VEGETARIANISM - VEGANISM      Vegetarians are people who do not eat meat.  Vegans don’t eat meat or other animal products such as eggs and dairy.  They also avoid the use of all animal products such as gelatin, lanolin, leather, fur, feathers.  They aspire to lead a cruelty-free life. "Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution.  Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.             —Thomas Edison      Many people believe that animals were put here for us to eat, so it’s OK to eat them.  Not true. "And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.’                  –Genesis l:29      There is no reason to eat meat, other than that we like the taste. "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."                             --Leo Tolstoy      People buy their neatly packaged pieces of meat and rarely connect them to the living, feeling beings from which they were torn.  They know little or nothing of the horrors of factory farming.   They don’t know that these sentient beings are considered agricultural produce and not subject to anti-cruelty laws.  If they give it any thought at all, they picture the old-time family farm with chickens pecking at the ground in the sunshine, or cattle grazing on a velvety hillside with their babies beside them, or old Bossie coming in at the end of the day to be milked. T hey don’t want to know about the misery and suffering caused by their selfish desire to satisfy their tastebuds.  Tastebuds don’t have a conscience. People do.  But they block the reality so they can continue to enjoy their meat. "Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight."                          --Albert Schweitzer       There are numerous ethical, environmental and health reasons for not eating meat. T he VivaVegie Society  has compiled a list of 101 reasons complete with detailed citations.  Many of those reasons are included here.  Read through them and examine your conscience.  Do you really want to be a party to the cruelty involved in food animal production?  Do you really want to contribute to the destruction of the environment? Do you really want to risk your own health solely because you like the taste of meat? How do your reasons for eating meat stack up against the arguments for eliminating it from your diet? "You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."