Ten Reasons To Be A vegan

Hunger

Number of people worldwide who will die as a result of malnutrition this year: 20million.
Number of people who could be adequately fed using land freed if Americans reduced
their intake of meat by 10%: 100 million.
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 80.
Percentage of oats grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 95.
How frequently a child dies as a result of malnutrition: every 2.3 seconds.
Pounds of potatoes that can be grown on an acre: 40,000.
Pounds of beef produced on an acre: 250.
Percentage of U.S. farmland devoted to beef production: 56.
Pounds of grain and soybeans needed to produce a pound of beef: 16.

Environmental

Primary cause of greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels Fossil fuels needed to produce meat-centered diet vs. a meat-free diet: 3 times more .Percentage of U.S. topsoil lost to date: 75. Percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directlyrelated to livestock raising: 85.
Number of acres of U.S. forest cleared for cropland to produce meat-centered diet:260 million. Area of tropical rainforest consumed in every quarter-pound of rainforest beef:55 sq. feet. Current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforestsfor meat grazing and other uses: 1,000 per year.

Cancer

Increased risk of breast cancer for women who eat meat daily compared to less than
once a week: 3.8 times. For women who eat eggs daily compared to once a week: 2.8 times.Increased risk of fatal ovarian cancer for women who eat eggs 3 or more times a weekvs. less than once a week: 3 times. Increased risk of fatal prostate cancer for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs andmilk daily vs. sparingly or not at all: 3.6 times.

Cholesterol

Most common cause of death in the U.S.: heart attack.
How frequently a heart attack kills in the U.S.: every 45 seconds.
Average U.S. man's risk of death from heart attack: 50 percent.
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat, dairy or eggs: 4 percent.
Amount you reduce risk if you eliminate meat, dairy and eggs from your diet: 90 percent
Average cholesterol level of people eating meat-centered-diet: 210 mg/dl.
Chance of dying from heart disease if you are male and your blood cholesterol level is
210 mg/dl: greater than 50 percent.

Natural Resources

User of more than half of all water used for all purposes in the U.S.: livestockproduction.
Gallons of water needed to produce a pound of wheat: 25.
Gallons of water needed to produce a pound of California beef: 5,000.
Years the world's known oil reserves would last if every human ate a meat-centereddiet:13.
Years they would last if human beings no longer ate meat: 260.
Calories of fossil fuel expended to get 1 calory of protein from beef: 78.
To get 1 calory of protein from soybeans: 2. 

Antibiotic

Ingredients: Any one of our instant noodles, fresh vegetables (if you don't have fresh
veggies handy, then our Just Corn and Just Veggies are just as good), Roasted Seaweed(optional), Wei-I Best Grade Laver Ro Su (bacon bits) (optional) and any of our frozengourmet.

Percentage of U.S. antibiotics fed to livestock: 55.
Percentage of staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin in 1960: 13.
Percentage resistant in 1988: 91.
Response of European Economic Community to routine feeding of antibiotics tolivestock: ban.
Response of U.S. meat and pharmaceutical industries to routine feeding of antibiotics tolivestock: full and complete support.

Pesticide

Fewer than 1 out of every 250,000 slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical
residues.
Percentage of U.S. mother's milk containing significant levels of DDT: 99.
Percentage of U.S. vegan mother's milk containing significant levels of DDT: 8.
Contamination of breast milk, due to chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides in animal
products, found in meat-eating mothers vs. non-meat eating mothers: 35 times higher.

Ethics

Number of animals killed for meat per hour in the U.S.: 660,000.
Occupation with the highest turnover rate in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker.
Occupation with the highest rate of on-the-job-injury in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker.

Spiritual Consciousness

Food is the source of the body's chemistry, and what we ingest affects ourconsciousness, emotions and experiential pattern. If we want to live in higher consciousness, in peace and happiness and love for all creatures, then we should
consider not eating meat, fish, shellfish, fowl or eggs.

Karmic Consequences

Major religions around the world such as Buddhism or Hinduism teach that all of ouractions including our choice of food have karmic consequences. By involving oneself inthe cycle of inflicting injury, pain and death, even indirectly by eating other creatures,one must in the future experience in equal measure the suffering caused.

vegan quotes:

Animals are not food. ?People at VegeCyber.

