Vegan Education: Working With What You Have

This Friday I went out in Hamilton with pamphlets and a box full of vegan cupcakes to educate the public about veganism. Each cupcake was given out with one of my Cupcake Cards, and I also had Abolitionist Approach and Butterflies Katz's Becoming Vegan pamphlets for people to take as well.

I had three cupcakes on the box at a time, with the pamphlets in front. I positioned myself in front of a shopping centre, where a good amount of people would be walking past, holding the box and saying "Free Cupcake!" whenever someone walked past. It was a great experience. I had a lot of interest, and gave out all my cupcakes within two hours.

This is something anyone could do. You don't need to be a part of any organisation, it's cheap, doesn't require much setting up, and it's a great and fun way to educate people about veganism. When you don't have much, but you want to get vegan education into your community, get creative and work with what you have! 

Hand out vegan food, host cooking classes, make videos, write, do a market stall, hand out pamphlets, do whatever you feel comfortable doing - There are many ways you can promote veganism!

The Cow in the Field

Today I was watching a cow in the field across the road. She was all by herself, just standing and staring off into space. She was standing there for a while and I wondered what she was thinking about. Had she just lost a baby? Tears came to my eyes as I thought about what she would have had to go through.

Being raped. Giving birth. The emotional pain of having her child taken away from her. Having a machine hooked up to her teats every day to suck the milk from her. Over and over until the day she is slaughtered.

The cow lay down. It looked uncomfortable to do with her oversized udder. And there she lay for some time, staring at the sky. Again I wondered what was going on in her mind. I had to go off to do something, and when I came back, I realised something.

She hadn't just lost a baby. She was about to lose one. Because she had just given birth. Her little baby was right there, suckling from her. I wondered how many children she'd had before this one. I think she knew what was going to happen, because it seemed like she was trying not to look at this baby, like she was trying not to get emotionally attached. The calf nuzzled his/her mother. And for a small precious moment, they were connected with love. But that wouldn't last. And she knew it. She walked away from her baby.

Mother and child eventually went to another part of the field, and I didn't see them again. I felt sad for them. When the farmer discovers the newborn calf, they will be taken away from each other. If male, he will be raised for beef. If female, she will become a dairy machine like her mother. Either way, they will be separated and will never get to see each other again. She will never have the chance to raise her child, all so that a selfish species can take the milk to drink themselves.

It's absolutely horrible what we force these mothers to go through every year. No mother deserves to lose her child like that. Like humans, cows are very maternal mammals and have a strong bond with their young. Imagine the grief they have to go through when they lose their beloved children over and over again. It's no wonder this cow was trying to disconnect herself from her calf to save her the pain. She'd had it happen to her before, and couldn't bear to have it happen again.

If you're not vegan, please go vegan. Then educate others about veganism too. Be a voice for those who can't speak for themselves. They need us.

The Peaceful Abolitionist Youtube Channel

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"Life's too short to not eat.."

"Life's too short to not eat good food" "Life's too short to not eat cheese" "Life's too short to give up the taste of meat"

Some people can't imagine not eating their favourite foods and have problems trying to give them up. I've read that animal products such as meat and especially cheese release feel-good chemicals in your brain when you consume them, making you easily addicted to them. It's no wonder some people find them so hard to give up. 

If you have an addiction, you're surely going to crave that product for a little while after taking it out of your diet. But don't give in! Remember that the cravings will pass. I had a few cravings at first too. I remember once craving pig flesh. But I got through that by thinking about the poor pig who was killed for someone to eat that slice of ham.

Remember who you're doing it for. If you crave cheese, remember the dairy cows who were separated from their babies and eventually killed after a short life of being impregnated over and over, and the newborn calves who were slaughtered for the rennet in their stomachs, used to make the cheese. When you remember the victims, it's easier to fight the cravings away.

Life may be short, but those animals who were exploited for your food had much shorter lives. Don't let a moment of difficulty put you off doing what's right.

And you don't have to sacrifice good food to be vegan. I always see celebrity chefs on tv calling plant-based food "boring". Far from that, it's exciting and delicious! Google vegan recipes online. You'll find heaps to try.

Don't look at veganism as a "sacrifice". As Gary Francione has said, "You can't sacrifice what you had no moral right to in the first place." Veganism is simply saying "no" to violence and injustice. 

Human Rights before Animal Rights

So, I've seen a few people say that they would rather focus on Human Rights issues, and solve those, before working on Animal Rights issues (and even thinking about going vegan, it seems). This position confuses me.

Humans are animals, so in theory, human rights = animal rights. As a vegan, I am opposed to violence towards *all* animals, including humans.

Being vegan doesn't mean you have to automatically care more about non-humans than you do humans. It is simply a rejection of violence. All violence.

