OMNI VEGETARIAN NEWSLETTER #3, January 8, 2014. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of
Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
Newsletters
Index:
See: Animal Cruelty, Animal Rights, Compassion/Empathy,
MY NEW EMAIL ADDRESS
(479) 442-4600
2582 Jimmie Ave.
Fayetteville , AR
72703
VP, like all of OMNI’s activities, is a member-run group. If you would like to compile these
Newsletters, take my place, start next month!
And the newsletter is open to all opinions. Send yours to me for the next newsletter.
JANUARY POTLUCK
Wednesday, January 8, 6:30p.m.
OMNI, 3274 Lee Ave.
Program. . . .
Contents #1 Nov. 12, 2013
Vegetarian Organizations, Magazines, Books,
Films:
Vegetarian Voice
Vegetarian Times
Vegetarian Living
VegNews (Vegan)
Organizations, Magazines, Books,
Films for Preservation of Animals
PETA’s Animal Times
Foundations
of Vegetarianism
Why
People Become Vegetarians
Nutrition,
Health
Moss, Addictive
Junk Food
Nutrition
and Ethics
Google Search, Food, Inc.
Food and
Climate Change
Google Search
Meat vs. Climate
Peace
Tuttle, World
Peace Diet, Food, Compassion, Interconnectedness, Harmony
History:
Recipes from Famous People
OMNI’s
Library
Contents #2
Declaration for Consideration
Nutrition
Eliz.
Renter, Poisons in Meat
Get the
Antibiotics Out of Turkeys
Ethics
Schweitzer,
Reverence for Life
Susie
Hoeller, Ethical Food
Climate Change and Food
Google Search
Contents #3
Dick, Declaration
of Support, See Newsletter #2
Animals
and Vegetarianism
Cahill,
Cruelty and Kindness
From Rolling Stone, Factory Farms
Google
Search: Cruelty to Animals
Humane
Society of the US
SPCA
Nutrition
and Pleasure
Last
month we held our first and very tentative discussion of the relation between
VP and the values of vegetarianism. Here
is what I sent you in Newsletter #2.
DECLARATION FOR
DISCUSSION
Since OMNI has always affirmed the interconnectedness of life,
the linkage of peace, justice, ecology, good health for all people, empathy
with all animals, and the protection of the environment, and since
Vegetarianism empowers us to deal with the world’s
environmental, health, and humane problems, the Vegetarian
Potluck declares its support for an active role in promoting the values of
vegetarianism:
A vegetarian diet is more nutritious and safer than that of
meat.
Vegetarianism is more ethical than a meat diet, by avoiding the
cruelty and killing of animals. As
Albert Schweizer wrote: “Until he extends the
circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
Meat eating contributes to the destruction of the air, water,
and land, and to the production of C02, warming, and climate change much more
than does a vegetable diet.
The initial question
for each of us to ask is: Do I believe
in these values? And then: Will these
values contribute to a better world?
And: Do I wish to see more
people embrace these values? And: If we
do can we be effective? Finally: Should OMNI’s VP promote the values, and to
what extent, and in what ways?
Each one of these
questions is complicated, so I’ll tackle only two of them right now: Can we be effective if we advocate the values
of vegetarianism? Is meat-eating
harmful to animals, humans, and the planet?
Recently in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 9(9-27-13) Dana Kelley
explained how drunk driving was dramatically reduced in the US
Mothers Against Drunk
Drivers was founded by Candy Lightner in 1980 after her 13-year old daughter
was killed by a repeat DWI offender. The
target of MADD was not alcohol but the behavioral problem of drinking too much
and driving. Her supporters became MADD,
for they shared her determination to stop drunk driving and save people’s
lives. Within 15 years drunken driving
had become socially stigmatized and criminally punitive, and drunk-driving
rates and deaths had plummeted by half.
The key to MADD’s
success was their conviction and concentration.
They would accomplish nothing if they simply met occasionally to enjoy
each other’s company. No. Drunken driving was harmful, wrong, criminal,
and it could be reduced if they put their minds to it.
Of course,
alcohol-related deaths by traffic accidents continue, but the epidemic’s growth
was stopped and reversed. (Kelley
continues by applying the example of MADD to the problem of gun abuse. We can reduce gun killings.)