May all that have life be delivered from suffering. -- Buddha.

For hundreds of thousands of years the stew in the pot has brewed hatred andresentmentthat is difficult to stop. If you wish to know why there are disasters of armies and weaponsin the world, just listen to the piteous cries from the slaughterhouse in the midnight. ?Poemby a Chinese monk.

What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ... The question is not, Can theyreason?nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? --Jeremy Bentham.

Animals are my friends--and I don't eat my friends. -- George Bernard Shaw.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan.
We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals knowing we're not contributing to their pain. -- Paul and Linda McCartney.

Thou shall not kill. ?First of Ten Commandments (Christian) and First of Five Precepts
(Buddhist).

Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence. I was told to extend nonviolence to themotherand her calf. -- Dick Gregory.

I would not eat if no one kills the animal ?said the meat eater?I would not kill if no one
eats the animal?said the butcher?/font>

Homer: You mean you're not going to eat BACON? Lisa: No, Dad.
Homer: Or SAUSAGE or PORK CHOPS or HAM? Lisa: Dad, those all come from thesame animal.
Homer: Oh, suuuuure, Lisa ... some magic animal. -- Homer and Lisa Simpson.

How can you eat anything with eyes! -- Will Kellogg.

I'm stopped. I'll never eat another burger. -- Oprah Winfrey.

Once I was fishing and caught the hook in the fish's eye. That was the last time I ate a killedcreature. -- Janet Barkas, editor of Grove Press.

The world's environment can no longer handle beef. -- JeremyRifkin, author of Beyond Beef.

Many things made me become a vegan, among them the higher food yield as a solutionto world hunger. -- John Denver.

Cruelty to animals can become violence to humans. -- Ali MacGraw.

Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the powerof compassion to the marketplace and the dinner table, you can make your life really count.-- Rue McClanahan.

I grew up in cattle country--that's why I became a vegan. Meat stinks, for theanimals,the environment, and your health. -- K.D. Lang.

All creation has the same right to life. -- Sun Bear and Jaya Bear.

I would not want to get to know a pig very well if I intended to eat him. -- Pat Leigh.

A human can 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. -- Leo Tolstoy.

Whenever we cause suffering or death to any other being, we cause suffering to the GreatLife Force. -- Shik Po Chih.

I went snorkeling and noticed how gently the fish welcomed us into their world ... as
compared to the violence with which we welcomed them into ours. I became a vegan.-- Syndee Brinkman.

If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meatagain. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals Iworked with on "Babe" that by the end of the film I was a vegan. -- James Cromwell.

I have reached zero tolerance for the cruelty against our animal brothers. If we are to nurtureour culture, let's begin with the animals who have been nothing but our beasts of burden forso long. -- Riki Rockett.

Items containing raw or uncooked egg should be avoided so as not to contact a certain strainof salmonella. (It used to be thought that only broken eggs could transmit salmonella ... now itis known that the mother passes salmonella through the egg.) (There is more incidence offood poisoning from eggs than from meat, fish, or milk.) -- Jane Snow, food editor of theBeacon Journal.

To his butler: Please put the ladybug outside without harming her. -- WinstonChurchill.

Since visiting the abbatoirs [slaughterhouses] of South France, I have stopped eating meat.-- Vincent Van Gogh.

Thousands of animals [now billions] are butchered every day without a shadow of remorse.It cries vengeance upon all the human race. -- Romain Rolland.

More and more we realize that a vegan diet is a good idea. -- Dr. Edward Martin, headof Dept. of Defense Health.

My respect and empathy towards animals includes sea dwellers too - from dolphins to fish tolobsters. So, of course, I wouldn't dream of eating them. -- Alexandra Paul.

As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, loveand compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding.Please help to stop this madness. -- Richard Gere.

We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday lunch we
happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields.
Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realized we were eating the leg of an animal whohad until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said: "Waita minute, we love these sheep - they're such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?"It was the last time we ever did. -- Paul and Linda McCartney.

The other members of the National Football League say I'm in the minority ... but they are. Amajority of the world is vegan. -- Former Pittsburgh Steeler and New York Giant footballplayer Glenn Scolnick.

