Some time ago, I believed the health benefits of being a vegan lower rates of obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and high blood pressure would be the bridge that people would want to walk across to transition from omnivore to vegan. I may have been wrong about that. A healthy body may not be the most important reason for becoming a vegan. I am beginning to see that the real steel and cement pillars holding up that bridge to veganism are the ethical reasons to become vegan.
I know that some of you are asking your elves why you should make this change now. By asking this question, you can begin to look at the various reasons to become vegan.
In my opinion, the simplest reason for becoming a vegan has to do with respect for life. To take the life of a sentient creature so we can consume the meat and other products of its body when we don’t need to do that is wrong on the most fundamental level. This action does not honor life. We must respect the life of every living creature on this planet because each one has as much right to exist as we do.
Here’s a fact you might not know: 60 billion animals give their lives annually for an industry that confines, tortures, and brutally slaughters them to feed us and to make a profit.
I realize it is difficult to visualize what has to happen to a cow in order for you to have a steak on your plate. This is a blunt way to put this, but ignoring this image is a great example of how we take the “kind” out of humankind. None of us are actually involved in the processes by which animals and animal products arrive at the grocer’s or on our plates at a restaurant. Our minds have been turned off, and we don’t stop to consider the impact of our diet on the animals, our own health, or the well-being of this planet.
I described my own journey to veganism, which began with concerns about my personal health. But since then, I’ve learned a great deal about how animals face their lives when bred solely to feed us. This knowledge has changed my perspective forever.
If you watch the documentary Earthlings, which looks in-depth at the daily horrors animals endure throughout the world, you too will likely have a change of heart about why we should be vegan. Watching that film was like being caught in a horror movie. After seeing it, though, I felt I needed to do further research. The more research I did, the more I was appalled. I consider myself to be a pretty aware, informed person who knows what goes on in this world. But I had no idea of the depth of the depravity that is found in our meat and dairy industries, as well as in other areas of business and commerce.
It is no longer possible for me to separate the many reasons I have for becoming a vegan from one another. My reasons include the ethical, health, environmental, and spiritual considerations. To me, they are now all one. Yet I would say it is my love for animals, for all living creatures, that fuels my basic desire every day. I want to help the animals we share this planet with to be treated justly. That goal keeps my passion burning bright. Maybe I should put it this way: I want to bring as many people as possible across that bridge into a more compassionate and loving relationship with all living beings on this planet.
While I call it my passion, and it is, this is also the mission I see for myself in the second half of my life. In my search for ways to help others cross the bridge that I have crossed, I have met some teachers who have been very encouraging and enlightening. Their teachings have also encompassed how we need to think about the life and death issues facing us and our relationship with animals.
Because of the activity on my blog, I have been able to be in touch with virtually the whole social media world. I have become friends with some of the most thoughtful animal advocates and activists, not just in Las Vegas, but across the country and around the world.
One of the activists I met on social media, Jenn Smith, has become more than a good friend. She is a constant source of inspiration. I have been moved by her passion and compassion that takes her to protests and demonstrations around the world in support of animal causes. When I reached out to Jenn as I was writing this book and asked for her to help me explain the ethical reasons for being vegan, she was happy to help.
Here are some of her thoughts about being an activist and a vegan:
“All animals are living, breathing, conscious beings. Those raised for food are routinely enslaved, exploited, tortured, and killed. The same thing happens to animals on fur farms and in laboratories. Society has used and abused animals for centuries for all sorts of reasons, but none of which can be considered morally justifiable. There is nothing ethical about the imprisonment and murder of a sentient being. Meat and dairy not only contribute to animal abuse but hurts humans as well. Working conditions in factory farms are extremely dangerous and studies have shown that slaughterhouse workers have higher rates of domestic violence and drug abuse than those in other manufacturing jobs. Children are going hungry all over the world because of grain that could be used to feed them is being fed to livestock instead.”
Another animal activist I have come to know is Laura Beth Bamberger from Ohio. I asked her to share some thoughts about how she views benefits from being a vegan.
Here’s what she told me:
“While there are several benefits to a vegan lifestyle, the reasons I chose to be vegan were ethical. It was not until I graduated from the Catholic school I attended for twelve years that I began to really think about the Golden Rule and realized that do unto others was not followed by an asterisk limiting that statement to people. Somewhere along the way society has become so desensitized that we forgot that animals and people experience fear and feel pain the same. We are so accustomed to walking into a grocery store, past the nicely packaged dairy and meat products, that we forget the reality behind those choices are unimaginable amounts of suffering and death.”
