What Is A Vegan Lifestyle? A vegan lifestyle is one where a person chooses not to consume or buy any animal product. This means that they choose not to eat meat, fish, eggs or dairy and wont wear anything that has come from animals such as fur, leather or exotics skins. May vegans also will only buy household products and cosmetics that are BUAV approved to ensure that they havent been tested on animals.

Why Vegan? For People If more people were to go vegan, we would have more food for people worldwide. Currently the grain that could be used to feed people is instead used to feed animals. Because animals need protein to help maintain lots of inedible body parts such as horns, eyes, hooves etc, in the end it takes 16 pounds of grain to create just one pound of edible flesh. In fact, the amount of veg protein fed to the US beef herd would feed almost the entire populations of India and China; thats two billion people. The amount of grain needed to end extreme hunger is 40 million tonnes. Yet the amount of grain fed to animals in the West is 540 million tonnes. If we all went vegetarian, we could end world hunger overnight. For The Planet As for climate change and damage to the environment, farming livestock contributes to these problems for many reasons. Once land has been used for livestock, it often cant be used again. In fact, deserts spread every year by an area the size of England and Scotland. Livestock grazing is the main cause. Farming livestock also uses more water than vegetables. On irrigated land, 1lb of vegetables uses 25 gallon whereas 1lb of beef uses 5,214 gallons. Rain forests are still being felled to graze hamburger cattle. Going vegan saves one acre of forest every year. Farmed animals rank second in causing global warming due to the methane they produce.

For Your Health Many people worry that a diet without meat, eggs or dairy is unhealthy. Meat does contain lots of protein but so do lots of fruit and vegetables. You can get the same amount of protein as you can from meat, from foods such as chickpeas, peas, spinach, broccoli, almonds, banana, brown rice, tofu, corn, whole wheat bread and lentils. Not only that but animal protein has actually been proven to cause cancer cells as well as leading to heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure and gallstones. A recent article in the New York Times also found that around half of chickens were contaminated with e-coli which is an indicator of faecal contamination. Dr Neal Barnard, founder of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, stated that this contamination is very common. Along with faecal contamination, there is the added risk of roundworms, hairworms, tapeworms, insect larvae and faecally excreted drugs and chemicals. This contamination is an unfortunate result of the way the animals are killed and processed at the slaughterhouse. As for dairy; this is also full of calcium but this calcium is very hard for humans to digest as it is meant for calves. Despite it being advertised as good for your bones, the countries that consume milk also have the highest rates of osteoporosis. When milk is combined with wheat, it creates a sticky substance that clings to the intestines and prevents nutrients from being absorbed. It also creates perfect conditions for the growth of putrefying bacteria which leads to problems such as candida and thrush. Milk also leads to high cholesterol which then leads to hardening of the arteries which can make you feel sluggish, tired and cause cramps. Eventually they can close up altogether and this leads to a heart attack. We can get plenty of calcium from eating leafy greens, beans, almonds, figs, oatmeal, oranges, sesame seeds and tofu. Cows are milked frequently and this along with hormones they are given to trigger maximum milk generation, causes many cows to suffer from mastitis, a painful udder infection. In response to the infection, the cows immune system produces

somatic (pus) cells which are, along with blood and bacteria then excreted into the milk. EU regulations allow a maximum limit of 400 million somatic cells per litre of milk. So one teaspoonful of milk could contain up to two million pus cells! Whats even worse is that it takes 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese; that means there are ten times more pus cells, hormones and who-knows-what else in a slice of cheese than youd get in a glass of milk. Many report more vitality after opting for a plant-based diet. Asthma, eczema and other conditions will usually disappear. Vegans are also said to live an average of six years longer than meat-eaters. In fact, according to T. Colin Campbell, PhD, author of The China Study, 80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular and other degenerative illnesses, can be prevented by adopting a plant-based diet. Dr Campbell says, Some of the plant proteins, particularly soy, have an impressive ability to reduce blood cholesterol. Dr Campbell and his team found that as blood cholesterol levels decrease, so does the chance of getting many cancers including liver, rectum, colon, male lung, female lung, breast, childhood leukemia, adult leukemia, childhoodbrain, adult brain, stomach and esophagus (throat). Further to this, The China Study found that animal protein actually causes and fuels cancer cells and is the most carcinogenic substance we consume. Dr Campbell started his career as a researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech where he promoted animal products as a healthy source of protein. Later, Dr Campbell was asked to work in the Philippines with malnourished children. He was asked to research why so many children there had been diagnosed with liver cancer. As part of his work, Dr Campbell had been asked to ensure the children would get as much protein as possible. However, Dr Campbell soon discovered that children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer. There is increasing evidence of a link between animal proteins and cancer. An 11-year-long German study involving more than 800 vegetarian men found that their cancer rates were less than half of those of the general public. The lowest

