higher forms of life. All life will unravel if these creatures are wiped out.
The driving force behind all these extinctions is the destruction of wildlife habitat, especially the rainforests of the world. The driving force behind the destruction of the rainforests is livestock grazing. The leading cause of species in the United States being threatened or eliminated is livestock grazing. A 1997 study of endangered species in the southwestern United States by the Fish and Wildlife Service found that half the species studied were threatened by cattle ranching.

You know, you and I cannot change all this. We are not going to be able to get a bill through Congress outlawing factory farming. Yet Earthsave as an organization believes we can still have a dramatic effect: we believe that you can protect your health and protect the environment one bite at a time. Let's review what I've said here: by not eating beef - and other farm animals as well - you :

* Save massive amounts of water - 3000 to 5000 gallons of water for every pound of beef you avoid

* Avoid polluting our streams and rivers better than any other single recycling effort you do

* Avoid the destruction of topsoil

* Avoid the destruction of tropical forest: remember passing up 1/4 lb of hamburger averts the destruction of 67 sq ft of rainforest
* Avoid the production of carbon dioxide. Your average car produces 3 kg/day of CO2. To clear rainforest to produce beef for one hamburger produces 75 kilograms of CO2. Eating one lb of hamburger does the same damage as driving your car for over 3 weeks.

* Reduces the amount of methane gas produced. I imagine the next bumper sticker: stop farts, don't eat beef.

*Reduces the destruction of wildlife habitat

* Help to save endangered species.

That's a pretty good day's work, for just what you don't put in your mouth.

This is a transcript of the Earth Day talk that was given for the Baltimore chapter of EarthSave International by Steve Boyan Ph.D., a recently retired political science professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has published two books on environmental issues, and may be available to speak for other groups. His email address is boyan@umbc.net.

posted July 22, 2007 02:08 AM         

Although some historians and anthropologists say that man is historically omnivorous, our anatomical equipment - teeth, jaws, and digestive system ­ favors a fleshless diet. The American Dietetic Association notes that "most of mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near-vegetarian diets."

And much of the world still lives that way. Even on most industrialized countries, the love affair with meat is less than a hundred years old. It started with the refrigerator car and the twentieth-century consumer society. But even with the twentieth century, man's body hasn't adapted to eating meat. The prominent Swedish scientist Karl von Linne states, "Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of the other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food." The chart below compares the anatomy of man with that of carnivorous and herbivorous animals.

When you look at the comparison between herbivores and humans, we compare much more closely to herbivores than meat eating animals. Humans are clearly not designed to digest and ingest meat.

Meat-eaters: have claws
Herbivores: no claws
Humans: no claws

Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
Humans: perspire through skin pores

Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding
Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits

Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Based on a chart by A.D. Andrews, Fit Food for Men, (Chicago: American Hygiene Society, 1970)

Clearly if humans were meant to eat meat we wouldn't have so many crucial ingestive/digestive similarities with animals that are herbivores.

Many people ask me, "If we weren't supposed to eat meat than why do we?". It is because we are conditioned to eat meat. Also, the ADA (American Dietetic Association) tells us that "most of mankind for most of human history has lived on a vegetarian or Lacto-ovo vegetarian diet.

A popular statement that meat eaters say is; "In the wild, animals kill other animals for food. It's nature." First of all, we are not in the wild. Secondly, we can easily live without eating meat and killing, not to mention we'd be healthier. And finally, as I have already shown, we weren't meant to eat meat. Meat and seafood putrefies within 4 hours after consumption and the remnants cling to the walls of the stomach and intestines for 3-4 days or longer than if a person is constipated. Furthermore, the reaction of saliva in humans is more alkaline, whereas in the case of flesh-eating or preying animals, it is clearly acidic. The alkaline saliva does not act properly on meat.

The final point I would like to make on how we as humans were not meant to eat meat is this. All omnivorous and carnivorous animals eat their meat raw. When a lion kills an herbivore for food, it tears right into the stomach area to eat the organs that are filled with blood (nutrients). While eating the stomach, liver, intestine, etc., the lion laps the blood in the process of eating the dead animals flesh. Even bears that are omnivores eat salmon raw. However, eating raw or bloody meat disgust us as humans. Therefore, we must cook it and season it to buffer the taste of flesh.

