Veganism can dramatically alter ones life forever, often producing deep emotionalchanges. Although choosing veganism is a source of great joy, it can also create friction amongfamily and friends.
Cultural pressures, the demand for conformity, and the personal desire foracceptance can challenge a vegans confidence and self-esteem. Because vegans so acutely see and feel the suffering of the world, and are at odds withmany widely accepted social customs, some will invariably experience occasional bouts of theblues. Vegans who experience anger, pain, or frustration for extended amounts of time maybecome depressed and exhausted from maintain such strong emotions. Feelings of loneliness,isolation, or rejection can compound matters, leading to despondency in an otherwise emotionallyhealthy person. Holidays and celebrations such as birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, andreunions are opportunities to reconnect with family and friend and feel like a part of the broaderculture. However, most gatherings center around customs and practices that are very upsetting tovegans.
Meat is typically the center of the holiday table and the focal point of picnics andbarbecues. Although most happy occasions are intended to convey a spirit of fellowship andconviviality, they can be extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant experiences for vegans. Consequently, it is not surprising that many vegans feel torn over their allegiances and maydistance themselves from family and community celebrations. They may opt instead to participatein alternative festivities or start their own traditions with others who share their perspectives andideals.
The most difficult challenge for me in being a vegan is the separation and distance. I oftenfeel far from others who are not vegan. It is no longer comfortable for me to sit down at a tablewhere animal products are being served. I feel that I know too much, and it is so painful to beaware of the profound suffering and misery that is represented on the table. This is especially trueat celebrations such as Passover, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.
. . where the the holiday is aboutfreedom and gratitude. Oppressing and harming others while we speak words of thanksgivingfeels hypocritical and wrong to me. People who profess to be animal advocates yet eat meat, eggs, or dairy products or wearleather shoes and belts apply contrary rules of ethics. They are known as people with selectivecompassion.
Their actions imply that one group of animals– the one they represent– has a greaterright to life than another and suggest that sacrificing habit, fashion, and beauty, comfort, or tasteis a worse evil than taking an animal’s life or making an animal suffer Some activities vegans are against are rodeos, marine mammal parks, circuses, zoos,fishing, racing( dog and horse) and hunting which is probably the worst activity. Hunting, hunters proclaim, instills in its devotees such noble qualities as self-reliance,ruggedness, discipline, and courage. But in fact, hunters skulk about the forest in camouflage,wait in ambush for their victims, and kill at a long range with overpowering, technologicalweapons, often going to extraordinary lengths to lure their unsuspecting prey into a violent death. Equally important is the fact that hunters are rarely in any danger from the animals that they hunt. They inflict pain and death on creatures who cannot hurt them. Even animals who could pose athreat, such as bears or cougars, would normally run rather than fight a human unless they arecornered or protecting their young.
Hunters entrap and frequently shoot terrified animals in theback as they flee for their lives. Often, hunters tempt animals with a false promise of a mate, andthen kill the trusting creatures who are duped by their bait. Also 17 million animals are trapped inthe United States each year for fur, many traps are so painful that the animals chew through theirown limbs to escape. Some materials Vegans do not wear consist of leather, wool, fur, etc.
Most peoplebelieve that shearing is not only harmless, but necessary to rid sheep of excess wool foisted onthem by nature. Like much information about animal-agriculture practices, this, too, is a myth. Merinos are the most commonly raised wool producing sheep. Their unnatural skin folds andexcessive coats cause severe heat exhaustion and fly infestations. To reduce fly problems, thesheep are subject to mulesing, a surgical procedure performed on about 20 % of Australia’s 150million sheep. The great majority of wool used for clothing in the United States comes fromAustralia, which produces nearly one-third of the world’s supply.
Mulesing involves cutting largestrips of flesh off of the hind legs of 4 week old lambs. Another procedure is called tail docking,designed to maintain the salable condition of the wool surrounding a sheep’s anus, whereby thetail and some skin are cut off with a knife. Because of economic and logistic considerations, theseprocedures are performed on fully conscious lambs without analgesic, producing varying degreesof acute pain that may last for hours or even days. Sheep, like most farmed animals, have beengenetically manipulated. Previously sheep shed their wool naturally.
Today modern sheep,however, produce abnormally excessive amounts of wool. As a result, they are no longer capableof shedding their wool and must be shorn. Sheep shearers are paid by piece rate; the more sheepsheared, the more money they earn. Therefore, speed alone dictates the shearing process. Because there is no incentive to deal with the animals carefully, the sheep are often violentlyhandled. As a result, sheep are frequently cut and injured during a shearing.
