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.
This is probably due to the fact that the PH content for dairy is
perfect for calves but not humans and acidifies our blood
when we consume it. In order to neutralise the effect of this
our body then uses the calcium from our bones and teeth.
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.