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The Complete Guidefor New and Aspiring VegansThe Complete Guidefor New and Aspiring Vegans
 
Welcome to Vegan Basics, a one-stop resource for thoseinterested in exploring alternatives to food and otherproducts made from animals. Because you are reading thisguide, you may already be taking your first steps towardchoosing veganism; or maybe you’re just thinking about it.Either way, good for you! The public has the perception thateliminating the consumption of all animal products can beunhealthy or at least very difficult, but this is simply nottrue. As you’ll find out with this guide, veganism is thehealthy choice for you, the planet, and animals. With somany animal-free options readily available, going vegan iseasier today than ever before!
Veganism is...
good for you
Research on vegetarians (including vegans) shows them tohave lower rates of heart disease, obesity, high bloodpressure, rheumatoid arthritis, and possibly some cancers. Italso reduces the chance of food poisoning. And of courseyou avoid all the hormones and antibiotics that are pumpedthrough animals raised for food.
good for the animals
If you’re already a vegetarian you’ve undoubtedly helpedreduce animal suffering, but the dairy and egg industries areno picnics for the animals involved.Cows must be repeatedly impregnatedfor the production of milk, and theiroffspring sent straight to theslaughterhouse or reared for veal, milk, orsold for their flesh. Both male and femalecalves are kept in confinement and areunable to walk. The male, if being raised forveal, will be slaughtered after only 4 months, whilethe female calves will be kept in a similar settinguntil they are able to produce milk. Then they areturned into milking machines. Cows’ udders areoften infected and swollen from the abuse of growthhormones and multiple milkings every day. Dairy cowsare killed at about five years of age and sold for ‘lowgrade’ products such as burgers, sausages and other3
 
suffocate to death or they aredisemboweled with a gutting knife. Inaddition to this, countless other seacreatures who are not the targets arecaught in fishing nets.
good for the environment
Vast expanses of wilderness areconverted to pastureland, resulting in aloss of habitat for countless species.Commercial fishing of the oceans hasdecimated the aquatic environment.Shrimp nets, which are dragged through thewater, catch everything in their path – thousandsof sea turtles are killed this way every year. A branch ofthe USDA kills wildlife, such as coyotes and bobcats, toprotect farmers’ livestock.The factory farming industry is creating environmentalproblems of its own. According to the EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA), dairy farms have created anenvironmental crisis in California, the number one dairyproducing state. In fact, California alone produces anastounding 30 million tons of manure each year. EPA statesthat a single cow produces approximately 120 pounds ofwet manure per day. Estimates equate the waste producedper day by one dairy cow to that of 20-40 humans per day.Manure lagoons designed to contain livestock waste canleak or spill over into waterways, contaminating ourdrinking water. Pig farms with 100,000 animals produce asmuch waste as a city of a quarter-million people; but the pigfarms have no wastewater treatment system. Pig wasteoften spills into nearby rivers, sometimes killing manythousands of fish.
good for the planet’s people
Every day, 840 million people around the world, including200 million children, go hungry. But much of the world’sgrain harvest, 40%, is used to feed livestock, not people. U.S.livestock alone consumes about one-third of the world’s totalgrain harvest, as well as more than 70% of the grain grownin the United States. In fact, the more a cow is milked, theprocessed foods. Their natural life span would be at leasttwenty years.And as for typical (battery cage) egg production, since onlythe females lay eggs, 200 million day-old male chicks arekilled every year, many suffocated in garbage bags. Theindustry average is less than one-half square foot of spaceper bird. They have the tips of their beaks cut off toprevent feather pulling caused by the intensiveconfinement. These poor animals live with barely enoughroom to move for up to two years until their eggproduction goes down. Then they are either killed or forcedinto molting. To induce a molt, egg producers take awayfood and water from the birds, which then forces them intoanother egg laying cycle.Life for pigs on factory farms is dreadful too! Over 80% ofpigs who are raised for food (like sausages, hot dogs, baconand ham) live their lives in sheds thick with theoverwhelming smell of urine and feces. A mother pig (sow)is forced to give birth in a tiny crate where she cannot walkor even turn around. This is also where she will spend herpregnancy. She moves between these two small crates forfour to five years until she is killed. The piglets spend theirlives in squalid conditions until at six months they areshackled by one leg and their throats slit.Chickens and turkeys raised for meat are crammed by thethousands in windowless sheds. Breeding has caused themto grow at an incredible pace, one that their bodies have ahard time catching up to. Turkeys have the tips of theirbeaks and some toes cut off. Chickens have been known tobe boiled alive during the slaughter process.And the label ‘free range’ does not mean that they arecruelty-free; in fact, free range hens live in very crowdedconditions, have the tips of their beaks cut off, and are notslaughtered in any ‘humane’ fashion.Billions of sea animals are caught each year. Those fish whoare still alive by the time they make it to the decks of fishingboats have one of two fates. Either they are allowed to54
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Silent One of the east

aww can you give the OK to download this please!!! {puppy eyes} i really do look forward to reading it even more.. thanks

reply12 / 21 / 2009
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