Why Am I Vegan?

Before I start ranting about my personal thoughts on the above title, I would like to clarify two things about veganism.

First, veganism is not about health. A man can eat veggie burgers, pizzas, cakes, pastries, noodles & portions of pasta, or drink sodas & concentrated juices every day of his life and still be a vegan but definitely not a healthy vegan. This is also the main reason why there are vegans who are fat, obese, or overweight because Veganism is not about health.

Second, veganism is not about NOT eating meat. A vegan can eat meat but a meat of an animal that has lived a life of health & freedom and died a natural death. 

Someone said to me that the dead should be buried. No! Because there are other animals that would gladly have the dead as food. There are scavengers around, and even humans were once in such a situation. To bury, burn the dead or not has nothing to do with veganism but of a personal decision depending on one's cultural upbringing. I myself would allow my body, when dead, to be fed to the vultures. 

So is there such thing as ethical carnivore? Yes! They are vegans who fully understood the ethics and philosophy of veganism and accepted that contrary to what most people believe, veganism is a complex philosophy.

It is so complex that many don't even get it!

So, why am I vegan?

Mahatma Gandhi's famous quote says "The life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being". And I believe it applies to all beings, to all creatures that roam this planet.

I desire to live the life I was given and I am convinced that these animals we murder for food, clothing, or experiments desire the same. They surely wish to live a life that is free from any kinds of threats whether it is injury, torture, abuse, or death.

I have learned to value the lives of these animals NOT as food but as individuals who can feel pain, sorrow, happiness, or embarrassment. They sulk when their freedom is deprived yet they show affection when shown one. They recognize you as another animal that is kind and compassionate but would avoid you when you become a threat to them.

I realized that they too have families and friends whom they protect, play with, and care for. It has not passed my observation that they cry and mourn a loss of a loved one. They call and look for a missing child.

And if given the opportunity, they can become the kind of friends you never had.

Yes, I learned to see and accept that they are no different than me. These animals we consider food are amazing creatures who deserve nothing else but love and affection. They, too, want to live in health and freedom!

These realizations brought me to investigate further to fully understand why you should become vegan, too! Killing or murdering innocent individuals is simply wrong. And I know that you know it, after all, a murder of the innocent can never be justified.  You just need to acknowledge it and extend its meaning towards these remarkable non-human animals.

So let's talk about....

Meat! Whether it's white or red, it's all the same. Meat means murder! There is no other way! 

Why murder? Because when you decide to have meat on your plate 

you become a willing participant in murdering the innocents. You have become the means of taking innocent lives -the lives of sentient animals, that, just like you and I, desire to live and express their natural behavior. You also acknowledge that the lives of others, especially the life of pigs, chickens, cows, sheep, goats, turkeys, or fishes have no value to you other than food or clothing. You become responsible for a crime that these innocent beings pay a priceless price -their life!

Milk! Cow's milk is for calves, human mother's milk is for babies. Cow's milk, or any other animal milk, is never for human babies and definitely not for adults. It's outrageous and shameful! 

When you drink dairy milk and/or eat any products of or with milk,

you become the means for murdering the newborn calves and sending the mother cows to a lifetime of misery, early and untimely death. 
Why? Because calves, right after they were born, are separated from their mothers for milk production, for human milk consumption. These calves, who have not tasted their mothers' milk, which is rightfully for them, are murdered for veal or just left to die.

Each mother cow, on the other hand, suffers from a loss of a child (If you haven't seen a video of how a mother cow would run after her baby, please do!). 
All mother cows suffer from over-milking, from repeated artificial insemination so she keeps getting pregnant for more milk. And when the times comes that these mother cows' milk production decreases, they too, are butchered for your meat.
These practices are horrendous. The more you see and read about them the more it becomes clearer which species is savage, cruel, and evil.

Eggs! When you consume eggs you must be so impatient you cannot wait for these eggs to hatch, the chicks to grow, the adults to live a full life and die a natural death before you can have their meat. When you do this, you just willingly send hens into 2 weeks of starvation so that they would lay more eggs than usual. You allow them to be confined in a cage you yourself would never want to be in. You just let the male chicks macerated or ground alive or suffocated to death for they have no future use to the egg industries.

These exploitation and murder are happening every second of the day...all for human consumption. A kind of food that humans don't need to survive nor become healthy. In fact, the products of these exploitations are the unhealthiest diet you could ever provide for yourself or for your family.

So why am I vegan?

~Because these animals are now my friends and families that I would care for and protect to the best of my capabilities.
~Because they have the rights to inhabit and share this only home we have free from harm. Earth is their home, too, you know, and I acknowledge that with high respect!
~Because I finally disposed of, forever, the "selective compassion" that I learned at a young age. 

~Because I chose to live a life of peace, compassion, kindness, love, and affection that includes every living creature on this planet.
~Because I realized that the kindness, compassion, peace, or love that people talk about is meaningless until they realize that these words are meant for non-human animals, too.

~Because I don't want to be part of such atrocities anymore. I don't need to murder or be the means of their murder for my food, my clothing, my entertainment, my well-being.

And I don't really need their meat or their milk or their eggs to survive and be healthy. You don't need them, too! 

The picture below displays just a portion of what humans need to survive!

I am vegan because it's the least thing I can do for the animals.

How about you? Given the ethical and health aspects of eating meat and dairy products, what would make you become vegan?