Why Vegetarian

Why Vegetarian?

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances of survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein

“A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.

Therefore if he eats meat he participates in the taking of animal life for the sake of appetite”.

Leo Tolstoy

Below are a number of reasons for not eating meat.

Concerns about food production methods - Irradiated food, GM modified foods and also increased use of chemicals as growth promoters in food production, which may have a harmful effect on body cells.
There is also some concern about animals becoming immune to the antibiotics they are given and this immunity being passed on to humans via the food chain.

Disease and health concerns – Foot and Mouth, BSE and CJD

Food oil production methods – See- Essential fatty acids

Moral issues - Exploitation of all animals

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the Earth."

Henry Beston

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.
Mohandas Gandhi

Animal testing - the use of animals in product testing, i.e. household, pharmaceutical and cosmetics

“Let me say it openly were surrounded by an enterprise of degradation ,cruelty and killing which rivals any thing the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them”.

J.M.Coetzee

Farming methods – Animal welfare /transportation /slaughtering /battery hen farms etc

“Truly man is the king of the beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places!

I have from an early age adjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as we will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

“The smallest feline is a masterpiece”.
Leonardo da Vinci

Environmental issues waste and pollution: -

Livestock are a vast consumer of precious water and natural resources; they consume twenty times as much vegetable protein than the meat protein they produce. The waste from them is a major source of pollution.

Livestock cause deforestation due to land clearance for grazing, which in turn cause soil erosion.

This can all have an effect on the balance of nature and the environment that we live in.

“We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit.

We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains and the four legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand the Great Spirit is also above all these things and people. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends”

Black Elk (Holy man of the Oglala Sioux)

Do we need to eat meat

The answer to this is no, we can obtain all the protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and nutrients from vegetables, legumes, seeds, fruits, nuts, good oils and in moderation organic dairy products.

Research has shown that vegetarians suffer less from cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and osteoporosis than meat eaters. More importantly they tend to live longer.

"Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food".

Hippocrates (The father of medicine)

Eating Organic food minimises the risk of the ingestion of chemicals additives from food . It also offers food production a sustainable future and encourages diversity of the species.

“Then god said, I give you every herb bearing seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to ever beast of the earth and every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth on the earth, wherever in there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.”

Gen.1:29, 30 (NIV)