1. Animals that live in the wild kill other animals in order to eat. If I also lived in the wild would it still be inhumane to kill an animal to eat?? What about if I raised chickens in my backyard and cultivated their eggs for my breakfast omelet, is this inhumane? A: Because animal flesh and products are not needed for human nutrition killing and eating them is inhumane in any circumstances. No kind of slavery is humane no matter how well the slave is treated. You can't respect someone and then exploit her for her eggs/milk/honey. 2. Do animal rights moralists take into consideration the domestication of animals i.e. history of farming, farming as the back bone to the establishment of the first civilizations. There’s not much literature about the reasons animals have become a central part of human life? A: History is no excuse to continue to exploit non humans. Animals are not needed for human nutrition. That is a myth perpetuated by industries which make money exploiting non human animals. 3. Is domestication against animals rights? If so, does that make having a dog or cat or horse inhumane? A: At this time there are a lot of domesticated animals that need tending. Most domesticated animals are just that. They would not exist as we know them if not for domestication. Breeding animals for pets or for food is unnecessary and inhumane. Adopt animals, have them spayed or neutered. Give them a comfortable home where they can live out their lives without being exploited. With time the numbers of "non-food" and "food" animals will go down and eventually there will be no more domesticated food animals or pets.Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice. ~Gary L. Francione
Merely by ceasing to eat meat Merely by practicing restraint We have the power to end a painful industry We do not have to bear arms to end this evil We do not have to contribute money We do not have to sit in jail or go to meetings or demonstrations or engage in acts of civil disobedienceMost often, the act of repairing the world, of healing mortal wounds, is left to heroes and tzaddikim (holy people) Saints and people of unusual disciplineBut here is an action every mortal can perform--surely it is not too difficult! ~Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights
The ten commandments of Mother Earth1. Thou shall love and honor the Earth for it blesses thy life and governs thy survival.2. Thou shall keep each day sacred to the Earth and celebrate the turning of its seasons.3. Thou shall not hold thyself above other living things nor drive them to extinction.4. Thou shall give thanks for thy food, to the creatures and plants that nourish thee.5. Thou shall educate thy offspring for multitudes of people are a blessing unto the Earth when we live in harmony.6. Thou shall not kill, nor waste Earth's riches upon weapons of war.7. Thou shall not pursue profit at the Earth's expense but strive to restore its damaged majesty.8. Thou shall not hide from thyself or others the consequences of thy actions upon the Earth.9. Thou shall not steal from future generations by impoverishing or poisoning the Earth.10. Thou shall consume material goods in moderation so all may share the Earth's bounty. ~Ernest Callenbach
"This is what passes for "food" in America today: A collection of nutritionally-obliterated, hormonally-enhanced, chemically-adulterated shapes of refined whatever, all hyped up to make them seem like real food when in fact they're just agricultural byproducts devoid of any real nutrition." ~Mike Adams
"I like not eating animals. Animals are our friends and we shouldn't eat them. Animals need us to take care of them and save them. My mom cooks us vegetables and pretend hamburgers and hotdogs and chicken nuggets and they are healthy for you and taste good! I told all my friends 'you should NOT eat animals!' I hit my friend Levi because he was eating a ham sandwich and wouldn't stop. Then mom said that Levi is an animal too and we have to be nice to all animals even if they eat other animals. I said sorry to Levi, but I wish he would not eat animals anymore. I also like not eating animals because my mom says it helps the earth, like recycling." ~Jacob, 6 yrs old
You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.~Anthony Robbins
It only takes a spark ~Daniel Andreas San Diego
Some people are still going to want to eat meat. We do agree though that vegetarianism is a healthier diet. ~David Stroud (of the American Meat Institute)
For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts ;even one thing befall them: as the one dies, so dies the other. They have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows that the spirit of man goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth? ~Ecclesiastes iii., 19, 20, 21.
There is no such thing as cruelty free slaughter or humane killing.
No slave is happy no matter what the owner tells you.
Go Vegan NOW!
Do it for the cows that have their babies taken away again and again for milk production.
Do it for the chickens who are de-beaked for egg production.
Do it for the pigs who have to nurse their babies on concrete floors.
Do it for the millions of humans who don't know any better.
Do it for the planet.
Do it for your health.
