The Angry VEGAN

I am often called an angry Vegan. I am not the fluffy lets all be friends and hug type, that went out the window years ago if it ever was. In most cases I try to educate in discussion, but my Russian temper often turns me into Ivan the terrible if people make callous stupid comments  like , who cares how they die they taste good. Or global warming  who cares fire up the grill YOLO ! Or I am told eating meat and dairy is a personal choice and I should mind my own business. The Problem is that those so called personal choices are severely impacting the lives of others , first the animals who’s life is being taken, then the million of starving in third world countries and then everybody else .

 

We as a species have killed and eradicated more other lifeforms than any other one in history. Our planet is in really bad shape and we are to blame . Sitting back and doing nothing cannot be the answer. I am vegan for Multiple reasons , yes of course for the animals, but also for my health , for the survival of our race and this planet. The industry and advertising would like to make us believe that most cows live their life peacefully out on pasture till it is time to come home be milked and fed. This is far from the truth … 80% of meat consumed in the U.S is raised on industrial feeding lots in South America and China, that number rises to a whopping 98% when we count in government surplus and school lunch meals. From the remaining percentage of young bovines raised for meat in the U.S only 30% are raised in an industrial farm environment and that is why most Americans still believe the fairy tale of the happy family farm. They are not aware that most of their meat comes from foreign countries and what it costs, the planet or the impoverished struggling nations we exploit to feed our lust for flesh. People could argument that it is not under our control what these nations do, people always find a way of shifting blame. The bitter truth is however, that more and more of those so called family farms are using factory farm practices; and that almost 80% of dairy cows raised in this country are raised in an industrial setting and never see the light of day .

So let us take a deeper look into the life of the average dairy cow and her children. If you are born in an average dairy farm they rip you away from your mother as soon as you are licked clean, sometimes even before that. You are either carted away in a wheelbarrow or by your leg while you scream for your mother and she screams for you; you never see her again. If you are lucky and are a girl you are sent to an industrial feeding lot where you are fed till you are old enough to have your own babies. If you are unlucky and are a boy you are in most cases bludgeoned to death, auctioned off as veal or sent off to be raised as someone dinner, to most humans your life has no value. So what is your life like as female cow?

If you are a female cow compared to your brother you might think you are lucky and for the first year, or so, of your existence that might be so. Even though you are denied running free you have a clean place to sleep and food everyday, but soon things will change. The first thing they do to you is what they call de-horning. You are locked in a mechanical device as your sensitive horns are cut off your head with pliers without pain killers. You scream yet no one comes to your rescue no one cares. Later when you are about 15 months old a human comes and “inseminates” you so you can have a baby and they can have your milk. Or they strap you in a rape rack and lead a bull to you to seal the deal, no matter how you resist you have no say in it. Basically they are violating your body, if you were a human they would call it sexual assault or rape but you are a cow you don’t matter to them. After an average 285 days you give birth, you are happy you love your baby. Then they come and take him or her from you. You scream and struggle but there is nothing you can do, you will never see your baby again. This process is repeated every year till you produce less milk as they expect you to and you are sent to slaughter.Now that you produce milk you more than likely will never see the light of day again. If you are lucky your facility is clean but more than likely it is not. The farmer or staff will impregnate you every year and they will take your baby every time. You will be fed some disgusting pallet food but you’re hungry and because producing milk takes a lot out of a body. They bread you to produce an obscene amount of milk but it comes with a cost, a cost to you- painful infections and fever so they pump you full of antibiotics and medicine. You are often depressed and when you are pregnant you become very agitated because you know they are going to take your child and you have nowhere to run. If you struggle they beat and torture you, you learn to remain as passive as possible but it does not always help. If you are strong you live like this for an average of 7 years, if you are frail you don’t make it past your second birthing. If you stumble if you can’t get up they label you a downed cow it’s a death sentence and no matter how scared you are no one is coming.

A picture says more than a thousand words a video even more here is some undercover footage shot in an average dairy farm in Ohio.