If a deer is burned in a forest fire, a carnivorous animal will NOT eat its flesh. Even circus lions have to be feed raw meat so that they will not starve to death. If humans were truly meant to eat meat, then we would eat all of our meat raw and bloody. The thought of eating such meat makes one’s stomach turn. This is my point on how we as humans are conditioned to believe that animal flesh is good for us and that we were meant to consume it for survival and health purposes. If we are true carnivores or omnivores, cooking our meat and seasoning it with salt, ketchup, or tabasco sauce would disguise it and we as humans would refuse to eat our meat in this form.

Overall advantages of vegetarianism
You can indeed reap a lot of benefits by being a vegetarian and people have become more aware of the health benefits of being a vegetarian. Animal rights issues is only one of the reasons why people decide to go on a vegetarian diet. People are beginning to care more about the environment. However, the main reason why people go on vegetarian diet is because of health benefits.

...If you look at the chicken and vulture (carnivores), these animals eat just about everything and notice how unhealthy these animals look. The Chinese believe that the chi or life force in your body is less when you consume meat and so do the Indians with their ancient yogic principles, their life force was called prana.

The great Tai Chi masters of China were adept at preserving their chi, even if some of the masters were not vegetarians, they still had a balanced diet. It has now been scientifically proven that a balanced vegetarian diet is better compared to a diet that is taken with meat.

There are a lot of misconceptions about being a vegetarian; protein is one of the main topics of debate as a lot of people think that you can only get protein from meat. Vegetarians get a lot of protein, if they eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes. What vegetarians don't get is the excess protein of traditional American diet, excess that leads to kidney overload and mineral deficiency diseases.

A lot of people also think that a vegetarian diet is not a balanced diet. Vegetarian diets have a proportion of three macronutrients, which are complex carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Vegetarian food sources (plants) tend to be higher sources of most micronutrients. Another myth that needs to be clarified is the so-called lack of calcium among vegetarians. Many vegetables, especially green, leafy ones, have a good supply of calcium. The truth is that vegetarians suffer less from osteoporosis (a deficiency of calcium that leads to weak bones).

...fColon cancer is rampant! This is caused by the slow evacuation and the putrefaction in the colon of the remains of meat. Lifelong vegetarians never suffer from such an illness. Many meat eaters believe that meat is the sole source of protein. However, the quality of this protein is so poor that little of it can ever be utilized by humans because it is incomplete and lacks the correct combination of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Studies show that the average American gets five times the amount of protein needed. It is a common medical fact that excess protein is dangerous, the prime danger being that uric acid (the waste product produced in the process of digesting protein) attacks the kidneys, breaking down the kidney cells called nephrons. This condition is called nephritis; the prime cause of it is overburdening the kidneys. More usable protein is found in one tablespoon of tofu or soybeans than the average serving of meat!

Have you ever seen what happens to a piece of meat that stays in the sun for three days? Meat can stay in the warmth of the intestine for at least four days until it is digested. It does nothing but wait for passage. Often, it usually stays there for much longer, traces remaining for up to several months. Colonic therapists always see meat passing through in people who have been vegetarians for several years, thus indicating that meat remains undigested there for a long time. Occasionally this has been documented in twenty-year vegetarians!

Some vegetarians claim they are more satisfied after they eat. The reason for this is that there are fewer ketones (protein-digestive substances) formed when vegetable protein is digested. For many, ketones cause a trace amount of nausea which one normally interprets as a decreased desire for food due to this uncomfortable and slight degree of queasiness. Although the body calls for more food, the taste buds tolerate less. This is the danger of the popular high-protein diet substances on the market. This abnormally high level of ketones is called ketosis and refers to the state of starvation that the body incurs due to the inability of the appetite to call for nutrition. Most Americans who eat the wrong type of carbohydrates never recognize the high amount of complex carbohydrates required to overthrow this condition. Also, when the blood ketone level is too high, it results in abnormally acidic blood, called acidosis.

Tigers or lions who eat meat and grow strong on it have acid-based digestive systems. Our Hydrochloric Acid isn’t strong enough to fully digest meat. Also, their intestines are in a straight run of about five feet long, not twisted and turned, layer over layer, compacted into a small area like the human intestine, which is twenty feet long.