Right now, people in developing countries are starving to death because they don't have enough food. At the same time, tons of grain, corn and soy are being taken from those same malnourished countries to feed to livestock in wealthier countries. No matter how much food we donate to the hungry, the problem will still remain because the cause is still there and it will stay there as long as there is a demand for it. World hunger is another thing that has to be abolished, and the solution isn't to farm more animals to try to feed them all a meaty western diet (that will just increase the problem, and by the time we have enough farms to feed every human, if that could happen, the Earth would be so damaged that we couldn't live here anymore), the solution is to be vegan and to stop supporting an industry not only of great violence towards non-humans, but that wrongfully takes food that could be fed to humans and feeds it to their "profit machines".

Someone once asked if I was saying to take the food to feed to humans and let the other animals starve. To be clear: no, I am not suggesting that. There's enough grass for everyone ;)

In conclusion, being vegan is about respecting the rights of *all* sentient beings, and that includes humans. Being vegan doesn't mean you have to stop caring about and campaigning for human rights issues, and it doesn't mean caring about only non-humans. In order for us to live non-violently, we must reject discrimination in all forms. I encourage you to go vegan, if you're not vegan already, and advocate for veganism as a voice for all animals, both human and non.

The Confused Vegan

During the first couple of years of being vegan, I was a very confused person.

I believed in promoting veganism and was passionate about animal rights. I was a member of Peta2 (PETA for youth), and I supported them, as well as a few other big "Animal Rights" organisations. However, many of their actions puzzled me.

When SAFE in New Zealand got undercover footage of factory farms on tv, I didn't think it was a good thing. Because there was no mention of veganism. Only promotion of free-range animal products.

When PETA campaigned for KFC to use "Controlled Atmosphere Killing" on their chickens instead of slitting their throats, I didn't think that was right. The chickens still lose their lives, either way.

Once on the Peta2 forums, a farmer was complaining that we were trying to put him out of business. I was the first person to comment, and I said that I simply don't support violence, and that the lives of those animals are as valuable to them as ours are to us. Everyone else on the forum, however, reassured him that they loved little family farms where the animals were treated well, and it was only the big mean factory farms that they were trying to get rid of. I actually felt embarrassed, and wondered if I'd said the wrong thing.

Was I being a bad advocate for animal rights because I didn't support campaigns by PETA or SAFE? Should I be advocating for welfare reforms like them? I didn't believe it would help animals, because they would still be murdered in the end, but it seemed like that was what all the vegans and animal rights people were campaigning for. I was very confused indeed.

Then one day, I stumbled across Professor Gary Francione on Twitter. After reading some of his "Tweets" I thought, Finally, here's someone who actually makes sense! Someone campaigning for the end of animal use - not better treatment! I then learnt about the Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights. I met other vegan abolitionists on Twitter. And suddenly I didn't feel alone, or that what I believed in was wrong.

Now I wonder; how many others out there are feeling the same way I did? How many confused vegans are there who support PETA and the like because they are supposedly "Animal Rights", but don't agree with the things they campaign for? How many vegetarians are there who haven't learnt about veganism because nobody's talked to them about it? How many omnivores are there who pay extra money to buy free-range because they believe they're helping animals?

This is why I urge people to promote veganism, and encourage others to promote it too. You don't need to be a part of a big animal welfare organisation to help other animals. Talk to others about veganism, and promote veganism only. People can make up their own minds about whether to go free-range, vegetarian, or vegan after you talk to them, but I never compromise my message and say that anything less than veganism is okay - that would just be speciesist.

Since going vegan at the age of 13, I have always believed in promoting veganism. I always looked at it from the animal's perspective. If that were me in the slaughterhouse, if I were a slave to another species, I wouldn't care if I got a bigger cage or if I were gassed to death instead of having my throat slit. The thing I would want the most, and would hope for for my children's future, would be to no longer be considered as someone else's property. An individual in control of her own life.

Free.

A Mother And Her Baby

This is a story from my week at an animation school in 2010. Originally posted to Facebook, I thought I'd share it here.

It was a clear Tuesday morning. While waiting for class to start, I was watching the cows in the field nextdoor. In the field closest to me were 4 cows and a young calf. The calf was lying down next to his mother. It was all peaceful, until the farmer started approaching the paddock on his quad bike. The mother - alerted to danger - got up and stood in front of the calf. The calf, sensing something was up, got up as well and stood close beside his mother. Two of the other cows came to the mother's side, ready to protect the baby from danger. They all watched the farmer approach with wary eyes. He appeared to only be checking up on them, and then he left. But the cows didn't drop their guard until quite a while after that. Only when they were sure it was safe would they go back to doing what they were doing.

You can tell by this story that cows are very maternal animals. They adore their babies. But, in order for humans to drink the milk intended for the calves, dairy cows are denied motherhood. In order to keep lactating, they are repeatedly impregnated, and their beloved children are stolen away from them. Cows produce milk for the same reason all mammals do - to nourish their young. Milk is for calves, not humans. 

