United Poultry Concerns - [link removed]
21 April 2020

Take a GIANT STEP: Go Vegan!

By Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns


This article, excerpted from Life Can Be Beautiful - Go Vegan!, is featured in
the April 2020 issue of The Echo World: The Alternative Voice in the South. The
Echo World appears in print and online.

Life Can Be Beautiful - Go Vegan!
[link removed]

The Echo World:
[link removed]


There's never been a better time to switch to a diet free of animal products.

Animal-free eating gets easier every day as more and more people seek healthy,
delicious vegan foods and restaurant dishes. More and more supermarkets sell a
range of easy-to-prepare products marked Vegan. With today's culinary creativity
and technology, we can enjoy delicious textures and flavors without worrying
about the cholesterol, type-two diabetes and other health issues linked to
unhealthy, animal-based diets. Let's look at the arguments.


Why Choose Vegan?

As the human population grows, food-safety and environment problems grow, and
animals raised for food get treated worse. They suffer more cruelly, grow sicker
and pass their sickness on to us. By choosing vegan, we refuse to support the
suffering of billions of animals while enjoying the health benefits associated
with plant-based foods.

Fortunately, the demand for animal-free foods is growing. People want meals that
are healthy, better for the environment, and compassionate to animals. Sales of
vegan meat and dairy-free products are rising rapidly in the United States and
elsewhere in the world, according to food trend analysts.1 Plant-based eating is
a path toward a healthier, more sustainable and caring way of life.


The Environment

Much of the destruction of our forests and wildlife is due to animal
agriculture. Our forests, especially our rainforests, absorb carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere and exchange it for oxygen. When we slash and burn forests to
graze cattle and grow soybeans to feed billions of poultry and pigs, we diminish
our ability and our children's ability to breathe fresh air. Currently, seventy
to eighty percent of the world's soy goes not into tofu but into food fed to
farmed animals.2

A plant-based diet helps to protect our forests and our environment. In "Saving
the Planet, One Meal at a Time," American journalist and Presbyterian minister,
Chris Hedges, writes: "With animal agriculture as the leading cause of species
extinction, water pollution, ocean dead zones and habitat destruction, becoming
vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save
the planet and its species."3


Animals Raised for Food

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production reported that of all the
terrible things they witnessed in their investigation of farmed animal
facilities, "The most appalling was a facility that produces chickens for
eating. It was totally dark and the dust and ammonia smells were overwhelming."4

Animals raised for food are treated badly and they are very unhealthy. Chickens,
turkeys and ducks are crammed in filthy, dark buildings loaded with bacteria,
flu viruses, toxic funguses and poisonous gases that burn their eyes, their
skin, and their lungs. With no fresh air, sunshine, or normal activities, the
birds develop painful skeletal deformities, soft watery muscles, stress hormones
and heart disease.

Chickens and turkeys go to slaughter with rotting livers (necrotic enteritis),
"wing rot," pus-filled lungs, and ammonia-burned skin. Rotting intestines and
ulcerated flesh are removed at the slaughterhouse. Corpses are drenched in
chlorinated water to conceal flesh sold falsely to consumers as "healthy."5

Former Tyson chicken slaughterhouse worker Virgil Butler and his partner, Laura
Alexander, described their switch to an animal-free diet: "We just couldn't look
at a piece of meat anymore without seeing the sad, tortured face that was
attached to it sometime in the past."6


"Free-Range," "Cage-Free," "Humane Farming"

These terms sound reassuring, but the reality behind the scenes is different. As
soon as they are born, most hens used for "cage-free" eggs are painfully
debeaked, and all male chicks are destroyed at the hatchery since they don't lay
eggs. "Free-range" turkeys are violently "milked" and inseminated by hand,
newborn calves and piglets are torn from their mothers, and baby chicks, turkeys
and ducks are denied the comfort of their mother's wings.

All animals raised for food - "free-range" included - are slaughtered, trashed,
or trucked to live animal markets and rendering companies when their moneymaking
life is over. Farmers do not keep "useless" animals. The idea that billions of
humans can have billions of "humanely-raised" animals is untrue.


What About Fish?