...

posted July 22, 2007 02:20 AM         

While carnivores take pleasure in killing animals and eating their raw flesh, any human who killed an animal with his or her bare hands and dug into the raw corpse would be considered deranged. Carnivorous animals are aroused by the scent of blood and the thrill of the chase. Most humans, on the other hand, are revolted by the sight of raw flesh and cannot tolerate hearing the screams of animals being ripped apart and killed. The bloody reality of eating animals is innately repulsive to us, more proof that we were not designed to eat meat.

Ask yourself: When you see dead animals on the side of the road, are you tempted to stop for a snack? Does the sight of a dead bird make you salivate? Do you daydream about killing cows with your bare hands and eating them raw? If you answered "no" to all of these questions, congratulations—you're a normal human herbivore—like it or not. Humans were simply not designed to eat meat. Humans lack both the physical characteristics of carnivores and the instinct that drives them to kill animals and devour their raw carcasses.

If we were meant to eat meat, why is it killing us?

In addition to being anatomically ill equipped to digest meat in the short-term, the long-term damage that a meat-based diet wreaks on the human body confirms that we were not meant to eat flesh. Natural carnivores never suffer from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, or obesity, ailments that are caused in humans by the consumption of the saturated fat and cholesterol in meat.

Dr. William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of the authoritative American Journal of Cardiology, sums it up this way: "[A]lthough we think we are one and we act as if we are one, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

Studies have shown that even when fed 200 times the amount of animal fat and cholesterol that the average human consumes each day, carnivores do not develop the hardening of the arteries that leads to heart disease and strokes in humans.4 Indeed, researchers have found that it is impossible for carnivores to develop hardening of the arteries, no matter how much animal fat they consume.5

Carnivores are capable of metabolizing all the fat and cholesterol in meat, but humans are a different story: Our bodies were not designed to process animal flesh, so all the excess fat and cholesterol from a meat-based diet makes us sick. Heart disease, for example, is the number one cause of death in America according to the American Heart Association, and medical experts agree that this ailment is the result of the consumption of animal products.6 In fact, meat-eaters have a 50 percent higher risk of developing heart disease than vegetarians, and a low-fat, completely vegetarian diet has been repeatedly used to unclog the arteries of heart disease patients—it not only prevents but also treats the disease!7 Learn more about animal products and heart disease.

In addition to pointing out the damage done by saturated fat and cholesterol, scientists have also shown that eating animal protein can be harmful to human health. We consume twice as much protein as we need when we eat a meat-based diet, and this leads to osteoporosis and kidney stones.8 Animal protein raises the acid level in human blood, causing calcium to be excreted from the bones to restore the blood's natural pH balance. This calcium depletion leads to osteoporosis, and the excreted calcium ends up in the kidneys, where it can form kidney stones. The strain of processing all the excess animal protein from meat can also trigger kidney disease in meat-eaters.

The consumption of animal protein has also been linked to cancer of the colon, breast, prostate, and pancreas. In fact, according to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the director of the Cornell-China-Oxford Project on Nutrition, Health, and the Environment, "In the next ten 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."

Eating meat can also have negative consequences for stamina and sexual potency. One Danish study indicated that "Men peddling on a stationary bicycle until muscle failure lasted an average of 114 minutes on a mixed meat and vegetable diet, 57 minutes on a high-meat diet, and a whopping 167 minutes on a strict vegetarian diet."9 Besides having increased physical endurance, vegans are also less likely to suffer from impotence.

Since we don't have strong stomach acids like carnivores to kill all the bacteria in meat, dining on animal flesh can also give us food poisoning. In fact, according to the USDA, meat is the cause of 70 percent of foodborne illnesses in the United States because it's often contaminated with dangerous bacteria like E. coli, listeria, and campylobacter.10 Every year in the United States alone, food poisoning sickens over 75 million people and kills more than 5,000.11 While carnivores can process all the saturated fat, protein, and bacteria in animal flesh, a meat-based diet can send humans to an early grave. Clearly, people were not intended to eat meat. Learn more about how meat affects human health.