cancer rates were found in those who had avoided meat for 20 years or more. A 2007 study of more than 35,000 women published in the British Journal of Cancer found that women who ate the most meat had the highest risk of breast cancer. Everyone Else Is Doing It OK, we all know thats not really a reason to do anything but veganism is actually on the increase and becoming a popular diet if you want to lose weight, be healthy or eat in a way that is cruelty free. Many celebrities are vegan including Casey Affleck, Bryan Adams, Pamela Anderson Simon Amstell, Fiona Apple, Alicia Silverstone, Portia De Rossi, Alec Baldwin Daryl Hannah, Ellen Page, Emily Deschanel, Jenny Seagrove, Jared Leto, James Cromwell, Joaquin Phoenix, Natalie Portman, Samuel L Jackson, Ted Danson, Tobey Maguire, Woody Harrelson, Sinead OConnor, Alanis Morrisette, Chrissy Hind, Carrie Underwood, Ellie Goulding, Jennifer Lopez, Leona Lewis, Miley Cyrus Moby, Morrisey, Pink, Shania Twain, Ellen DeGeneres Bill Gates, Al Gore and Bill Clinton, to name a few! Itll Save You A Few Bob A vegan diet is generally the cheapest of diets when compared with meat-eating, pescetarian and vegetarian. This is due to the fact that plant derived products are generally the cheapest of the food products and even tofu and soy meat replacements are cheaper than their meat equivalents. Of course, health food shops, where it is generally easier to get hold of vegan alternatives, do tend to charge more than other shops. This is where it pays to know where to go and what to get. There is plenty of products that are accidentally vegan so you dont have to pay any extra and they are available in most supermarkets. There is plenty of information on these products in our booklet Lazy Vegan. It will also fare better for your budget if you make more of your own dishes from scratch and dont rely on processed overpriced and less healthy alternatives. If you dont get a huge amount of time in your day to make meals from scratch, its worth putting aside

some time at the weekend to make some meals and freeze them for other days when you have less time. For Animals Meat Can you imagine living in a tiny, cramped room your whole life? Theres nowhere to go to the toilet, you struggle for food and if someone dies, the body stays with you for days, maybe weeks? This is the life for most animals on farms today. After a life of fear, pain and crammed up misery, these animals are killed and with the high number of meat eaters out there, a lot of them have to be killed very quickly; in fact the going rate is one every three seconds. Stunning a panicking cow within three seconds is no mean feat as Im sure you can imagine. Not only that but if the jolt on the stun gun is too high, this bruises the animals and ruins their meat so it is kept low even if this means the animal isnt properly unconscious when their throat is slit. Gail Eisnitz interviewed several slaughterhouse workers for her book Slaughterhouse. This is what one of them had to say; Ive seen live animals shackled, hoisted, stuck and skinned. Too many to count, too many to remember. Its just a process thats continually there. Ive seen shackled beef looking around before theyve been stuck (had their throats slit)...Ive seen hogs in the scalding tub trying to swim. Milk Cows, like humans, only produce milk when they are pregnant. Once cows have given birth, their calf is then taken from them within a day or two so that they dont drink the milk. If the calf is male, he will be killed immediately or raised for veal, as dairy cattle cant be used for beef. When mother cows have had their calves taken from them, they will call and bellow for days and have been known to escape and travel miles in search of their young. A farming family in England bought a calf from a farm only to find him suckling from his mum when they came down the next morning. He was in his