After being sheared,the animals must endure extreme weather conditions without protection. A closely shaven sheepis more sensitive to cold than a naked human, since a sheep’s natural body temperature is muchhigher than ours, roughly about 102 degrees. During cold weather, hundreds of thousands ofsheep die of exposure or freeze to death, and in hot weather, freshly shorn sheep suffer painfulsunburns. Leather must be treated to prevent it from rotting or becoming extremely rigid in the coldor flaccid in the heat; thereby rendering it unusable. Treatments to leather are environmentallyunsound; in addition, they preserve the animals skin and make it incapable of biodegrading. Leather tanneries not only emit a foul odor, but also produce a host of pollutants, including lead,zinc, formaldehyde, dyes, and cyanide based chemicals.
Tannery runoff contains those toxicsubstances as well as large amounts of hair, proteins, salt, sludge, sulfides, and acids, which aredischarged into rivers and groundwater. Furthermore, workers in the tannery are exposed tocarcinogenic substances such as coal, tar derivatives, toxic chemicals, and noxious waste. Purchasing leather goods supports the ongoing contamination of our air, land, and water fromtannery toxins. The United States cattle industry produces 158 million tons of waste per year, and livestock production is the number one cause of water pollution in the United States.
From 1960-1985, over 40% of the Central American rainforests were destroyed to create grazing land forcattle. Understandably, dairy farmers want the public to desire their products and feel good aboutusing them. Even though human beings are the only creatures on Earth that consume anotheranimal’s milk after growing old enough to not need it anymore. As a result, the dairy industry haspainted a utopian but highly fallacious image of modern dairy production.
Impressions aside,dairy is a big business and with all business, interests boil down to the bottom line. 70% of dairycows and 25% of heifers are bred artificially. Genetic manipulation is customary and rampant. Dairy cows suffer the entirety of their brief lives enduring illness and pain caused by barbaricconfinement practices, rigorous automatic milking systems, endless cycles if pregnancies, artificialinseminations, drugs, hormones, and genetic manipulations, prior to facing the ultimate horror ofdeath, making dairy production certainly as brutal and murderous a trade as meat production. Butbecause the dairy industry is shrouded with in civic approval leveraged by powerful lobbyingforce, it receives extensive governmental subsidies, has a stranglehold on our federally fundedschool lunch programs, and has carried favor with the medical and healthcare communities.
Theblood and tears that go into every glass of milk are masked by manipulative marketing crusades,couched in political pretense, and made virtually invisible to an oblivious and trusting public,making dairy products perhaps even more distasteful to vegans than meat. Chickens wingspan is 30 to 32 inches and four to six chickens are typically crowded into a16 inch wide cage making it impossible to stretch their wings or walk Since they are in such aconfined space they go insane just like anyone would, they turn to cannibalism and pecking ateach other usually eating their eyes. So to stop these acts, handlers have come up with a methodcalled debeaking where they cut off the chickens beaks. When they do this, they are cuttingthrough bone, cartilage, and delicate soft tissue.
Male chicks are of no use to the egg industry because they can not produce eggs and donot grow large enough to be sold profitably for meat. Consequently, they are disposed of by thequickest and cheapest methods, most often suffocation(thrown into a garbage bag), gassing,drowning, or being ground up alive for animal feed. All egg hatcheries commit these atrocities. Whether they provide hens for factory farms or free range farms, approximately 200 million malechicks die these ways each year.
This is just a brief rundown of why Vegans are the way they are. They see life for what itreally is and stop their everyday routine to be conscious about the suffering around them. Theyare the people who act out in defense and voice their opinions on society to say that what peopleare doing is wrong, hurtful, and evil. Society must open its eyes and realize it is being force feddeath, disease, and suffering from all of the dead bodies of other animals just to make a profit.
Some Vegans and Vegetarians:Einstein, Ghandi, Jesus Christ, Voltaire, Thoreau, Leonardo DaVinci, Mark Twain, Plato,SocratesVegan Quotes“You are what you eat”- American proverb“ People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification forcontinuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people frommurdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times. ”- Isaac Singer“Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn. You bury it in the ground, and itexplodes into a great oak. Bury a sheep, nothing happens but decay”-George Bernard Shaw“You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.
If it eats the rabbit, and plays withthe rabbit, I’ll buy you a new car”- Harvey Diamond
