People take deadly seriously the prerogative to use animals as sources of satisfaction. Not only for food, but as beasts of burden, as raw materials and as sources of captive entertainment — which is the way animals are used in zoos, circuses and the like. These uses of animals are so institutionalized, so normalized, in our society that it is difficult to find the critical distance needed to see them as the horrors that they are: so many forms of subjection, servitude and — in the case of killing animals for human consumption and other purposes — outright murder. ~Gary Steiner
Many of us live with companion animals such as dogs, cats, and rabbits. We share our homes with them, consider them members of the family. We grieve when they die. Yet we kill and eat other animals that if you really think about it are no different from the ones we love. This is known as speciesism - a prejudice against members of different species. Most people don’t question their habit of eating animals as they’ve been brought up to believe it’s normal behaviour. But causing suffering should never be considered normal. Behind windowless walls, it’s easy to turn a blind eye to the horrific reality of factory farms and slaughterhouses.
Benjamin Zephaniah (from Chapter 7 of Making The Connection, a documentary made by Environment Films and The Vegan Society)
When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard. ~River Phoenix (actor and vegan, 1970-1993)
Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable. ~Gary L. Francione
All life matters. It is our true nature to nuture and protect other animals, not to exploit and abuse them and fund violent acts towards them. All we need to do is open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts and then we can truly see and appreciate the beauty and intrinsic value of every creature sharing our world.. ~EVOLVE! Campaigns
VEGANS DO:
- Eat delicious plant-based foods
- Wear clothing made from natural animal-free fibres and man-made fibres
- Use natural organic products
- Adopt from shelters and rescue centres
- Visit animal sanctuaries
- Care about the future of our planet
- Align their actions with their values
- Practice compassion and have respect for the sanctity of ALL life, not just human
- Enjoy their lives!
VEGANS DON’T:
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Eat animals
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Eat animal secretions
- Wear animal products
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Use products tested on animals
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Buy animals from breeders
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Support zoos, animal circuses, marine parks or aquariums
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Support blood sports like hunting, shooting or fishing
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Live in denial and constantly make excuses
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Think that it’s ok to confine, abuse, exploit and use animals as commodities
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Get clogged arteries
An abandoned baby hedgehog - or hoglet - sleeps at the Folly Wildlife Rescue near Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Still blind and deaf, four-day-old triplets would have stood no chance in the wet and wild weather..
— at Picture: Phil Yeomans/BNPS.http://www.facebook.com/EVOLVECampaigns
If you have no relationship with the living things on this earth,
you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity. ~J. Krishnamurti
Primrose is a three-week-old donkey who was saved by vets who put her under-developed legs in pink casts until they are strong enough to support her. She was born prematurely which meant the bones in her legs had not developed fully. Because her legs are bowed, Primrose’s knee bones would have been crushed under the weight were it not for the casts. It is hoped they can be removed in 10 days and she will have made a full recovery. What a little cutie! ♥
Images: Caters News Agency
Animal rights, to me, is quite simply respecting animals as the sentient beings that they are. This means that they are on this Earth for their own reasons, not ours. That they have their own self interests just as humans do and in so much as they do they should be respected for that and left alone.
But this is also the proverbial up hill battle animals face. They are the legal property of humans and this dynamic puts them at a grave disadvantage, in particularly in a free-market capitalist system where animals are owned and traded openly as commodities, as economic units.
Until we question this entangled relationship, which has existed for some 10,000 years we will have some difficultly seeing animals with new eyes.
~Harold Brown, former beef and dairy farmer, now a vegan, an animal rights activist and the founder of Farm Kind: www.farmkind.org/AR.htm
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