It’s true that one person can make a difference. The average vegetarian saves the lives of approximately 95 animals each year, which adds up to thousands during a lifetime. Every time we eat, we are making a powerful choice that has profound consequences on the lives of ourselves and of animals. At each meal, we make a choice between supporting cruelty or living compassionately.
Earthlings (the movie): “A documentary film about humankind’s complete economic dependence on animals raised for pets, food, clothing, entertainment and scientific research. Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, EARTHLINGS chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. Powerful, informative, controversial and thought-provoking, EARTHLINGS is by far the most comprehensive documentary ever produced on the correlation between nature, animals and human economic interests.” (narrated by Joaquin Phoenix)
Factory Farming (Food)
Meet Your Meat: “Meet Your Meat is a look behind the closed doors of today’s giant meat, egg and dairy product industries, revealing the shocking truth about the abuse of animals for food.” (narrated by Alec Baldwin)
Milk does NOT do a body (any body) any good: Despite the common belief that drinking milk or eating eggs does not kill animals, commercially-raised dairy cows and egg-laying chickens, whether factory-farmed or “free range”, are slaughtered when their production rates decline. As with any mammal, cows produce milk only when pregnant and stop after their calves have been weaned. When a dairy cow delivers a female calf, the calf becomes a dairy cow herself, born to live in the same conditions as her mother. But when a dairy cow delivers a male calf, the calf is sold to a veal farm within days of birth. He is tethered to a stall, deprived of food and exercise, and soon slaughtered for meat. Because it is unprofitable to keep cows alive once their milk production declines, dairy cows are usually slaughtered at 5 years of age. Thus, a cow’s normal lifespan of 25 years is cut 20 years short just to cut costs and maximize production.
Clothing
Leather may be made from cows, pigs, goats, and sheep; exotic animals like alligators, ostriches, and kangaroos; and even dogs and cats, who are slaughtered for their meat and skins in China, which exports their skins around the world. Since leather is normally not labeled, you never really know where (or whom) it came from.
Most of the millions of animals slaughtered for their skin endure the horrors of factory farming before being shipped to slaughter, where many are skinned alive. Buying leather directly contributes to factory farms and slaughterhouses since skin is the most economically important byproduct of the meat-packing industry. Leather is also no friend of the environment since it shares all the environmental destruction of the meat industry, in addition to the toxins used in tanning.
With every pair of leather shoes that you buy, you sentence an animal to a lifetime of suffering. Instead, you can choose from hundreds of styles of nonleather shoes, clothing, belts, bags, and wallets. Fashion should be fun, not fatal! Check out our Shoes and Shopping sections on the Links page to find cruelty-free fashions!
Just try and tell me pleather isn’t sexy: http://www.peta.org/feat_jenna_pleather2.asp
Or that you would rather see Eva Mendes in fur over being naked..right… http://www.furisdead.com/feat_eva_mendes.asp
Zoos and the Entertainment industry
Animals don’t want to ride bicycles, stand on their heads, balance on balls, or jump through rings of fire. Sadly, they have no choice. Trainers use abusive tools, like whips and electric prods, and force them to perform. We all know where whips and chains belong, and it’s not in the circus or zoos…
Masquerading as conservation, education, or rescue facilities, roadside and traveling zoos are among the worst abusers of captive wildlife and fuel the multibillion-dollar-a-year trade in exotic, rare, and endangered species. Animals are kept in grotesquely inadequate conditions and suffer myriad problems, such as neglect, abuse, malnutrition, incompatible social groupings, unsuitable climate, and insufficient veterinary care. With little opportunity for mental stimulation or physical exercise, animals often become despondent and develop abnormal and self-destructive behaviors (which include pacing, rocking, swaying, bar-biting, pulling out hair and feathers, and biting themselves).
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