“One of the most profound ads I saw read, ‘Why pet one but stick a fork in another?’ In order to justify our choices, we created this delusion that the life of a domestic animal is more valuable than that of a farm animal. The society also used that thinking when justifying slavery and women not having equal rights. I believe that one day, just as we evolved from the aforementioned, we will realize that respect and compassion apply to all life. We will come together to stop all injustice and not turn a blind eye because there is a profit to be made. Albert Einstein said, ‘If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.’ I tend to think that a man revered as one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century is someone we should take to heart.”
Wise people throughout history have pleaded with humankind to forsake eating animal meat and products, not only for our good but for the good of the animals as well. Sari Dennis, from My Wellness Counts, is also an animal advocate and a local in Las Vegas. She has taught me about building a bridge to a better way of life without hurting animals in any way. Sari speaks eloquently about the ethics of animal treatment. She says:
“Once you know, once you see the reality of what goes on behind these dark walls of modern-day factory farms, the question of whether or not it is ‘ethical’ to eat meat is properly answered. Ethics stares at you squarely as your conscience as the innocent eyes behind the face of every animal silently pleading for their freedom and for the return of their stolen loved ones. For forty-five years I ate animals without so much as a second thought. Today, I do not eat animals. Today I define MEAT as Manufacturing Endless Animal Torture. This[is] what it is. New knowledge brings new thinking and new thinking brings new choices.
“I think of all the animals across the world who are suffering needlessly, just so we can eat them. I think about how we place the pleasure of our taste buds over the tragedy of their confinement—one meal trumps the value of life. I think about our collective indifference and find it too hard to bear and just impossible to justify. Thomas Edison wrote, ‘Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the god of evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.’ Today my plate is filled with love and life, color and vibrancy, and with that comes a feeling of peace, assurance of good health, and the pride of compassion.”
I’m sure your next question will be the same as mine was:
“Dairy can’t be all that bad, can it? They aren’t killing the animals.”
The dairy industry’s mistreatment of animals is every bit as grotesque as anything you will find in the rest of the meat industry. They are connected in many ways. When dairy cows (and chickens, too) outlive their usefulness, they are slaughtered. Until then, they have to survive a myriad of torture and abuse. Dairy cows have artificially inseminated over and over again so they can give birth and continue to produce milk. Then they are separated from their calves at birth, causing unimaginable grief to both. Most of the female calves are raised to live the same torturous lives as their mothers. The male calves are taken away from the mothers; some are starved and slaughtered for veal. The dairy cows are usually kept in a confined area where they can’t move around and are hooked up to milking machines, which often lead to a variety of infections and other illnesses.
Chickens, too, are abused by being kept in cages where they can barely move and their wings and beaks are clipped without anything to dull the pain. Male chicks are usually put on a conveyor belt leading to a crushing machine and live a very short life. Knowing this, I couldn’t ask my conscience to try and rationalize it away. In fact, I found that it couldn’t do that. I know many of us to disconnect from this knowledge of where our food comes from and how these sentient beings are treated. For me, no milkshake or piece of cheese is worth this.
Psychological comfort and the benefits of being a vegetarian
Every day of my journey, I have come to see the connection we have to all living creatures. We have a responsibility to take care of them, not to abuse them, not to torture them, not to use them for our own pleasure. We have been given stewardship over them, and we have abused that responsibility. We are just as guilty as any caregiver who does not properly take care of a patient in his or her charge.
You can feel great about the health benefits of being vegan and eating a plant-based diet, but that is nothing compared to the feeling that you have a clear conscience. By clear conscience, I mean that you know that no living, sentient being is being harmed for your use. That is a wonderful feeling, knowing you can make a tangible difference and save the lives of animals by your actions. The average vegan alone can save hundreds to thousands of animals’ lives each year. The collective conscience is beginning to awaken, and we are seeing so many understand these truths and then cross over the bridge to a life free of meat and animal products. Meat and dairy consumption are steadily declining, which means eventually the number of animals destined for slaughter will decrease, as the demand for them decreases.
As I have said, I can’t separate my reasons and benefits for being a vegan into separate issues: health, ethical, environmental, and spiritual. Now, all these reasons are equally compelling to me. And I know that the ethical reasons lie at the heart of everything. To me, it is important to live in a right relationship with my fellow humans and all living creatures at the same time. I want to know that no creature is being harmed by my actions.
I don’t live in a fairy tale world either. I know the horrors of factory farming, animal experimentation, and other forms of animal abuse continue on a daily basis. This knowledge fuels my desire to be all I can and do all I can to make a difference until every cage is open and animal-free.
This changed perspective of mine came about with the help of lots of good people who also care about the fate of animals and other species on this planet. I studied what they had to say and the work they did. I learned from them that how I see all living creatures and the world that supports all of us is determined by the grid placed by us before our eyes. We create that grid, and it has been life-changing to learn that I have the power to change that grid when my head and heart don’t line up with what is there before me. Never before in history has it been more important for us individually and collectively to make these changes.