Fish are intelligent beings with feelings. When pulled from the water, they
suffocate in panic and pain, the same as humans and other land animals do when
drowning. Being hooked in the mouth or caught in a net is torture for fish that
are increasingly raised in huge aquatic factory farms as a result of human
overpopulation, overconsumption and ocean water pollution. They're subjected to
genetic engineering, drugs and diseases the same as their terrestrial
counterparts. The Guardian reports that "the oceans are massively overfished,
with more than half now being industrially fished."7


Foodborne Diseases

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that the major foodborne pathogens -
viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi - occur mainly in "meat, poultry,
seafood, dairy products and eggs." 8 Foodborne bacteria such as E. coli,
Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Listeria can migrate from people's intestines to
other body parts - blood, bones, nerves, organs, and joints - to cause chronic
illnesses later in life, such as arthritis. Salmonella and E. coli contamination
of plants such as spinach, tomatoes and melons comes from animal farming
operations. Fruits and vegetables do not generate this contamination.


Antibiotics

Farmed animals are fed massive amounts of antibiotics. Antibiotic-resistant
bacteria remain in slaughtered animals even on the dinner plate. Urinary-tract
infections (UTIs) caused by E. coli affect millions of women. These infections
correlate particularly with eating chicken. To reduce the risk, women are
encouraged to eat the plant-based chicken products available in stores and
fast-food franchises. These products taste just as good and do not present a
risk of UTIs.9


The Good News

When all is said and done, a plant-powered diet produces a legitimate feeling of
wellbeing in people. In "The Evidence for a Vegan Diet," James McWilliams,
associate professor of history at Texas State University, writes: "For me, the
most persuasive evidence supporting a healthy vegan diet is the everyday reality
that a dozen or so people with whom I eat have done extraordinary things as a
direct result of intelligent veganism. They've conquered obesity, chronic
disease, depression, and a host of food-related disorders by exclusively eating
an exciting diversity of plants. If there's one lesson I've learned, it is this:
the diet empowers."10



Notes
1. Monica Watrous, "Plant-based foods go mainstream in 2019,"
Meat + Poultry, December 27, 2019.
[link removed]


2. Farhad Manjoo, "Stop Mocking Vegans," The New York Times, August 28, 2019.
[link removed]


3. Chris Hedges, "Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time,"
Truthdig, November 10, 2014.
[link removed]


4. Robert Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm
Animal Production interviewed in E Magazine, July-August 2008.


5. Karen Davis, "Chickens: Their Life and Death in Farming Operations,"
Encyclopedia Britannica, October 1, 2018.
[link removed]


6. Virgil Butler & Laura Alexander interviewed in "Slaughterhouse Worker Turned
Activist," Poultry Press, Fall 2004.
[link removed]


7. Damian Carrington, "Avoiding meat and dairy is 'single biggest way' to reduce
your impact on Earth," The Guardian, October 30, 2018.
[link removed]


8. Buzby & Roberts, FoodReview, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Economic Research
Service, May-August 1995.


9. Martha Rosenberg, "Are Your Frequent UTIs From the Food You're Eating?"
The Epoch Times, July 27, 2019.
[link removed]


10. James McWilliams, "The Evidence for a Vegan Diet,"
The Atlantic, January 18, 2012.
[link removed]



Order printed copies of
Life Can Be Beautiful - Go Vegan
UPC Merchandise:
[link removed]



KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a
nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment
of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Inducted into
the National Animal Rights Hall of Fame for Outstanding Contributions to Animal
Liberation, Karen is the author of numerous books, essays, articles and
campaigns. Her latest book is For the Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation:
Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domesticated Fowl (Lantern Books, 2019).



--
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes
the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
Don't just switch from beef to chicken. Go Vegan.
[link removed] [link removed]
[link removed]

View this article online
[link removed]

Forward email
[link removed]





This email was sent to [email protected] by [email protected].

Update Profile/Email Address
[link removed]


Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM)
[link removed]


Privacy Policy:
[link removed]





Online Marketing by
Constant Contact(R)
www.constantcontact.com



United Poultry Concerns | PO Box 150 | Machipongo | VA | 23405