posted July 22, 2007 02:45 AM         

Rebuttal 1: Eating meat is natural back

It is true that through evolutionary time, homo sapiens have acquired certain adaptations to meat consumption. Physically speaking these adaptations include slightly enlarged canines, forward eye sockets, and the development of certain enzymes for the breakdown of meat. It is also true, however, that we still possess many herbivorous adaptations from the vast majority of human evolution in which we were herbivorous, such as the structure and length of our intestines. It is for these reasons that homo sapiens are categorized as ‘omnivores‘. The fact that we have acquired these adaptations often causes people to take the stance that meat eating is a natural process. I am not going to argue any different, animal consumption is seen throughout the animal kingdom, but does this hold a moral truth? Other practices seen in the animal kingdom include rape (ducks among other species) genocide (as seen in wolves and Chimps) and intra-specific competition (as seen in nearly all species). Now does the fact that these are ‘natural’ processes make them morally acceptable? The short answer is no. Rape has been outlawed in most modern societies, the reason for this rejection is generally of a utilitarian/egalitarian basis, that is, people generally reject rape as it causes immense pain and gender inequality. The horrors of genocide were seen during the holocaust, to which the majority of the world were morally outraged by, once again due to the senseless pain caused by these action. Intra-specific competition refers to competition of conspecifics (individuals within the same species). Darwin’s theories of natural selection, gave rise to an ideology known as ’Social Darwinism’, which basically states that the rich should allow the poor to perish in order to keep genetic fitness of the human species as high as possible. Clearly this ideology ignored the fact that wealth does not correlate very well with genetic fitness. Another theory which promotes intra-specific competition is individualistic anarchism (not to be confused with collective/social anarchism) which states that the removal of the state is required to eliminate protection of ‘the weak’. These theories are not taken overly seriously in today’s modern societies as they ignore human rights. They too, are regarded as morally reprehensible by most, BUT they appeal to the natural process of life as seen in the animal kingdom. Therefore, the argument that eating meet is morally acceptable because it is natural ignores the fact that this premise also deems acceptable other actions already outlawed in most modern nations. Another argument against this rebuttal is the fact that many meat products are currently produced in factory farms, which basically treat living sentient organisms as machines, or products. These animals live inhumane lives and die inhuman deaths, and their living conditions are anything but natural.

Rebuttal 2: Eating meat is okay, because we are human back

This argument hold a number of religious assumptions, which I do not wish to enter into. Myself being an atheist I would whish not to offend any theists by laying claims about faith. What I can argue is the similarities between humans and animals. To categories one species as ‘human’ and the thousands of others as generically ‘animal’ simply makes no sense. This categorization implicitly states that humans and chimpanzees which share over 98 percent of our genes, are less closely related than a Gorilla and a Caterpillar. Any logical person would admit that this grouping is erroneous at very best. All of our characteristics deemed uniquely human have animal possible precursors, from language, to art and even drug abuse. The removal of humanity from the animal kingdom, to allow a dominion over nature, only fosters an unsustainable ethos. Of course, it is clear to see that human beings are unique in some respects, for example an adoption of morality and the invent of agriculture, but these characteristics are just extremes of activities and characteristics seen in the animal kingdom. Should then, if we are just another species of great ape, ignore morality and dismiss it as a highly extreme version of self interest with obvious animal precursors? If your answer is yes, then you are basically stating that the afore mentioned ruthless acts such as genocide and rape are acceptable, which we know them not to be. So, humans are just another species of animal, however they have evolved (or been given depending on your views of origins) a seemingly (though not necessarily) altruistic adaptation to life which generally rejects pain. Another argument often put forward is that animals do not have souls hence eating them is morally acceptable. This argument is grounded in faith, but it is interesting and important to note that not all religions adopt this philosophy. I, once again, will not enter this debate because of my own views on life which would bias any argument.

Rebuttal 3: Eating meat harms no one, and is environmentally sustainable back

I must admit, this argument is not often brought up with me, as generally meat eaters are ignorant to the repercussions of meat production, but here we go anyway…. Worldwide a cattle consumes a massive 736 billion kilograms of grain annually! To give an analogy, if this grain was put into a train with carriages, it would be long enough to span the equator at least six times! Almost a third of this feed is grown in the Third World. These people rarely can afford to consume the meat produced by the cattle they feed! meat consumption expends far, far more water than the production of vegetables or fruit. 100,000 liters of water for 1 kg of steak. As I’m sure your all aware, water though plentiful in first world nations, is not so abundant in other places. In the third world, water is a very scarce resource, people regularly die of thirst, or from drinking contaminated water, yet we continue to waste water on cattle production, rather than sharing it between other people who are dieing because of a lack of it. Compare meat water consumption to that required for a kg of soy (~2-3000L), or a kg of potatoes (~500 L). Here is some perspective, a country like Holland consumes enough water through bovine production to supply drinking water to nearly a third of the worlds population…get it! Cattle and Swine etc are secondary producers, plants are primary producers, this explains the disparity in consumption. We must first grow a primary producer, in order to feed a secondary producer.

