Millions of people around the world are questioning their dietary habits. The typical high fat, high cholesterol, high protein, low fibre, largely refined diet has been increasingly indicted as the prime contributing cause of heart disease, strokes, circulatory ailments; diabetes; various types of cancer and numerous other serious health problems. Public attention is also being drawn to the injustice and cruelty of preventing animals from living their own natural lives in glaring contrast to the brutal realities of the appalling conditions in which our slave 'food-animals' are usually raised and slaughtered.
Another major source of urgent concern, is that the greatest wasting of natural resources, the worst producer of desert and famine, a prime motive for the despoiling of vitally needed tropical rain-forest and the most wasteful using and polluting of precious water supplies, all involving the raising, feeding and slaughtering of livestock for food. The terrible ecological results of this human short-sightedness and callousness may in many areas be passing the point of irreversibility.
Thoughtful, caring people realise there has to be a better way and there is. Veganism is an ethical way of living without the use of animal products such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy foods. Vegans enjoy a plant based diet including as basic sources, vegetables, grains, legumes, fruit, nuts, and seeds. A typical vegan cookbook lists wide varieties of delightful recipes for soups, entrees, salads, dressings, vegetable dishes, casseroles, sauces, 'dairy substitutes', breads, pasta, pizzas and deserts (icecreams, puddings, cakes, pies and biscuits) - all made without ingredients of animal origin. This is the time tested total vegetarian system that is nutritionally balanced, helpful and humane, ethically and scientifically sound, naturally rich in vitamins and minerals, high in fibre and complex carbohydrates, low fat and low sodium and contains no cholesterol.
Vegans also oppose the use of leather shoes, fur coats, woollen garments and other products of animal cruelty, suffering and death. Vegans realise that it makes no difference to the animal whether we kill her to eat her and wear her and that there is no 'innocent-by-product' of animal cruelty and exploitation.
The natural results of widespread veganism are not only better human health and happier circumstances for the animal nations but also a tremendous alleviation of the environmental burden place upon this planet. As it takes two or three acres to feed someone on the Standard Australian Diet, but only a fraction of an acre to feed a vegan, the land use of economy factor has a ratio of about 10:1. In terms of water used to grow food, it takes less than 1/3 as much to feed a lacto/ovo vegetarian (one who still consumes milk and eggs) but it takes less 1/13 of the usual amount of water, to grow the food for a vegan.
There is a better way than perpetual animal slavery, suffering and slaughter, human hunger and malnutrition, waste of natural resources and pollution of our environment.
The cruelty of fishing: Pain begins when the hook pierces the mouth and the fish is reeled in. Many people remove the hook while the fish is still alive. Pain is further increased if large fish are landed with a gaff hook. The large hook on a handle rips into the flesh of the live fish to pull out of the water. Live baiting is another barbaric activity that increases pain. A live small fish is threaded up as bait for larger fish. The needle is passed through the front of the eyesocket of both eyes. The material is then pulled through so that the hook sits on the head of the baitfish. Remember the bait fish is alive and feels pain, just as a dog or cat (or indeed a human) would.
"As long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace."
- Isaac Bashevis Singer