 

The end of a bovine > when those cows have been milked dry or to exhaustion we humans cart her of to slaughter. No matter how well a bovines life was in the end they all ace the same horrible practices in the end. What most people do not know is that although the cows are shot in the head with a bolt they are often still alive when their throat is cut and they are skinned. The process is horrid and the workers are often abusive and cruel. The industry would like to make you believe that the animals do not suffer, the truth is they do not only suffer they are terrified every second from arrival to point of death; some fight others shut down emotionally , but they are all very aware of their fate. If you do not believe me go to a slaughter house and watch. Humane slaughter is a myth and the only truly happy cows live in sanctuaries nowhere else! Oh and one more thing A cow’s natural lifespan is about 25 years we kill them between 0-7 years of age. How do I know all this? Because I worked on a farm when I was twenty, it was not a factory farm it was in fact the best possible farm environment for a cow a European eco farm, still what I saw there and the surrounding factory farms changed me forever.

 

 

 

Meat , Milk and Dairy and health > Despite what the meat and dairy industry would like to tell you Milk and dairy have been linked to the following illness heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer and asthma. A Harvard study points to a direct coloration of high milk consumption and osteoporosis. The study explains that Dairy turns the body acidic and that it has to leach calcium from the bones to balance it out. This also explains why the countries that have the highest dairy consumption also have the highest osteoporosis rates. Still Advertising using Celebrities like “the got milk” campaign still sell us the lie and we literally poison our children and ourselves because we believe what we are told. Other studies point to milk , meat and dairy as cause for cancer one of them is the famous China study. The China Study was conducted by T. Colin Campbell, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, and his son Thomas M. Campbell II, a physician. The China-Cornell-Oxford Project was conducted over 20 years. It began 1983 and ended in 2003. During those 20 years blood work and dietary studies were conducted on over 6,500 people from in 65 regions in China. The study concluded that counties with a high consumption of animal products had substantially higher death rates from Cancer, diabetes and heart disease while these diseases were very uncommon for regions on a plant based diet.Now that scary isn’t it?

 

What the industry does to the planet and how its fucking YOUR FUTURE TOO! >Most People are not aware that the meat, dairy and fish industry are bringing us to the edge of extinction. It is predicted that if we do not change our fishing practices we will face a total collapse of our oceans marine wildlife by the year 2045 . Now you will more than likely be alive then so what does it mean for you ? The problem is our oceans produce over 80% of our breathable oxygen. The balance within our aquatic habitats are a delicate one, the loss of just one species impacts the balance greatly. If the projections are right the loss of all marine life could tip the balance and render the ocean sour and unable to produce the oxygen we need to survive. What fishing is doing in our oceans the Meat and Dairy industry is doing on land. In South and Central America our rainforests are being chopped down to make land for cattle. An area of the approximate size of a football field is decimated four seconds; that’s an area twice the size of Paris gone every day. That in turn equates to 13 million hectares or an area about the size of England, Greece or Nicaragua chopped down every year. ). So the question is what are we going to breath after 2045?
The Meat and Dairy industry are the Number one contributor to global warming, crazy as it sounds cow farts and even worse burps are producing such amounts of methane that it counts for 18% of green house gas causing emissions. You might think 18% does not sound like much, but what if I told you that the entire world transportation industry, this includes all boats, cars , drivable lawnmowers, motorcycles, rockets ships, space shuttles, ships ,tanks, trams, trains, trucks, planes, only hold a 13% stake.). Does this surprise you? That does not conclude all the damage this industry does the meat and Dairy industry is second in line when it comes to soil and water pollution, the Oil industry is in pole position there.

 

World hunger and how meat and dairy consumption makes you personally responsible > The meat and dairy industry and western societies lust for them is the number one reason for global hunger (next to political red tape) and ground water depletion. In a world were a child dies from hunger every 2-3 seconds consuming meat and dairy is just not sustainable practice. 70 percent of the world’s agricultural land is used to either grow feed for cattle or as graze land for cattle.More than 50% of U.S. grain and nearly 40 % of the entire world grain yield is fed to livestock .If this grain were fed to humans instead of bovines we could increase the global food supply by nearly 50%!That is an approximate 800 million people who could be fed if we took the gain from America cattle feed alone !Imagine this; the grain it takes to produce an average steak could feed 30 people a hearty meal of gains and veggies. How bitter must it be for these people to watch as the flesh of animals raised and fed with the grain produced on their land is being shipped and consumed in the first world while their children are dying of starvation. Fact is that if humanity does not change their behaviour there will be severe consequences in your immediate future change starts with the individual.

