The Reason For Vegan
Human beings are capable of great tenderness, compassion, and mercy. Yet even with our generous nature, we largely ignore the perpetual suffering of the animals bred and killed for food.
The production of meat, dairy, and egg products causes great suffering. Animal agricultural operations confine billions of feeling, sensitive, sentient beings to a living hell. While personal health and the environment are excellent reasons to adopt a plant-based diet, for many, concern for the suffering of farmed animals is the most intimate and heart-felt reason.
Cages and crates packed with closely-confined animals make for a lifetime of misery, denying them the most basic experiences like normal movement, foraging and nesting behaviors, and even sunlight and fresh air.
Painful procedures like de-horning, de-beaking, and castration are performed without anesthesia. Injuries, psychological stress, and death at a very young age are the norm. Most animals are slaughtered before they reach one year of life.
Animals sick with disease and too weak to walk are dragged or hauled to slaughter and end up on our plates. The sensitive beaks of tiny chicks are sliced off with a hot blade without anesthesia or any pain relief.
Aside from the many physical cruelties of agricultural operations, animals also suffer psychological and emotional trauma as they are forced to live in unnatural, agonizing conditions and often exhibit self-destructive behavior.
Families are separated and mind-numbing monotony is endured day in and day out. But there is something that each of us can do to help.
The solution to their suffering is to reduce and eventually eliminate animal products from our diets.