Some people are still going to want to eat meat ... we do agree, though, that veganism isa healthier diet. --David Stroud of the American Meat Institute.

For many years the media have been afraid of the Goliath power of the meat industry. (ButDavid is coming!) -- Pegeen Fitzgerald of WOR TV and Radio in NY.

I spoke often in Congress against the war in Vietnam and commented on Congresspersonshiding from the reality of war by saying, "Many eat the meat, but few go to the slaughterhouse". I said it so often I became a vegan. -- Rep. Andrew Jacobs, formerlyof Indianapolis.

In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot
stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hewa dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of thelast slaughterhouse. -- H. G. Wells (A Modern Utopia).

Of what use are all your sacrifices to Me? I have had enough of the roastedcarcasses oframs and of the fat of fattened beasts. I take no pleasure in the blood of calves, lambs andgoats. ... When you spread out your hands, I close My eyes to you; despite however muchyou pray, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood! Wash yourselves clean! Put awayyour misdeeds from before My eyes and stop doing evil. -- Isaiah 1:11, 15-16.

Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers, you do it unto me. -- Matthew 25:40.

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as muchas the evolution to a vegan diet. -- Albert Einstein.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradualimprovement,to leave off eating animals. -- Henry David Thoreau.

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 "realfood for real people," you'd better live real close to a real good hospital. -- Neal D. Barnard,M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for
continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent peoplefrom murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest oftimes. -- IsaacSinger.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals aretreated. -- Mohandas Gandhi.

If [man] is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, forhe who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge theheart of a man by his treatment of animals. -- Immanuel Kant.

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to thehuman race or doesn't ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals isthe basisof my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without lookingfurther. -- Mark Twain.

One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon researchonhuman beings. -- Leonardo Da Vinci.

Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry. -- Steven Spielberg.

The medical argument for animal testing doesn't stand up. Even if it did, I don't thinkwe should kill other species. We think we're so much better; I'm not sure we are. I tellpeople,"We've beaten into submission every animal on the face of the Earth, so we are the clearwinners of whatever battle is going on between the species. Couldn't we be generous?" Ireally do think it's time to get nice. No need to keep beating up on them. I think we've gotto show that we're kind. -- Paul McCartney.

You're thinking I'm one of those wise-ass California vegans who is going to tellyou that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I'm not. I say it's a free countryand you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your colddead body is not blocking my driveway. -- Scott Adams (writer of "Dilbert").

If you could see or feel the suffering, you wouldn't think twice. Give back life. Don't eat
meat. -- Kim Basinger.

I haven't bought any leather articles for a very long time. My ideal is to be able to avoid
all animal products, in food as well as clothing. -- Martina Navratilova.

Forty years ago on the set of "Gunsmoke" I read the book The Holy Science. Since thenI have not eaten meat. -- Dennis Weaver.

Being around all the animals in the film Dr. Doolittle made me one too. -- Samantha Eggar.

GE is the biggest polluter of the Hudson ... years ago they killed all the fish dumping
millions of pounds of PCBs into our waterways. Now let's make them pay for the cleanup.-- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

So you are the people tearing down the Brazilian rainforest and breeding cattle.--Prince Philip, to McDonald's of Canada.

The awful cruelty and terror to which tens of thousands of animals killed for human foodare subjected in traveling long distances by ship and rail and road to the slaughterhousesof the world. God disapproves of all cruelty ... whether to man or beast. The occupationof slaughtering animals is brutalizing to those who are required to do the work. ... Ibelieve this matter is well worthy of the serious consideration of Christian leaders. -- Mrs.Booth and General Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army.

It is a surprisingly close progression from hunting animals to hunting and torturing people... catching and lynching blacks or smoking out Jews during the Holocaust. -- AvivaCantor writing in Ms. magazine.

Why not just put sterilization hormones in the deer food rather than killing them? --Dan
Ryan, Youngstown talk show host.

I have no intention of eating a fish from the East River. They're not safe to eat.--Mayor White of Cleveland.

Arson and cruelty to animals are two of three childhood warning signs regarding the
potential to be a serial killer. -- John Douglas, profiler of serial killers for the FBI, upon
whom the FBI character in "Silence of the Lambs" was based.