Real People on why They went Vegetarian-
“I was caught in a traffic tie-up directly behind a tractor-trailer hauling live chickens to slaughter. For nearly an hour, I sat in my truck, a mere 7 feet away from hundreds of the saddest living creatures I had ever encountered. Their tiny feet were stuck in the wire mesh and feces, their beaks and faces were bloody, their wings broken and bent, their feathers missing in large patches all over their bloated bodies, and worst of all, their eyes were focused directly on mine and seemed to be pleading for mercy.”
—Lori Robbins, Tennessee
“I read an interview with Harley Flannagan, the lead singer for a band called the Cro-Mags. … He said one thing that I have remembered ever since: ‘You cannot talk about peace while eating a steak. You have to remember that that animal died in agonizing pain.’”
—Mike Mahler, California
“That night, my mother made hamburgers for dinner. For some reason, I asked my parents what I was eating and where it came from. … [T]hey told me that I was eating a cow. … I can remember sitting there in our teal dining room chairs, feeling stunned. Feeling shocked. Feeling this incredible sick feeling in my stomach, in my whole body.”
—Jennifer Cohen, Florida
“I’m a Christian and in the Bible one of the Ten Commandments says, ‘Thou [Shalt] Not Kill.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Thou [Shalt] Not Kill People’; it just says, ‘Thou [Shalt] Not Kill.’”
—Mary Sleboda, Pennsylvania
“I went along on a hunting trip with my stepdad when I was 10 years old. [M]y mom thought it would be a good bonding experience. I waited in the back of a rusty old Jeep as my stepdad [shot] a doe. [She] didn’t die with the one shot , so he got the knife out. All I remember is the sound of the knife going in and out [She] just didn’t want to die. He threw [her] into the back with me ‘Well, Mama’s not comin’ home to Bambi tonight,’ he said.”
—Rachel Mertz, Minnesota
“I am a truck driver and run coast to coast. [One night,] I pulled over on an exit ramp off the interstate to sleep. … There was a truck already there in front of me. I pulled my tractor-trailer up close behind his. As I got ready for bed, I looked into his truck; it was a stock hauler, specifically, [of] turkeys. I sat there looking at those pitiful birds, crammed into wire cages with no room to move or turn around, bare to the elements, no water. … As I sat looking at those birds, I had an epiphany.”
—Billy Dillingham, North Carolina
“I have never liked meat and have always had a soft spot for animals. [I]t sickens me to think of eating an innocent animal. I believe we are all meant to live peacefully on this great Earth together I’ve always felt that animals have a soul and feelings, as we do.”
—Carrie Ann Liebrock, Michigan
“I had two beautiful dogs [whom] I lost … to dreadful diseases. … It left me lost and angry that they were taken from me, and I found it difficult to accept. I decided [that] for all the years of loyalty and love they gave to me, I would pay them back the only way I could. … [I]t wasn’t enough just to preach against animal cruelty—[I] had to live it.”
—Kelli Parker, Ontario, Canada
“When I was about three, I decided that my goal in life was to be a veterinarian, and now that I am in high school, I still haven’t changed my mind. One day I thought, ‘I want to spend my life helping keep animals alive and healthy, so why do I eat them?’ It didn’t make any sense. Would a doctor go home at night and eat his patients?”
—Kate Coppola, New Jersey
“I realized … [that the] animals used and abused for food … were no different from the cats I loved at home, except that they weren’t being loved, to say the least.”
—Cynthia Zipfel, Pennsylvania
“My father owned cows as a hobby Then one day, my father told me that five of the cows were pregnant and that I could choose any one I wanted as a pet except for the male because we were going to sell him. To help [this] sink in, he called him ‘Hamburger.’ I tried hard to not become attached, but that damn cow acted just like a dog. He would come when I called him [and] let me rub his stomach … and hand-feed him every day. [T]he day that they took [Hamburger] to the market …, I asked my mother what was for dinner and she replied, ‘[H]amburgers.’ I knew it was not my ‘Hamburger,’ but for the first time, I really made the connection.”
—Courtney Chitty, Florida
Thanks to http://www.peta.org/feat/07cont/
I've found without question that the best way to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example - to lead with your fork, not your mouth. ~Bernie Wilke
We pray on Sundays that we may have light/To guide our footsteps on the path we tread;/We are sick of war, we don't want to fight,/And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead. ~George Bernard Shaw
A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children. ~David Brenner
I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
~Vaslav Nijinsky
How can you eat anything with eyes? ~Will Kellogg
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child, as it is to the caterpillar. ~ Bradley Miller
The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. ~Mahaparinirvana
My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. ~George Bernard Shaw
Think of me tonite
For that which you savor
Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
~Wayne K. Tolson, from "Food Forethought"
A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen: "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing. They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive. I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They're all the same. If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything."
~Slaughterhouse 1997
Pigs may not be as cuddly as kittens or puppies, but they suffer just as much.
~James Cromwell
We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?" ~k.d. lang
Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? ~Plutarch
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore. ~ Franz Kafka-Novelist (to the fishes in his aquarium)
A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows. ~George Bernard Shaw
Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~Ingrid Newkirk, National Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid - milk. ~Rynn Berry
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. ~George Bernard Shaw
The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of "real food for real people" you'd better live real close to a real good hospital. ~Neal Barnard, M.D.