Respect the rights of others. Go Vegan.

Want vs. Need

In order to stay alive, there are certain things we human beings need. We need water, we need oxygen, and we need food. And food is the necessity I'm going to talk about in today's blog post.

I have heard that humans need to eat meat for survival. That we need to eat animal products in order to stay healthy. 

Eating other animals may have been necessary for human survival in the past when times were hard and plant food was limited.  But they only ate it because they needed it to continue living - not for palate pleasure like we do now. Quoting an episode from my Vegan for Life podcast:

"Early humans didn't overdo it. They only killed what they needed, in order to survive, and worked in harmony with nature. But look what we're doing to nature now, in order to satisfy the growing demand for animal products. Thousands of acres of forests have had to be destroyed, air and water is being polluted, and so much life is being lost. The earth has provided us with enough resources for all the animals living on it - human and non-human - to survive. But we are exploiting these resources in order to satisfy our taste for flesh. Early humans ate meat in order to survive. Why do we eat meat now? Purely because we like the taste."

For humans now, eating animal products is a want. A want for the taste. It is no longer a need. In fact, it's very easy to stay alive and healthy without consuming animal products. Long-time vegans are proof of that.

In a survival situation, when you're lost and you need to survive, maybe you'd have to eat other animals to survive. Maybe even other humans. In a situation like that, things are different. You wouldn't have a choice, you would have to eat what you can to survive - or die. Like lions, wolves, bears, and other carnivorous or omnivorous wild animals - they don't have a choice of what to eat. They have to eat what they can so that they will continue living. But right now, you're not out in the wild starving (I'm assuming you aren't if you have internet access and are reading this blog), and you have a choice. Over 56 billion land animals and trillions of sea animals don't need to be exploited and murdered for our consumption, clothing, entertainment, and other uses. 

We have a choice. To continue engaging in violence towards other sentient beings, or to go vegan and live nonviolently. If you're not starving, if you don't need it, and it harms others, why continue doing it?

It's easy to be vegan. Vegan food can be DELICIOUS and exciting! And if you really want the taste of animal products (cravings do go away, I promise), they can be replaced with plant-based alternatives. There's no reason NOT to be vegan, so give it a try! Start here: VeganKit.com

It's Time

Sunshine and a fresh breeze,
Lush fields and tall trees.
Friendship and bonds that will never be broken,
Memories that will never be forgotten.
Families that look out for one another,
Sons and daughters raised with the love of a mother.
A joy it is to live on this beautiful planet,
Healthy long lives lived without regret.

A life of freedom,
A life that we deny them.
Because they are property of humans,
Who enslave them just because they can.
A short life of misery and exploitation,
These sentient beings cry for freedom.
They have no words but their pleas are clear,
"We want to live, we don't want to die here."
Mothers torn from their newborn babies,
Young children slaughtered mercilessly.
They are moral persons, not things,
But we treat them like profit machines.
Over 56 billion murdered a year,
Simply for humans to eat, use and wear.

It's time to stop the killing, violence and oppression,
Time to end all hatred and discrimination.
Time to respect the rights of one another,
Time for peace and love to take over.
We don't need to exploit to survive,
So is it really worth taking innocent lives?
Go vegan, end the use.
They don't have a choice, but you do.

---

Sunshine and a fresh breeze,
Lush fields and tall trees.
How wonderful it is,
To be free.

Why go vegan? - From a 9 Year Old

This post was written by my brother Eddy about why to go vegan.

---

My name is Eddy I am 9 years old and I will tell you why you should go vegan.

Did you know, every picture of animals being happy on a meat/milk/egg/fish product is not true if you were one of these animals you would be screaming "help help" and if pictures of animals were real then you would see a very very sad cow/pig/chicken/fish.

Did you know eating a egg is like eating the male chicks that die because they're no use in the egg industry so they are killed just after they are hatched. :(

Did you know more then ten million animals are killed every day for us to EAT?

Did you know milk from cows is meant for the baby cows not humans and furthermore most of the male baby cows DIE because they're not needed just because they don't make milk.

Did you know dairy industries say dairy for life just so people will buy more stuff dairy or more meat.

Did you know honey is really bees VOMIT and that bees don't make it for us they make it for the nest and the baby bees?

You can't make every one happy but you can make animals happy by being VEGAN.

So get your friends and give it a go.

Here's some of the food we eat.

Macaroni and cheese (made out of chickpeas)

Vegetarian sausages

Soy milk

Lasagne

Chocolate fudge/cake/muffins

Vegan food is really yummy.

If you search vegan recipes on Google you can find lots of yummy vegan recipes

Well that's all from me for now I really hope this makes you want to be vegan.
goodbye. :)

"They're all vegans. And you?"