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Famous Quotes for New Dawn MT |
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Religous and Ethical Quotes - Enviromental Quotes - Medical Quotes And God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be meat" (Genesis 1:29) - "(There are no hunters, only gatherers in Eden) Let us return to the Paradise (Eden) that was meant to be. Back to a more loving relationship with this gift of creation. The choice people make about food on their plate and what they wear can bring one closer to the original intention or further away from the gift of creation and increase distance from what God hoped for." Tom Regan, author Empty Cages. Published 2004 - Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for all life is not a true religion or philosophy. Albert Schweitzer - A man can live and 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. And to act so is immoral. Leo Tolstoy - I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement to leave off eating animals. Henry David Thoreau - "If you have humans who shall exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you shall have humans who will deal likewise with their fellow humans"... Saint Francis of Assisi - We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for? George Bernard Shaw, Living Graves, published 1951 - "Kindness and compassion towards all beings/species is a mark of civilized society. Only when we have come non-violent towards man and animals will we have learned to live well ourselves"... Cesar Chavez- United Farm Workers - "Flesh eating is unprovoked murder"...Benjamin Franklin - "They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."... Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Letter Writer -- In order to satisfy one human stomach, so many lives are taken away. We must promote vegetarianism. It is extremely important. Dalai Lama
YOUNGSTERS PART WITH ANIMALS THEY RAISED Posted: 13 Aug 2009 08:58 AM PDT  A few weeks ago, a 5-mos old lamb arrived at another sanctuary straight from a FFA program. She looked, well, like a show sheep - all clean and shiny, so very unlike the rough and tumble animals at the sanctuary (who are clean, in their own ways, but not "bleach clean"). Within a few days, Alice (formerly Lambie) transformed into a beautifully dirty, perfectly happy sheep's sheep. She frolicks with the other sheep, decides when and where she wants to eat, and nestles in a bed of straw instead of a concrete floor. Her previous caregiver recently visited and was very happy and pleasantly surprised to see Alice look and act like a sheep. This time of year is fair time and with fair time, sheep like Alice generally end up at auction. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently did an article called "Youngsters part with animals they raised". Reading the article is a lesson on confusion and out-of-this-world weirdness. While most people still refer to nonhuman animals as "its", you would be hard-pressed to find a student in the article who called the animal in their care an "it". Even the article's author seems forced to switch from the rather impersonal "it" pronoun to the more intimate "she/he" format. These kids have taken the first step in recognizing the inherent worth in other animals - they are not objects, they are "she/he", animals with personality and interests. Which makes what they do to these animals all the more baffling. So how do these kids rationalize away their cognitive dissonance? Here are some quotes: "You have to remember it's a business" "I've spent a lot of time with Hobby, but I know that I can't get too attached." "I think everyone out here gets attached to their animal, but this also is about teaching us how to make good decisions." There you have it. The selling of life is a business, you can get attached or, if you do get attached, just remember it's about making good decisions. Seriously? Surely students can learn to make good decisions without betraying, according to what one student called her goat, a "friend"? Most students do not participate in FFA/4-H programs and many somehow manage to make good decisions now and later in life. And FFA/4-H students make poor business decisions now and in the future. FFA/4-H cannot be the model to ensure future good decision makers, especially when the end decision involves killing your "friend". Feel free to read the article and then make a comment. Be polite and all, but do point out the oddness of referring to animals as "friends" and then sending them to slaughter, the strangeness of "syndicates" who spend inordinate amounts of money to buy one animal, all the incongruities that FFA/4-H is preaching to our nation's children. The Inquirer also accepts letters to the editor: inquirer.letters@phillynews.com; keep your comments brief and respectful More plant species in the U.S. have been eliminated or threatened by livestock grazing than by any other cause, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). George Wuerthner - About 2,000 pounds of grains must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain eaten directly will support a person for a year. Thus a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many people as it will if it is eaten indirectly by humans in the form of livestock products. M.E. Ensiminger, Ph.D. - In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people. Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines - The costs of mass producing cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep and fish to feed our growing population...include hugely inefficient use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution from livestock feces...and spreading destruction of the forests on which much of our planet's life depends. Time Magazine, 11/8/99 - Our Earth-How every bite affects mother nature Becoming vegetarian is one of the most important and effective actions you can take to ease the strain on our Earth's limited resources, protect the planet from pollution, prevent global warming, and save countless species from extinction. According to Dr. David Brubaker, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future, "The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet. It pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs. The results are disastrous." As the Sierra Club put it in their 2002 report on animal factories, "environmental violations by the meat industry add up to a rap sheet longer than War and Peace." According to Ayers, "Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle." Ed Ayers, Worldwatch Institute - Wasting resources Feeding large amounts of grain to farmed animals in order to produce a small amount of meat is an inefficient waste of limited resouces. A July 7, 2002 article in Time magazine describes some of the envoronmental problems articulated by Cornell ecologist David Pimentel: "Pimentel argues that vegetarianism is much more environment-friendly than diets revolving around meat. 'In terms of caloric content, the grain consumed by American livestock could feed 800 million people'... Animal protein also demands tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy--eight times as much for a comparable amount of plant protein. Put another way, says Pimentel, the average omnivore diet burns the equivalent of a gallon of gas per day--twice what it takes to produce a vegan diet." - An "Inconvenient Truth" Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Livestock a major threat to environment-Remedies urgently needed According to reports published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent-18 percent- than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gasses. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times a warming aas CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes signifigantly to acid rain. Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification. The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water rersources, contributing among other things sto water pollution, euthrophication, and degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed. Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems. Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's persence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock the identified culprit. How good it is to be well-fed, healthy, and kind all at the same time. Henry J. Heimlich - Drinking cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children: it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population and the cause of multiple forms of allergies as well. Dr. Frank Oski, former Director of the Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Pediatrics. - I think the evidence is pretty clear. If you look at various characteristics of carnivores versus herbivores, it doesn’t take a genius to see where humans line up. William C. Roberts, editor in Chief, American Journal of Cardiology [Statement in support of his view that humans are not physiologically designed to eat meat.]
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