 

But don’t plants feel pain too? ->Plants do not have nervous systems like we do , but there have been some studies that suggest that they might have feelings and might be sentient. I have been giving it a lot of thought lately and am trying to evolve from vegan to fruitarian because of this. The fruitarian diet is the only real cruelty free diet out there. Plants produce there fruit for us to eat in hopes we will eat the seeds with it and carry their plant babies to a good place where they can thrive. I am not perfect and am still evolving step by step , but i get furious when people just have thins non caring attitude to what their actions are causing others. People like to say mind your own business the problem is it is no longer only their business when their actions are impacting the life quality of others. Its not like I can book a rocketship outta here to Beta Centauri. I am stuck with people who are literally threatening my personal survival but am told not to mention it or to let it go , or the whole personal choice crap. My grand mother lived to be 80 , my grandfather to be 98 …I do not want to spend my old age on a barren planet with extreme food shortages (predicted by the UN in the next 10 years if we don’t change) and little air to breath… So yes I am  AN ANGRY VEGAN and am going to be the uncomfortable fool on the soapbox as long as I have breath in me .

Namaste Alex

 

Meat industry – Environmental Enemy number 1

Today’s headlines confirm what environmental and animal activists have been saying for years, The meat and dairy industry is killing the planet ! New scientific evaluations have declared that by 2050 half of the world population will be living with extreme water shortage if we continue to insist on living a meat and dairy based diet to the extent we are now.The most alarming thing is that this article does not even hit on the grand scale deforestation, soil and water contamination as well as the monumental stake in global warming the industry also holds responsibility for. The new findings are based on water consumption and depletion alone, if we also include the data from the 2005 UN report our future looks incredibly bleak yet the general population seems oblivious or unwilling to believe in the severity of the issue.

When asking a group of people for the main cause of global warming most will assume the culprit to be the world traffic system, shockingly however this is not the case the main industrial offender fin the global warming scenario is in fact the Meat and dairy industry. The meat and dairy Industrial complex holds a 18% stake in green house gas causing emissions opposed to a mere 13% of the entire world transportation industry. The Meat and dairy industry together with the egg industry is also second in line when it comes to soil and water contamination. The stake of these industries destruction of our planet is so high that even the conservative UN has rallied against them yet little to nothing is done to make the extent of the destruction and its consequences known to a wider public. One of the reasons for this is the immense political power this industrial complex possesses; it not only has a well funded army of lobbyists , lawyers and Public relations specialists , but also large stake in the media landscape that greatly influences the mindset of the general population.

The truth is that the financial influence of corporations gives them the power to deliberately disseminate falsified data and often potentially dangerous lies through, what the public believes to be an independent, media. Sadly however today mainstream media is relies in most parts on corporate sponsorship to stay viable in a highly competitive market. This reliance on financial support has made mainstream news outlets vulnerable to sponsor meddling. Depending on how far the network is willing to go for its sponsors this can lead to anything from media blackouts, on certain subjects, to the deliberate spreading of misinformation. The best example of such practises was the Monsanto/Fox Milk scandal.

In 2009 investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, set out to look into Monsanto’s claims that their GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH or rbST) was fully safe for consumers who purchased milk from cows treated with it. During the course of their investigation the reporters not only found out that those claims where false but that there had been an extensive cover up and fudging of data . Akre and Wilson created a whole expose around the Material they found and presented it to their network for approval. Initially Fox gave the ok for airing but Monsanto soon became wind of declaring it would take legal action and relinquish any sponsorship with the media giant if the material where not either severely censored ,by leaving out any pointers to the dangers of the drug , or altered to conclude to its safety. After a long back and forth Fox sided with Monsanto and Jane Akre and Steve Wilson decided to publish on their own despite threats from both Fox and Monsanto. As appalling as this case may seem this behaviour is fairly common in the modern Media circuit and is large determining factor in maintaining an ignorant world population.

