animal rights articles

The witness is a documentary about one man, Eddie Lama, who makes a shift in his own consciousness that turns his life around, and as a result he begins to take action to defend those without a voice. Eddie's work in bringing awareness to the cruelty in the meat and fur industry is inspirational for those who are already fighting for change, and eye-opening for those who didn't know the real story behind animal exploitation.

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Many people talk about working to protect the planet, some recycle, some bring cloth bags to the grocery store, some ride their bike to work and others actually go out and rally to change the laws and regulations which are supposed to keep big industry in check. Of all those people, there are very few who are willing to examine our most significant contribution to the destruction of the planet: meat.

Meat is the single most significant factor contributing to the destruction of the planet, and it is a factor that we control directly as individuals.

Deforestation and habitat Destruction

Meat causes deforestation in and habitat destruction on multiple levels. Clearing trees to create grazing land is the most obvious, but grazing land is only part of the picture. Most domesticated animals raised for slaughter or for their byproducts are fed grains either as a supplement to grazing or as a replacement. Growing these grains takes space, and when there is a forest in the way of growing grains for animals it has always been the forest that looses. Eating organic doesn't change a thing when it comes to deforestation. The forest of the world are being cut down to make room for burgers and hotdogs, organic and free range as they might be.

The equivalent to seven football fields is destroyed every minute!

by Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer
(click here to view pdf of original article)

PASCO, Wash.

It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was “second-legger,” a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour.

The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t.

In our culture we have been inundated with the idea that the only way to stay healthy and strong is by consuming animal products. This simply isn’t true. Westerners in general consume many times over the protein needed by the human body. That protein isn’t stored for later use; it’s wasted. Over consumption of protein is harmful and has been directly linked to increased cancer and heart disease risk, leaching of calcium from the bones, kidney stress, and obesity. Fun stuff.

Speciesism is the final and most deeply accepted form of discrimination in our culture. Speciesism assumes that humanity is set apart from the animal world, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Humans (aka homo sapiens sapiens) are and will always be bound by genetic lineage to squirrels apes and fish.