Do it because there is NO SUCH THING as humane slaughter.~ Judith Barnes
Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals. ~Theodor Adorno
If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages. ~Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.~Anne Frank
If "rights" exist at all— and both feeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist —they cannot be consistency awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases.~Henry Salt, 1892
You ask people why they have deer heads on the wall. They always say, Because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother's attractive, but I have photographs of her. ~Ellen DeGeneres
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
Raw foods create living bodies, and cooked foods create dying bodies~Sabrina Aird, Grass Root co-owner
You say it’s my personal choice, it’s not a personal choice when you’re ruining my planet and you’re eating my friends~
Dave WarwakThe animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites, or women created for men. ~ Alice Walker
Thou Shalt Not Kill~ The Christian Bible
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy; if the world were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I wake up each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it very hard to plan the day.~E. B. WhiteDon’t want to ruin the oceans? Go vegan.Don’t like the environmental problems of the soy industry? Go vegan.Don’t like monoculture? Go vegan.Don’t like the environmental problems of the petroleum industry? Go vegan.Don’t like greenhouse gas emission? Go vegan.Don’t like animal exploitation and cruelty? Go vegan.Want environmental sustainability? Go vegan.Want to feed the hungry? Go vegan.Want to save water? Go vegan.Want to cut air and water pollution? Go vegan.Want to slow global warming? Go vegan.Want to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, obesity, and cancer? Go vegan.There is no absolutely single personal change that the average person can make that has a better impact on the environment than going vegan. ~
Dan CudahyHoney is not vegan. It is an animal product, it came from the inside of an animal that produced it, not for you to sweeten your tea, but for a baby bee to live and grow on. Using honey or products made with beeswax are not on the vegan menu.
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 (1748-1832)
Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.
How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?
It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless,tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace.
But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches.
No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.~Plutarch
I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil.~Charles Mayo (founder of the Mayo Clinic)
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.~Leonardo Da Vinci
DO NOT BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!
December 6th, 2010
Emmy Says "I was sent a book called World’s best origami for review. This book is a great gift idea for a broad range of people, anyone from tweens up through adults. When I was pitched for this book, I saw an image of the books cover, and gladly accepted. I expected the book to be about as thick as a magazine, so I was really surprised when the book showed up and was twice as thick as I was expecting. This book has so many awesome origami pieces that can be made! There’s so many ideas, that even non-artistic people are likely to find a few projects in here that interest them. Who knew you could make a ring out of paper? Some ideas in the book are even educationally based and could be used in high school science classes, like a DNA strand. Some designs are very detailed, and would be really hard to make if using a small piece of paper. Others are much more basic and could be made by tweens. I think origami is neat, but my only real experience with it so far had been an origami calender I bought. It was suppose to be 365 different origami designs, one for each day of the year. However, almost every idea in the calender was an animal of some sort, and I quickly realized that almost all of the designs were extremely similar. The dogs, cats, fox, horse, etc were all almost identical. I was afraid that might be the case with this book, but it’s not at all. There is an animal section, but all of the animals are unique. However, the animal portion is just one small section of the book, there are several other sections like flowers, geometric, people, and my personal favorite – practical. I thought it was really neat that this book shows you how to make different styles of envelopes out of paper. How practical and neat!"
Emmy Says: "Between the ages of 6-13 or so, I had more diaries than I could count. Ryan said he had several journals as a young kid as well. Traditional journals are a great way for kids to express themselves. Journal buddiestakes the traditional journal idea and makes it a step better, by not only allowing kids to express themselves and reep the benefits of a traditional journal, but they also get a bit of a self esteem boost. Each journal entry includes four parts. For each entry the child is suppose to pick a buddy. It could be a friend, a sibling, a neighbor, anyone. The first section of each entry is a daily quote, which is basically suppose to get your child thinking about a specific idea, and they are usually inspirational ones. The second part is a fill in the blanks area, where the child’s buddy lists three compliments, or three character traits that they like about the child. I like this section the most. I am still friends with kids I became friends with in first grade. We obviously had a great bond from the very beginning. However, I don’t remember ever telling my friends why I liked them, or what they meant to me until we were in high school. Children’s friends can be really important to them and it’s great that this encourages them to share their feelings about each other. It’s also great to hear compliments from siblings, parents, etc. Who doesn’t love compliments? Sometimes we get too wrapped up in life and forget to specifically tell kids what we like about them and why they are special to us, but it can really mean a lot. So I think that section is great. The third section is a focus word, meant to inspire thought, or perhaps to even inspire a journal entry. The fourth section is blank space, for either a written journal entry, drawing, or just about any other form of self expression. These pages are open to be used as your child wishes, for just drawing, for drawing out a story, or for writing a story or diary entry. Overall I think they are a great way to encourage your child to feel good about themselves. Journal buddies are aimed at children ages 7-12 and come in two types, one for girls and one for boys."