Rebuttal 4: Eating meat does not harm the environment back

In western nations the main factor causing acid rain is stock farming and trafficking. This acid rain is detrimental to the health of water bodies and forests equating to a greater amount of lives lost. In order to graze cattle large areas are usually cleared, regularly this happen in areas with highly fertile soils…and what areas have the most highly productive and fertile soils? Rainforests. So rip go the woodchips rip, rip, rip! and another forest dies. This causes further erosion causing water pollution and the destruction of many water ways (further reductions in water availability). Also if plants are by chance re-grown in the area, massive amounts of water is used by the saplings and juveniles as their leaves are often dorsi ventral and require high water input for growth and development.

posted July 22, 2007 03:12 AM         

Clear Your Conscience, Cat Lover
By Celeste DiFelici


Celeste’s vegan feline family

Many articles have been written about how well dogs fare on a vegan diet (for example, there is a border collie who might go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living dog—currently 27 years old—who eats a vegan diet of rice, lentils and organic vegetables). For those vegans out there, like myself, who struggle with whether or not to feed a vegan diet to their feline companions, put your conscience at ease. Cats can live just as healthy, if not healthier, on a strictly plant-based diet.

Whenever people learn that my four cats are vegan, the same statement always seems to follow: “But that’s not natural!” There’s nothing natural about feeding a cat commercial-brand cat food. I would even say that a pound of raw meat from the local grocery store is not natural for your cat either since that product is so far removed from what the cat would get if it were a fresh kill.

We all know cats are carnivorous. How, then, is it possible for them to live healthy lives eating a vegan diet? (It should be noted that I am referring to your average domesticated house cat, not an exclusively outdoor feral cat or any of the bigger cats who hunt their own food in the wild.) All that is required is a little supplementation.

The specific nutrient requirements of cats (since they cannot synthesize them on their own) are vitamins A and D, the amino acid taurine and the fatty acid arachidonate. Niacin and thiamin are two important vitamins as well.

The average commercial cat foods contain all of the above, as they are meat-based. But what exactly goes into this food for your furry friend?

• Carcasses of pets (some with flea collars and containing sodium pentobarbital used for euthanasia).
• Diseased livestock, (some still wearing plastic ID tags), riddled with insecticides and pharmaceuticals.
• Rotting (expired) supermarket meat rejects, including plastic and Styrofoam packaging.

Of course, the labels on the cat food won’t outright list the above ingredients. They are simply categorized as by-products. (Slaughterhouse waste is another worry now that mad cow disease has hit the U.S.) Needless to say, that doesn’t sound like a recipe for good health to me.

When I first discovered what “by-products” were, I was appalled and decided I could not continue to feed my cats such an atrocious diet, not to mention my increasing ethical battle with the killing of animals in order to keep my cats alive. In my search for a vegan cat food back in 1991, I stumbled across a vegan pet supplement in some literature I had received from the American Vegan Society.

The supplement was made by a small mom-and-pop company called Harbingers of a New Age (HOANA). James Peden, along with Barbara Lynn, his partner at the time, had done extensive research to learn whether cats could survive on a vegan diet. Luckily, they embarked on their task at a time when researchers had been busy discovering the essential dietary nutrients for cats.

Non-animal sources of necessary vitamins were already available, as well as synthesized taurine. It was the fatty acid arachidonate that slowed them down. After months of research and testing various methods, they finally hit a breakthrough. They contacted Dr. Robert Ackman of the Technical University of Nova Scotia, who analyzed a seaweed (ascophyllum dodosum) and discovered it contained enough arachidonate to meet the needs for a supplement.

The product of HOANA’s labors is called Vegepet™, and has been approved by the Association of American Feed Control Officials’ (AAFCO) Cat Food Nutrient Profile. Vegecat is specifically formulated for felines. A pH balanced formula is available if you have a cat prone to urinary tract infections (very common in male cats, mostly caused by a high ash and magnesium content in major brand cat foods). The risk of the cat’s urinary tract forming struvite crystals is virtually eliminated by feeding them the vegan recipes using the pH Vegecat. I experienced this firsthand with Jake who consistently had urinary tract trouble. It wasn’t until I converted him to a Vegecat diet that the problem went away completely.