Many argument that if the situation where as dangerous as some scientists , the UN and hundreds of environmental and animal rights organisations are saying, world governments would surly protect their citizens form it and take action. The problem with this argumentation is that in reality these corporations contribute substantially to political campaigns and politics as whole. The meat and dairy industry is traditionally a large contributor in the political circuit with a steadily growing stake in both national and individual campaigns. The Dairy industry alone contributed $4.8 million to federal candidates during the 2008 election cycle. In addition to these contributions their Lobbing fractions supplied a further $4.7 in 2009. This contribution trend seems to be on the rise as is the financing of specific candidates. For example California Dairies Inc.’s political action committee donated $10,000 to the Senator Lisa Murkowski’s campaign in 2010. The senator is a strong opponent against EPA greenhouse gas regulations and conveniently sits on the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

We live in a world where profit comes before everything, where humans and animals are seen as commodities. For these large corporations our function is to consume and they will sell what they can under any pretence. Income is the prize and the damage seems irrelevant to them how is it otherwise to be explained that the media , our government and these corporations still sell people on the Milk is health and creates strong bones myth. These claims have been disproven by multiple scientific surveys, in fact animal milk is show to leach calcium form bones not support healthy bone growth as we are taught by all the got-milk ads. If people would pay attention they would notice that U.S America the country that consumes the highest amount of milk has the highest osteoporosis rates.

If we look at the 2005 UN report and the new water consumption and conservation report we can point to the meat and dairy industry as one of the most damaging industries on the planet. It is murderer of millions of animals, major contributor to world hunger, grand scale devastation of soil and water, major contributor to the deforestation of south American rainforests and top contributor to global warming how can we label it anything but being a horrific menace. Clearly the extent of animal abuse and lack of regard for life is reason alone for any sane individual to want to shut down this revolting industry; sadly however most humans have little compassion for beings of another species, if it crosses their need for pleasure and selfish gratification. Humans are largely indifferent to the suffering amongst beings within their own ranks so expecting them to breach the divide when it comes to animals is at this point in history a lost cause. Right now advocating a plant based diet is no longer limited to philosophical musings on animal welfare, it is a do or die situation; either the majority of humanity goes vegan or humanity will most likely suffer extinction it is pretty much as simple as that.

How bad of a mess is humanity in? And how damaging is this industry really? Here an example to highlight the water consumption issue- To produce an average hamburger consisting of a bun, beef, tomato, lettuce, onions and cheese, it takes 2,389 litres of water. That’s 1194 soda bottles full to give a mental image. A traditional beef and rice dinner takes 4,230 litres of water, 2115 soda bottles full, and a beef steak guzzles a whopping 7,000 litres in its production- that’s 3500 soda bottle full of water how on earth is that sustainable?!

Food shortages in 2008 led to civil unrest in 28 countries, the new UN and scientific reports expect the next projected crises, expected in five years, to supersede it by a huge margin. Prices corn and wheat have risen by an average 50% on international markets since June how bad will it look five years from now? 18 million people in the Sahel at this point in time and the drought issues are expanding. The west loves to shut its eyes from third world suffering but we better react now because the food crisis is coming for everyone the severe drought in US. America and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia are just messengers for what is to come if we do not change and adapt quickly.

We need to understand that while the driving force in the exploitation of this planet lies with the corporations and their quest for financial gain every single one of us holds immense responsibility in what is happing in this world today. Humans like to shun their responsibilities but the truth is with the decisions we make we create the reality for all. If one chooses a animal product based diet one is responsible for the suffering of the animals involved, the starving people in third world countries who’s grain is being sold to the first worlds desire for flesh and the environmental damage the industry is causing in order to supply the product. Buy buying and consuming the product one supports the practises behind it, playing the three monkeys will not absolve anyone of their responsibility, it just fosters a climate where nothing changes.

Trying to convince corporations to do the right thing is as futile as convincing a squirrel to relinquish a nut, the responsibility lies with the consumers- either we force change or it will never happen. No super hero is coming so do something or perish that’s the deal!At this point in history any educated person can see that our planet is severely damaged, that we are experiencing climate issues and that we are now facing food crises the likes no one has ever seen. When it comes to pollution, the meat and dairy industry reigns together with the fossil fuel conglomerate. When it comes to global warming, soil and water contamination the meat and dairy industry reigns supreme. The evidence is there, has been for the last 20 years, now we are experiencing the first devastation effects of our choices. In the end even the best research cannot stand up to a closed mind, one can only hope that the mountain of insurmountable evidence piling up in the last few years will wake up enough people to make a difference. If not the future of the next generation is a bleak one.

> segment taken out of one of my term papers (Alex)