Happy new vegan year - free of violence, suffering and discrimination

Happy new year to all of you!!!! May you have a wonderful 2014!


I wish that this year will be a year where everyone decides to not be a part of any discrimination and violence. That we stand up against all discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, color, age, species, etc! [more info: note 0]  <3




I wish that we decide to use our time to fight against and alleviate the poverty, starvation, violence and discrimination in this world; that we help the orphans of this world, support foster homes, and consider to adopt people, and animals from animal shelters if we have the opportunity. A year were we don’t support the slavery and injustices of the cocoa industry [see note 1], and other slave work that is so common in the production of commodities in the Third world.




A year where we don’t exacerbate the poverty, starvation, injustices, environmental destruction involved in/exacerbated by the production and consumption of animal foods, which involves breeding up, using, unnecessarily harming and killing animals for food; and giving them feed that could have been used to feed starving people; while taking their land, driving them out of their homes and growing feed and raising “cattle” on land that could have been used to feed the indigenous population [2]. The feed that feeds the animals only in USA could be used to feed 800 million people. At the same time several million people die of starvation and 870 million suffering from chronic undernourishment [4]. And we have no nutritional need for this (see below).




More than 56 billion land animals and more than 1000 billion marine animals are harmed and killed all around the world. 1 billion is 1000 million. These animals are harmed and killed for meat, fish, milk and eggs. Is this enormous amount of suffering and killing necessary?


Even extremly conservative health organizations, including American Dietic Association, claim that we can live a life of optimal health on a well planned vegan diet. Thus we have a choice when we stand in the food store: Either we can choose to get all our nutrition from meat (including fish), milk, eggs and other animal foods, or we can choose to get our nutrition by consuming vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and other plant foods, i.e. a vegan diet.




We don’t need to consume animal foods for our survival. The production of animal foods inevitably involves that animals are harmed and/or killed. And the pleasure of meat, milk and eggs, or that it is more practical/socially accepted to consume these/peer pressure are no valid justifications for this unnecessary harm and death. Even a more “humane breeding and slaughter”/”ecological eggs”/”ecological milk” involves unnecessary suffering and death, and thus that is not a solution if we claim that animals have a moral value, and we think that their interest of not suffering and their interest of being a live are more important than our trivial reasons for consuming animal foods. Professor of law Gary Francione and Anna Charlton answers this and 29 other common excuses to consume animal foods in the book Eat like you Care [5].




We can live in a world without news articles describing suffering people and suffering nonhuman animals, and in a world without people and animals suffering in silence. But this requires that we stop using people and nonhuman animals as commodities, and stop paying for a production that involves their suffering. If we want to change the world, we have to start with ourselves. If you want to change the world, and start living according to your own moral values, you can easily do this (if you haven't already): opt out of all unnecessary suffering, discrimination and violence towards animals by going vegan; and opt out of all other discrimination and all violence.


Solution:

Vision for nonviolent vegan permaculture-community promoting veganism and human rights

More articles opposing all discrimination:

“That’s Racist Against White People!” A Discussion on Power and Privilege


0. See first paragraphs: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/some-thoughts-on-the-abolitionist-approach/#.UsNBH7SwUX0
1. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dark-side-chocolate/
2. References found in the end of this article: http://bloganders.blogspot.se/2013/11/human-rights-and-animal-rights-against.html
3. http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat
4. http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
5. www.eatlikeyoucarebook.com