According to HOANA’s website: “Harbingers pioneered this cruelty-free way of diet for ethical reasons, but it soon proved to be healthier! Letters and calls poured in from all over the world. People were simply amazed at health improvements that took place in their companion animals’ health. Often a veterinarian had warned the caretaker to [detach from] a failing animal, but with the Vegepet diet, health reappeared. We’ve received reports of animals living an additional 10 years after a vet had given up on them.”

Perhaps more convincing than personal stories and anecdotes is observation by a doctor of veterinary medicine. “As a veterinarian concerned with the animal’s health, it is very encouraging to observe their health improving in many cases after being on the new regimen [Vegepet],” says Michael Lemmon, DVM.

In every city I’ve lived in, my vets express time and again how healthy my cats look, from their shiny coats to extremely clean teeth. One vet said she would never have believed the two words “vegetarian” and “healthy” could be used together to describe a cat until my cats proved her wrong.

HOANA is not the only vegan source for cats. Evolution Cat Food is another. Their products are ready-to-eat canned cat food or kibble. Although I prefer to hand-make all my cats’ food so it is fresh, there are times when I travel where the Evolution Cat Food comes in handy. They have a gourmet canned food made with avocados that my cats find irresistible.

Transitioning Your Cat to a Vegan Diet
If you start a kitten on a vegan diet, it is unbelievably easy—just put the food in the dish and watch them gobble it up. Switching an older cat who’s used to their favorite meat dishes can be a bit more of a hassle.

I’ve read that one should introduce new foods slowly to get the cat used to the new diet. However, I could not comfortably do this. Vegan food was the only option I gave my cats. One adapted right away—just like my kitten did—even though she’d been eating a healthier version of a meat-based diet for two years. Another refused to eat the soft food, preferring only kibble. Vegepet made that transition easy with a kibble mix. I could bake kibble for my cats and sprinkle digestive enzymes on top to aid their digestion.

My fourth cat, Jake, was another problem altogether. He refused both the soft food and the kibble, having eaten meat-based food for five years by the time I adopted him. He preferred starvation to the new vegan regime. Worried he might lose weight, which he could not afford being a very active cat, I bought free-range chicken eggs from a local farmer and added them to his vegan food. As his taste buds began to change, I slowly stopped giving him egg with his meal and instead, slipped some meat substitutes like Tofurky and other fake meats into the soft food. Finally, it got to a point, about six months later, where he was eating the vegan food by itself. He can’t get enough of it now.

Not all cats may adopt a vegan diet easily. Keep working and introducing different vegan foods until you find one the cat favors. Feed that particular food with the Vegepet recipe until your cat’s taste buds adjust to the change.

In the wild, the big cats gorge themselves until their bellies are full. They can also go days without food if prey is scarce. On standard diets, domesticated cats aren’t supposed to be fed more than twice a day. On a vegan diet, however, cats get hungry more frequently. I feed my cats about four times a day, and also give them some kibble before bed. This, along with sunshine, exercise and plenty of fresh water has kept my cats in excellent health. They have yet to experience any adverse health problems due to their diet.

Every year, more and more cats become vegan and have excellent health to show for it. So clear your conscience, cat lover! Your feline friend does not have to be your remaining link to the slaughterhouse.

Celeste DiFelici has been a vegan since 1988 and a cat lover her entire life. With a background in nutrition and English, she has worked for earth-minded, educational organizations, like EarthSave, and was recently the publications manager for Bioneers, for which she is currently a contractor. To order Vegecat™ or read more about HOANA, visit www.vegepet.com. To order Evolution Cat Food or learn more about it, go to www.petfoodshop.com.

posted July 25, 2007 10:41 PM         

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Damn, and I only wanted a documentary for kids in the matter.

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posted July 25, 2007 10:51 PM         

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If we are true carnivores or omnivores, cooking our meat and seasoning it with salt, ketchup, or tabasco sauce would disguise it and we as humans would refuse to eat our meat in this form.

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posted July 25, 2007 11:26 PM         

the reason why I want to cut down on it is because the overpopulated world we live in and the inhumanity that goes with this. I know or I think they have been put in this earth to serve a purpose but I also think people oer do it and we do need to base our diet with more veggies.In fact even know I like meat a lot I don't have to have it everyday but yes when there is a piece of read bloody beef in frint of me I just want to eat it just like it!