stall, the gate having been knocked down. The cow had travelled several miles overnight to find her son. Similarly in West Virginia, a cow called Winnie was sold without her calf, Beauty. She escaped and was found twenty miles away with her calf in his new placement. Abattoir workers have said that one of the hardest parts of their job is killing calves and other baby animals. Sometimes calves will suck the slaughtermans fingers in an attempt to draw milk at a time when they particularly need reassurance and comfort. Some calves go to the slaughterhouse as young as three or five days old. One slaughterman said the hardest part for him is that goats in particular, cry just like babies. Unfortunately all animals that produce milk (cows, buffalo, goats) lose their babies as a result of the dairy trade. Eggs Male chicks, who also cant be used for meat or laying, are disposed of by gas or shredding. Chicks that are kept to lay eggs, are debeaked to stop them pecking at themselves (a sign of severe stress). This is a very painful procedure carried out with no pain relief, that can result in chicks losing part of their tongue. Natalie Jordi describes debeaking, I still remember a particularly grisly shot of gloved hands holding a soldering iron to a chicks beak, its legs pedalling desperately under a bug-eyed, wild stare, a wisp of smoke curling from its face. A professional de-beaker, de-beaks twelve to fifteen birds a minute. Seafood In order to limit the amount of diseases farmed fish can catch, they are given vaccines, antibiotics and chemicals with known human health risks. But its not only farmed fish that are unhealthy; the smell of fish we so often come across is actually the smell of their saturated fats turning rancid. Thirty per cent of the fats in fish can be saturated, leading to cancers, obesity and heart disease. These fats soak up toxins such as mercury and some cancer causing dioxins from polluted oceans. Lobsters and other crustaceans contain excessive amounts of proteins and cholesterol. They are also

often highly contaminated with pesticides, bacteria and many other toxins. When put into boiling water, crabs and lobsters have been known to scream. Invertebrate zoologist Karen G. Horsley said the following of lobsters who are cut in half while still alive, The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut. ... I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open ... [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed during cooking. Seafood is a source of omega three but you can also get this from foods such as spinach, soybeans, walnuts, rapeseed oil and flaxseed. But Animals Cant Really Suffer It is true that generally animals are less intelligent than people. Humans are the more advanced species. However, this does not lessen their capability of suffering or of having rich, emotional lives. People with learning disabilities are capable of suffering as much as anyone else and certainly dont deserve to suffer as a result of their disability just as animals dont deserve to suffer due to the fact that they are less advanced than humans. But What About Humane/ Free-Range Meat? A lot of free-range meat isnt much better than factory farmed animals. In order for an animal to be termed free-range they have to have access to the outside. However, where literally thousands of animals are kept together in one shed, the doors may be open, but they cant access the outside. In fact, they often can barely access their food or water because the place is so crammed. Free-range animals are also equally subject to de-beaking, castration and tail docking without anaesthetic. The young are still removed from their mothers at an incredibly young age and male chicks or dairy calves are still killed at as young as a few days old because they are not the right sex to produce eggs or milk whether they are free-range or not.

There are some farmers who do genuinely care about the animals they care for and provide them with a good life on free-range farms but its hard to be sure that you are buying from these farmers. Also, not matter how good the farm, all animals still have to go through the terrifying grim slaughterhouse to end their short lives. But Animals Wouldnt Exist If It Wasnt For Farming Its true that there would be a lot less farm animals if more people went vegan or vegetarian, but that also means less suffering and less cruelty. Animals cant tell us exactly how they feel but if we put ourselves in their place we have to ask ourselves, would we rather live a life of fear and suffering only to be ended by an early terrifying death or would we rather not exist in the first place? Anyone who has seen footage from a factory farm or slaughterhouse would probably go for the latter option. Other people say that its worth animals being able to live a happy life on free-range farms for the sake of one bad day in the slaughterhouse. Unfortunately the process of slaughtering animals is more prolonged than one day. Many animals are forced to move onto lorries by kicking and the use of electric prods. They are then made to travel for miles, often over a period of several days, with no food, water or protection from the elements. Many die before they make it to the slaughterhouse and end up on dead piles where they will be made into farm or pet food. According to many slaughterhouse workers, saying that the final moments of an animal in a slaughterhouse equate to one bad day is more than putting it lightly. A slaughterhouse worker has said, on cow slaughter: "A lot of times the skinner finds a cow is still conscious when he slices the side of its head and it starts kicking wildly. If that happens, the skinner shoves a knife into the back of its head to cut the spinal cord." (This paralyzes the animal, but doesn't stop the pain of being skinned alive.) And still another, on calf slaughter: "To get done with them faster, we'd put eight or