And their example
applies to OMNI’s Potluck as well, if, that is, we believe in the values of
vegetarianism and that those values—nutritional, ethical, and climatological--
resist and can reverse the drunk driving of meat-eating.
Each person’s
convictions are their private matter, but considerable evidence shows that
vegetarianism is more healthy, ethical, and environmentally friendly than
meat. Newsletter #1 included two essays
on the poisons in meat, an essay and book on the ethics of eating vegetables
instead of meat, and several references to writings about the role of meat in
the warming of the atmosphere.
Newsletter #2 covered the same ground (and more).
The evidence of the
harms of meat seems persuasive, but the debate over refusing meat is not over
obviously (see below). The evidence of
successful public relations campaigns is powerful, but of course failures have
occurred. We can make a difference as a
group, if we decide to. Several
considerations remain, but let’s pause to be sure we have sifted the present
questions sufficiently. –Dick
Vegetarian
Times: Food, Pleasure,
Nutrition
The entire Jan.-Feb. 2014 issue is devoted
to this one field of interest, almost excluding ethical and climate change
considerations. With occasional
exceptions, the magazine seems to offer a vegetarian (some vegan) gourmet/nutritional magazine. But of course it excludes meat also, which
makes an indirect statement regarding other subjects.
And gourmet is a problem at least for
me. The recipe for Baked Chips sounds
delicious and easy, but what is truffle oil?
And the Greek salad calls for Mexican oregano, Fuyu persimmons,
radicchio, and lacinato kale, among other ingredients. I have all the ingredients for tomato soup
recipe, but the author suggests I use mini-cutters to cut sliced bread into
shapes such as stars, footballs, snowflkes!
--Dick
HISTORY:
EARLY VEGETARIANISM
SHELLEY, “ON VEGETARIANISM”
There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of
vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the
experiment has been fairly tried.
Percy Bysshe Shelley from Wikipedia on Shelley’s nutritional and ethical
preference for vegetables.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) aligned most of his views
on vegetarianism with those of Ritson. Like Ritson, Shelley believed that a
meatless diet was the best mode of consumption for a healthy, disease-free
life. He believed that human disease could be alleviated by a simple reversion
back to a plant-based diet.[16] The
eating of meat, to Shelley, was a practice that polluted the body with
syphilis, among other unpleasant ailments. In A Vindication
of Natural Diet he
wrote, "Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am
persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our
unnatural habits,"[17] these
unnatural habits being the consumption of meat. He compared the negative
effects of a meat-based diet to alcoholism, asking, "How many thousands
have become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and
abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented liquors?".[18] He
goes on to suggest that, a human of gentle disposition towards animals,
"rising from a meal of roots," will be a healthy man whose only
threat of death will be that of his own natural, old age.[19]
GOOGLE SEARCH, PERCY
BYSSHE SHELLEY VEGETARIANISM, Jan. 6, 2014
1.
Vegetarianism and Romanticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to Percy Bysshe Shelley - [edit]. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) aligned most
of his views on vegetarianism with those of Ritson.
2.
Shelley - the first celebrity vegan - Vegsource.com
Jan 5, 2011 - Percy Bysshe Shelley, known as Bysshe to his
friends, was the rock star of his day - glamorous, controversial, fought over
by teenage girls, ...
3.
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Essay on Vegetarianism... - Taroscopes
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). The
language spoken, however, by the mythology of nearly all religions seems to
prove that at some distant period man ...
4.
History
of Vegetarianism - Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Jan 23, 2012 - A large collection of
articles about the development of vegetarianism around the world for
thousands of years.
5.
Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley and the Making of ... -
Academia.edu
Percy Shelley's copy of Joseph Ritson's
groundbreaking book on vegetarianism reveals a lot about his
politics and philosophy.
NEW BOOK BY THOMAS CAHILL, HERETICS
AND HEROES
Bill Moyers, on PBS Moyers & Co., Dec. 29, 2013, interviewed Cahill, who proposed the dichotomy
of kindness and cruelty as the fundamental ethical poles. Which life should we choose, was the
question.
