Go Vegetarian; You Have No More Excuses
Uploaded by kyra666 on Mar 06, 2002
Everyday, more and more people are making the choice to lead a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. Vegans abstain from partaking in all animal products, including honey and dairy products. Vegans do not use goose down, silk, wool or leather. The American Vegan Society (AVS) says that “vegan” is describing a lifestyle that avoids all forms of animal life, not just a diet (Krizmaniac 8). The definition of a true vegetarian is a person who does not eat any meat products or gelatin, but does eat dairy products (Krizmaniac 6). People who choose to live a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle may have several reasons for making that choice, including animal rights and health reasons.
One of the two most common reasons people choose to be vegan or vegetarian is due to harsh living conditions, mistreatment and slaughter of animals on industrial farms. Factory farmed animals are giving many types of hormones to reproduce more, grow larger and faster. As for cows, many people believe it does not hurt them to be milked; however it is unprofitable to keep a cow once its milk production declines. Therefore, dairy consumption leads directly to slaughter. By using these hormones, cows on industrial farms are forced to produce 8.2 tons of milk per year, whereas a normal cow would produce 3.5 tons of milk per year, naturally (Vegan Outreach 4). As for birds on farms, they are the most overcrowded. They are kept in cages stacked one on top of the other, so that the feces falls from the top to the cage below. Since they are kept in wire cares and cannot move, it is common to find the skin of their toes frowns around the wire bottom (Vegan Outreach 4). Also, to get the hens to reproduce more often, they are starved for eighteen days and kept in the dark to shock them into another egg laying cycle, which causes about ten percent to die (Vegan Outreach 4). The average hen should produce about seventy eggs a year, but on industrial farms, the count has been up to tow-hundred and seventy-five per year (Vegan Outreach 4). And because they have been manipulated to lay such large eggs, the hens’ uterus is often expelled along with the egg. Pigs are also extremely crowded, living on hard floors, commonly covered with feces and vomit. Because of this confinement, pigs become aggressive and will fight and bite...