For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. ~Pythagoras
“I was caught in a traffic tie-up directly behind a tractor-trailer hauling live chickens to slaughter. For nearly an hour, I sat in my truck, a mere 7 feet away from hundreds of the saddest living creatures I had ever encountered. Their tiny feet were stuck in the wire mesh and feces, their beaks and faces were bloody, their wings broken and bent, their feathers missing in large patches all over their bloated bodies, and worst of all, their eyes were focused directly on mine and seemed to be pleading for mercy.”
—Lori Robbins, Tennessee
“I read an interview with Harley Flannagan, the lead singer for a band called the Cro-Mags. … He said one thing that I have remembered ever since: ‘You cannot talk about peace while eating a steak. You have to remember that that animal died in agonizing pain.’”
—Mike Mahler, California
“That night, my mother made hamburgers for dinner. For some reason, I asked my parents what I was eating and where it came from. … [T]hey told me that I was eating a cow. … I can remember sitting there in our teal dining room chairs, feeling stunned. Feeling shocked. Feeling this incredible sick feeling in my stomach, in my whole body.”
—Jennifer Cohen, Florida
“I’m a Christian and in the Bible one of the Ten Commandments says, ‘Thou [Shalt] Not Kill.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Thou [Shalt] Not Kill People’; it just says, ‘Thou [Shalt] Not Kill.’”
—Mary Sleboda, Pennsylvania
“I went along on a hunting trip with my stepdad when I was 10 years old. [M]y mom thought it would be a good bonding experience. I waited in the back of a rusty old Jeep as my stepdad [shot] a doe. [She] didn’t die with the one shot , so he got the knife out. All I remember is the sound of the knife going in and out [She] just didn’t want to die. He threw [her] into the back with me ‘Well, Mama’s not comin’ home to Bambi tonight,’ he said.”
—Rachel Mertz, Minnesota
“I am a truck driver and run coast to coast. [One night,] I pulled over on an exit ramp off the interstate to sleep. … There was a truck already there in front of me. I pulled my tractor-trailer up close behind his. As I got ready for bed, I looked into his truck; it was a stock hauler, specifically, [of] turkeys. I sat there looking at those pitiful birds, crammed into wire cages with no room to move or turn around, bare to the elements, no water. … As I sat looking at those birds, I had an epiphany.”
—Billy Dillingham, North Carolina
“I have never liked meat and have always had a soft spot for animals. [I]t sickens me to think of eating an innocent animal. I believe we are all meant to live peacefully on this great Earth together I’ve always felt that animals have a soul and feelings, as we do.”
—Carrie Ann Liebrock, Michigan
“I had two beautiful dogs [whom] I lost … to dreadful diseases. … It left me lost and angry that they were taken from me, and I found it difficult to accept. I decided [that] for all the years of loyalty and love they gave to me, I would pay them back the only way I could. … [I]t wasn’t enough just to preach against animal cruelty—[I] had to live it.”
—Kelli Parker, Ontario, Canada
“When I was about three, I decided that my goal in life was to be a veterinarian, and now that I am in high school, I still haven’t changed my mind. One day I thought, ‘I want to spend my life helping keep animals alive and healthy, so why do I eat them?’ It didn’t make any sense. Would a doctor go home at night and eat his patients?”
—Kate Coppola, New Jersey
“I realized … [that the] animals used and abused for food … were no different from the cats I loved at home, except that they weren’t being loved, to say the least.”
—Cynthia Zipfel, Pennsylvania
“My father owned cows as a hobby Then one day, my father told me that five of the cows were pregnant and that I could choose any one I wanted as a pet except for the male because we were going to sell him. To help [this] sink in, he called him ‘Hamburger.’ I tried hard to not become attached, but that damn cow acted just like a dog. He would come when I called him [and] let me rub his stomach … and hand-feed him every day. [T]he day that they took [Hamburger] to the market …, I asked my mother what was for dinner and she replied, ‘[H]amburgers.’ I knew it was not my ‘Hamburger,’ but for the first time, I really made the connection.”
—Courtney Chitty, Florida
Thanks to http://www.peta.org/feat/07cont/
I've found without question that the best way to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example - to lead with your fork, not your mouth. ~Bernie Wilke
We pray on Sundays that we may have light/To guide our footsteps on the path we tread;/We are sick of war, we don't want to fight,/And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead. ~George Bernard Shaw
A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children. ~David Brenner
I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
~Vaslav Nijinsky
How can you eat anything with eyes? ~Will Kellogg
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child, as it is to the caterpillar. ~ Bradley Miller
The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. ~Mahaparinirvana
My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. ~George Bernard Shaw
Think of me tonite
For that which you savor
Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
~Wayne K. Tolson, from "Food Forethought"
A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen: "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing. They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive. I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They're all the same. If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything."
~Slaughterhouse 1997
Pigs may not be as cuddly as kittens or puppies, but they suffer just as much.
~James Cromwell
We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?" ~k.d. lang
Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? ~Plutarch
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore. ~ Franz Kafka-Novelist (to the fishes in his aquarium)
A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows. ~George Bernard Shaw
Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~Ingrid Newkirk, National Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid - milk. ~Rynn Berry
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. ~George Bernard Shaw
The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of "real food for real people" you'd better live real close to a real good hospital. ~Neal Barnard, M.D.
For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. ~Pythagoras
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