COMPASSION
• Environment • Compassion • Health • Diet-Related Diseases

“ If there is to be a bright future for our children and grandchildren, it will come from consumer support of producers who work in concert with nature – organically, sustainably, and humanely.” -- Howard Lyman, President of EarthSave International and co-defendant with Oprah Winfrey in lawsuit with Texas Cattlemen.

"I am conscious that flesh eating is not in accordance with the finer feelings, and I abstain from it." -- Albert Schweitzer, MD, Ph.D. 1875-1965 Philospher, Theologian, Nobel laureate Choices Global

Your decision to reduce your meat, dairy and egg consumption has a great impact on reducing the suffering of animals overall. The average American will eat 1100 animals in his or her lifetime.(11) By reducing or eliminating meat in your diet, you can save and deliver from abuse hundreds of animals.

Gone are the days when animals raised for human consumption were allowed to live naturally and breed naturally on the family farm. Gone also are the days of treating those animals with some basic level of human decency.

The vast majority of animals eaten in the United States are raised in huge factory farms—yes, the same ones noted earlier for their horrible environmental impact. These factory farms are designed for maximizing meat production and minimizing cost. To that end, animals are overcrowded, denied the opportunity to move around, and given as little care as possible. Chickens, pigs, turkeys and cows are given loads of antibiotics to keep them alive under these conditions, and growth hormones to fatten them up and shorten the time from birth to slaughter.

While anti-cruelty laws prohibit cramming dogs and cats into crates, dragging them in chains, and transporting them in freezing temperatures, no such laws protect farm animals from that same treatment. Somehow we have been conditioned, culturally, to distinguish between companion animals and animals designated for human consumption. But certainly these “food animals” feel the same pain and fear as our dogs and cats.

In the name of “efficiency,” factory farm animals are taken from their mothers at very early ages, forced to grow (or produce eggs or milk) at unnatural levels and times, kept in over-crowded conditions, fed huge amounts of antibiotics and growth hormones, fed unnatural diets to force them to grow quickly, and finally slaughtered by means that are far from humane. Indeed, many animals are hung upside down, boiled and slaughtered while fully conscious. If you care about animals—and, after all, who doesn’t?— the best way you can prevent cruelty is to reduce or eliminate the animal products in your diet.

End Notes: Works Cited