ETHICS OF VEGETARIANISM
“The fundamental idea of good, therefore, is that it consists in
preserving life, in favouring it and wishing to raise it to its highest point;
and evil consists in the destruction of life, in the injury of life, or in the
frustration of its development.” Albert
Schweitzer, “The Problem of Ethics in the Evolution of Human Thought.”
FACTORY FARMS OR MORE HUMANE MEAT PRODUCTION OR NO MEAT?
The Stomach-Churning
Reason Why Meat Is So Cheap
By
Lindsay Abrams, Salon
14
December 13
Rolling Stone lifts the veil on animal abuse at factory
farms
olling Stone just posted an in-depth,
Snowfall-esque feature on the
litany of abuses carried out by Big Meat. It covers, in horrific detail, the
extent to which meat and dairy producers will go - and the extent to which the
government will overlook or even approve of their behavior - in order to raise
the estimated 9 billion broiler chickens, 113 million pigs, 33 million cows and
250 million turkeys consumed each year in the U.S.
It includes
sound effects, pop-up factoids and some truly brutal descriptions of conditions
on factory farms, like the following:
You're a typical milk cow in America
That account of
the typical doesn't include the instances of extraordinary abuse (one activist:
"I had a job at a barn with this sick-fuck boss who was proud of the stuff
he did to cows. One day, we're doing repairs on a gate in the barn and a couple
of cows stroll over to watch us work. Well, one grazes him with her snout, just
to be playful, and he smashes her in the face with his wrench. I also got him
bragging about past assaults, like tying a cow to a fence and taking turns
beating her, getting the other guys to work her over.") For the very
not-faint-of-heart, there are videos, too.
The article
fingers companies like Tyson and Perdue for transforming meat production into a
tightly controlled, top-down system, under which they "began treating
animals as production units, not living, feeling creatures with basic
rights." And it's not enough that laws and USDA regulators aren't
protecting these abusive and unsafe practices from happening, it continues.
A new spate of lobbyist-driven
"ag-gag" legislation is keeping activists from
stepping in and doing the government's job for them. Various state laws make it
illegal, for example, to film a farm from a public road, or to hold on to
evidence for longer than 48 hours before presenting it to the police.
After a whole
lot of bleakness, the article ends with a vision of humane slaughter, imagining
a future when we can subsist on a more natural and regional food system.
Everything that comes before it presents a solid case for us making the
necessary sacrifices to get to that point - as one activist told Rolling Stone: "Wherever you stand on the issue of
eating animals, I think we agree that making their
lives hell is too high a price for cheap food." (from
David D)
ETHICS
OF EATING MEAT, GOOGLE SEARCH, JANUARY 6, 2014
1.
Ethics of eating meat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In many societies, controversy and
debate have arisen over the ethics of eatinganimals. Two of the main ethical objections have been to
(1) the unnecessary ...Ethical views on
eating meat - Treatment of
animals - Animal
consciousness
2.
The Winner of Our Contest on the Ethics of Eating Meat - NYTimes ...www.nytimes.com/.../the-winner-of-our-contest-on-the-ethics-of-eating-...
May 3, 2012 - Is it ethical to eat meat? That short question,
posed in these pages a few weeks ago, inspired a debate heated enough to roast
a fatted calf (or a ...
3.
Why It's Ethical to Eat Meat | Michael Ruhlman
May 29, 2012 - It's no secret that I am
a vigorous & unapologetic carnivore. I believe: to eat humanely raised &
slaughtered animals is not only ethical, it's ...
4.
Why Vegetarians Are Eating Meat | Food & Wine
Yes, my husband has started eating meat again after a seven-year
hiatus as anethically motivated and health-conscious
vegetarian. About a year ago, we ...
5.
BBC - Ethics - Animal ethics: Eating animals
Is it wrong in principle to raise and
kill animals so that human beings can eat meat and fish? Does it stop
being wrong if the processes involved are carried out ...
6.
Bulletproof Editorial for the New York Times: Why Eating Meat is ...
Several weeks ago the New York Times
gave an invitation to its readers: “Tell us why it is ethical to eat meat.” The winner, Jay Bost,
a vegetarian returned to ...
7.
Why It's Unethical To Eat Animals - Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary
In any discussion concerning the ethics of eating animals, it's important
to begin ...insist that meat-eating is “natural”—and
therefore morally neutral— because ...
