Animal Rights and Vegetarianism- Why be a vegetarian?

Animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other reason. By switching to a plant-base diet, human societies will be able to alleviate the needless suffering and deaths of countless animals, the irreparable damage done onto the earth like air and water pollution, the erosion of lands, waste of precious energy, and deforestation. Raising and eating meat leaves behind an environmental toll that generations to come will be forced to pay.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. - Gandhi, Indian spiritual leader

Animal Welfare and the Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet

How animals become meat and why the vegetarian diet & vegan diet helps animals. Modern high-pressure agriculture commonly keeps cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other animals in overcrowded stalls, cages, crates, or sheds where they are often unable to turn around or take even a single step for their entire lives. Deprived of veterinary care, exercise, sunlight, and even the feel of grass beneath their feet, these living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings, whose senses are so much like our own, suffer and die at the rate of millions per day just so that we can have burgers, patties, nuggets, and wieners. Deciding what we will eat means choosing between the horrors of factory farming and respect for animals.

Pigs, cows, and chickens are individuals with feelings - they experience love, happiness, loneliness, and fear, just as dogs, cats, and people do. More than 25 billion animals are killed by the meat industry each year - in ways that would horrify any compassionate person. The average American meat-eater is responsible for the abuse and death of about 90 animals per year. Watch video: Meet Your Meat

Many Reasons to Go Veg

Because I Refuse to be Cruel to Animals
In modern factory farms, animals are routinely injected with hormones and stimulants to make them grow bigger and faster. Many dairy ranchers use recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to enhance milk production, despite the fact that this chemical - which has been implicated in causing cancer and other diseases - shows up in milk. Feedlots are crowded, filthy, stinking places with open sewers and choking air. The animals would not survive at all but for the fact that they are fed huge amounts of antibiotics. In some farms, cattle are fed "renders" - dead and grounded up cows. To induce and increase egg production, chicken are kept in tight cages and kept awake under bright light 24 hours a day. Consider eating vegan and eliminating all animal products from your diet. Watch: The Meatrix

Hundreds of thousands of animals are poisoned, blinded, and killed every year to test shampoos, household cleaners, cosmetics, hair sprays, and other personal-care and household items. These tests are not required by law, and they often produce inaccurate or misleading results - even if a product has blinded an animal, it can still be marketed to you. Some corporations force substances into animals' stomachs and drip chemicals into rabbits' eyes. What goes on behind the doors of laboratories is horrific.

Animals are also unnecssariyly being trapped, caged, hurt, and even killed to make clothing, accessories, and furniture for human use. Learn more about how you can make a switch to cruelty-free: Vegan Fashion

All the arguments to prove human superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals. - Peter Singer, Australian author, Animal Liberation.

Adopting a plant-based diet is one of the most important and effective acts anyone can take to make this world a better place.

Because it's Better for the Environment
A vegetarian diet reduces the destruction of tropical rainforests, wildlife habitat, and help to save endangered species! Rainforests are vital to life on earth - they regulate the global climate and the water cycle, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and provide humans with medicines, food, and much more. Sadly, rainforests are cut down to make room to raise cattle. Every second, one football field of rainforest is destroyed in order to produce 257 hamburgers.

Two-thirds of Central America’s rainforests have been destroyed, in part to raise cattle whose meat, typically found in hamburgers and processed meat, is exported to profit the US food industry.

A vegetarian diet reduces pollution in the land and waters: Modern factory farms are sprayed with herbicides and pesticides to grow grains to feed cattle. These chemicals destroy topsoil and leak into the ground and nearby streams and rivers. Over 4 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion in the US every year due to plundering farmlands to fatten animals for slaughter. High contents of toxic chemicals are often found in fish in many parts of the world’s lakes, rivers, and oceans.

A vegetarian diet reduces the production of carbon dioxide (CO2). An average car produces 3 kg of CO2 a day while the effort to clear rainforest to produce beef for one hamburger produces 75 kg of CO2. Eating one pound of hamburger does the same damage as driving your car for three weeks!

Another benefit of eating a vegetarian diet is that it also reduces the depletion of our oceans' marine lives and the destruction of corals & reefs.

Because it Saves Energy and Precious Resources
Eating a vegan diet reduces waste and devastation of earth’s precious resources. Consider the enormous energy put into growing grains to feed cattle. Aside from the gutted rainforests, up to 5000 gallons of water for is required to raise one pound of beef! According to the US Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, when used to grow cattle feed, can produce less than 165 pounds of edible cow flesh.