nine of them in the knocking box at a time... You start shooting, the calves are jumping, they're all piling up on top of each other. You don't know which ones got shot and which didn't... They're hung anyway, and down the line they go, wriggling and yelling" (to be slaughtered while fully conscious). And another worker has said the following about pig slaughter: "If the hog is conscious, ... it takes a long time for him to bleed out. These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water, and start kicking and screaming... There's a rotating arm that pushes them under. No chance for them to get out. I am not sure if they burn to death before they drown, but it takes them a couple of minutes to stop thrashing." Its also worth noting that at this point in time there is a high demand for meat and this is the main cause of animals being mass-produced and treated as mere commodities. Less meat ultimately means better care and a more humane end for the animals who are killed for it. Even if a lot of farms were to close down, there would always be plenty of animals in petting farms and sanctuaries living out their lives in peace and happiness. Similarly, this argument is often used to justify experimenting on animals and using their fur. The animals that are bred for fur and experiments usually have a very miserable existence as well as horrific deaths. During the slave trade, some slave owners bred slaves to sell them. Considering these slaves wouldnt have been alive if it wasnt for the people who bred them, does this give them the right to have owned them? Similarly animals are individuals with their own wishes and feelings and any sentient being shouldnt be owned and have their basic rights taken away from them purely because someone gave them life. Because All Oppression Is Wrong

When assessing the oppression of humans and the way we treat animals today, there is a very clear link. We use the exact same reasons to excuse our exploitation of animals today as we did to exploit groups of human beings in the past. Slavery, the exploitation of women and many forms of genocide, were all accepted because the group of people who were being exploited, were portrayed as having a lower intellect and emotional capacity. All oppres-sions are supported by the belief that one group is superior to another. The inferior group can then be blamed, exploited and even culled without people feeling guilty about it. We now know the reasons we gave for exploiting groups of people in the past, were wrong. Are many peoples views on the apparent lack of intellect and emotional capacity in animals, simply another prejudice? The difference between people who have been oppressed in the past and the animals who are oppressed today, is that while many of those people were wrongly labelled as being less intelligent, animals are less intelligent than people. But this doesnt mean that they cant suffer or are any less deserving of having a decent life. What if a superior race of aliens were to invade our planet and liked the taste of our flesh? As wed be less intelligent and advanced than them, would they have the right to breed and imprison us for our meat? What if a terrible virus was affecting their race and killing their people? Would they have the right to experiment on us to save their own superior species? Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen but the analogy is an interesting one that is worth considering, because, effectively, we are those aliens. But A Vegan Lifestyle Is Too Difficult Being vegan is definitely a bit of a challenge as unfortunately this isnt a mainstream diet and therefore specialised vegan food can be expensive. Many people also worry about the limited amount of food they can eat and how theyre going to get all their nutrients. There are many books, blogs, websites and charities that are all too happy to give you plenty of tips, recipes and ideas for how you can ensure you get all your

nutrients without forgoing any of your foods taste! Every change is difficult at first, but many people who have switched to being vegan have found they soon got into the swing of it. Many meat lovers can easily switch to a vegan diet thanks to all the meat replacements out there. As vegetarianism has become more popular, more and more meat alternatives have been produced by a number of companies and many are very similar to the real thing. You dont have to give up the taste of meat to become vegetarian; it is now possible to just fake it. If you are worried about giving up eggs and dairy, there are also a number of substitutes for many of these products including vegan chocolate, vegan cream, vegan ice cream, vegan milk, egg replacer for baking and tofu for a scrambled egg alternative. Conclusion I hope you have found this booklet useful in understanding more about why many people choose a vegan lifestyle. There are plenty more resources available if you are interested in pursuing this lifestyle on speakfortheanimals.webs.com.