Why everyone should go Vegan

A year ago I was the type of person that thought it was ridiculous to live a diet without meat, I just couldn't get my head round it.. But since then I have learnt a lot about how our meat is brought up, slaughtered, processed and packed etc. We get taught that it's a simple process, that the animals have a happy life and they are killed humanly. That is simply not true. There is very few private farms left, the animals that we eat come from factory farming. A process which forces cows to become pregnant and kept in a small enough gate that they can't even lay down. After they give birth, the babies are snatched straight away before they mother even has a chance to feed her calf. The male calves are either sent straight away to be made into food, for us or they can be reared for beef. While the female calf will be raised to be another milking cow, which will also be unwilling inseminated and then have it's baby taken away. It's just a vicious circle, and the whole time these animals are being beaten, pumped with antibiotics and growth hormones. When we eat the meat that comes from these cows, we are also eating those antibiotics, and since the cows are stressed/depressed we are also eating stressed/depressed hormones.

It's not just cows that this happens to, the pigs live just as much as a depressive life and almost everybody has seen the videos of the chicken factory farms, but people don't seem to care/believe that this is what is STILL happening to all animals. Just because your chickens are "free range" does not mean that they have a happy life, they are still beaten, and injected with dangerous substances. Animals in factory farming also get castrated to stop them being aggressive and some have their beaks, claws, horns and even tails snipped without any pain relief. It's as simple as going onto YouTube and searching animal agriculture and you can see it all before your eyes, so many animals being beaten with metal poles and punches and stamped on, thrown around like rubbish, living in their own blood and poo but we are still happy to eat them? 

I have eaten meat for 23 years, and I am aware that I'm totally contradicting myself here but I know all of this happens, and it really has made me want to go Vegan. I can stand there a cook a spag bol and then once I've dished it up it just makes me feel unwell and I won't want to eat it. Because I know the pain that animal went through, and how much shit is in that meat that I'm about to put into my body.. For me I'm finding it really difficult, as a family of 4 on a low income, and me being the only one who wants to go vegan, we really couldn't afford to buy separate meals. I have started buying a lot more veg, and introducing more natural foods into my diet, in the hope that eventually I can wean into a vegan diet. From my point of view, nobody wants to eat unseasoned meat, so really as long as you flavor your "vegan meat" then your dinner will taste the same as it's the herbs and flavorings that make us think that meat "tastes nice" 

Obviously it's not just meat, it's milk, cheese, yoghurts, eggs and so much more that I spent most of my life eating and not knowing how bad it was for me. Ever since I saw somewhere stating that eggs were "chickens periods" I've been put off them since and couldn't even think about eating eggs because that's just so disgusting. How can this stuff be good for us? We produce our own milk for our babies, so why are we drinking milk from cows that contain 3 times more protein then we need? We are told "drink milk and have strong bones" but in fact this amount of protein for a human creates metabolic disturbances that lead to bone problems later in life. It's also the same milk that contains pus cells, feces and a whole load of unnecessary fat, cholesterol and calories.

Here I'm going to show you some facts about Animal Agriculture/Factory farming and then you will find some VERY graphic images from factory farms around the world, including the UK.

• The production of one calorie of animal protein requires more than ten times the fossil fuel input as a calorie of plant protein.

• Producing a single hamburger uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil.

• It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat and only 25 gallons to produce one pound of wheat

• Animals raised for food produce approximately 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population and animal farms pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Run-offs of animal waste, pesticides, chemicals, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics are contributing to dead zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reef and health problems. 

• Raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30% of the Earth’s land mass.

• Seven football fields’ worth of land is bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals and the crops that feed them.

• The massive amounts of excrement produced by livestock farms emit toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia into the air. Roughly 80% of ammonia emissions in the U.S. come from animal waste

• When the cesspools holding tons of urine and feces get full, factory farms will frequently get around water pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, creating mists that are carried away by the wind.

• 70% of the grain grown is fed to animals on feedlots

• It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat

• The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth

• Each year the livestock sector globally produces 586 million tons of milk, 124 million tons of poultry, 91 million tons of pork, 59 million tons of cattle and buffalo meat, and 11 million tons of meat from sheep and goats. That 285 million tons of meat altogether — or about 36 kg (80 lb.) per person, if it were all divided evenly.

Please take the time to do some research for yourself and consider making the world a better place by going vegan, vegetarian or even just reduce the amount of meat/dairy that you consume. "Nothing would ever change" is not an excuse, you have to change yourself to change the world!