8.
Paul Schwennesen: Ethics of Eating Meat - Huffington Post
May 14, 2012 - Asking whether eating meat is "ethical" is like asking
whether having sex is ethical. Biological imperatives
do not pander to such arbitrary ...
9.
How To Be An Ethical Carnivore - io9
Sep 23, 2013 - Not everybody can or
wants to become a vegetarian. But for those of us who insist on eating meat, that doesn't mean we
have to be complete ...
10.
The Ethics of Eating Meat - The Weston A. Price Foundation
Jun 30, 2002 - A philosophical look at meat eating, including effects on
environment, factory farming, productivity, the moral imperative, science,
theology, and ...
Searches related to eTHICS of eating meat
FACTORY
FARMING, CRUELTY TO FARM ANIMALS GOOGLE SEARCH, PAGE ONE, JANUARY 1, 2014
1.
Factory Farming: Cruelty to Animals | Animals Used for Food | The ...
Your
source for great-tasting vegan and vegetarian recipes, information on all
aspects of vegan and vegetarian living, news about PETA's campaigns to
stop ...
2.
Farm Animal Cruelty | ASPCA
At
every step of their lives, all animals should be treated with compassion and
protected from suffering. Sadly, billions of farm animals lack even the most
basic ...
3.
Undercover Investigations of Factory Farms and Slaughterhouses
DiGiorno
quickly cut ties with the dairy factory farm, while MFA and a state
lawmaker ...Less than a year after an MFA
investigation led to criminal animal cruelty ...
4.
Cruel Confinement of Farm Animals : The Humane Society of the ...www.humanesociety.org/issues/confinement_farm/
Factory farms cram egg-laying hens
into cages so tiny they can't even spread their wings. Breeding pigs and veal
calves are stuffed into cramped individual ...
5.
Protect Farm Animals : The Humane Society of the United States
This
video, narrated by James
Cromwell, reveals the cruelty animals suffer on factoryfarms, and tells you what you
can do to help. Working to reduce the ...
6.
Last Chance for Animals - Factory Farming
97%
of the 10 billion animals tortured and killed each year are farm animals ... The consequences of this
agribusiness are institutionalized animal cruelty, ...Factory Farming | Farm Sanctuary
Far
from the idyllic, spacious pastures that are shown in advertisements for meat,
milk, and eggs, factory farms typically consist of
large numbers of animals ...
7.
Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-crime.html
Apr
6, 2013 - On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn
the ankles of Tennessee ... in Wyoming
8.
Raw.info: Animal cruelty >> A raw truth of factory farming
Factory farming prioritises maximum
production above all else, ignoring the welfare ofanimals.
9.
Cruelty to farm
animals demands
exposure - The Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/.../cruelty-to-farm-animals.../9a972c8e-a6bf-11e...
Apr
26, 2013 - That, though, has helped make them
effective tools in the fight against illegal and cruel treatment of farm animals. It's alarming that a
number of ...News for cruelty to farm
animals (blog) - 5 days ago
This year, 15 bills in 11 states
attempted to make undercover videos on farms illegal. Not a single
one passed. Activists say a broad-based ...
SKNVibes.com - 1
day ago
·
ABOUT
US
Animal
cruelty can be either deliberate abuse or simply the failure to take care of an
animal. Either way, and whether the animal is a pet, a farm animal, or
wildlife, the victim can suffer terribly. Don’t despair, though—anyone can take
steps against cruelty.
People with emotional problems may beat,
shoot, or stab animals or set them on fire. Those who abuse animals are very
likely to be violent to other people—even their own family—too.
Neglect is not giving an animal the right
food, water, shelter or vet care. Because their misery goes on for so long,
animals who die of neglect can suffer just as much as animals who are harmed on
purpose.
All U.S.
Take Action Against
Animal Cruelty
If you think an animal is being abused, either
through violence or through cruel neglect, you can take action to help!
·
Adopt
We fight for animals. Will you join the
fight?
Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed
new guidelines designed to curb the rampant over- and misuse of antibiotics on
factory farms. Eighty percent of all antibiotics bought in the United States
Read More »Connect with Us
END VEGETARIANISM NEWSLETTER #3
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