| Pain on Your Plate |
| Part V -- The Immorality of Meat-Eating |
So far we've seen that eating animals makes several contributions to our lives on this planet:
- It contributes to our chances of getting heart disease and cancer.
- It contributes to the greenhouse effect and the destruction of the forests.
- It contributes to the erosion of our topsoil and the depletion of our water.
- It contributes to the starvation of millions of people who could otherwise be fed on land that is used to raise animals.
Any one of these facts would be reason enough to adopt a vegan diet.
But there is another reason: one which takes precedence and is fully sufficient:
It is immoral for vegetarian animals to kill for food.
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Recognizing these facts, several people recently made their feelings known outside a company which
boasts about the staggering number of pieces of corpses it serves up to the public.
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Protester: We're out here trying to bring attention to the use of factory farming in this country.
Many people are eating meat and they have no idea about how cruel it is to the animals,
and also the impact to the environment from factory farming, and the dangers to human health from meat eating.
Over 90% of all strokes and heart-attacks can be averted by not eating meat or other animal products.
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Protester: Animal products are totally unnecessary to your diet, and they cause untold amounts of animal suffering.
A lot of people don't know the extreme confinement conditions that animals are raised in to make hamburgers for
McDonalds and other corporations that serve meat.
And we really just want to wake up the public and let them know what's going on and how these animals are being raised.
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Passer-by: Eating meat? That's a good question... I eat meat.
I'm trying not to eat too much of it now because of cholesterol and different things like that.
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Passer-by: It has to be stopped. I mean you can't just be cruel to animals. I mean they are living things
that, you know, have a right to live in this world.
Interviewer: Are you a meat-eater?
Passer-by: No, I don't eat meat. On rare ocassions, I guess, you know -- holidays -- but not on a regular basis.
It's not good for you.
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Interviewer: What do you think of the protest?
Passer-by: Well, I'm a vegetarian myself -- or I'm trying to stay with it. You know you can't break it off
all at once sometimes; it's a gradual thing to work into. But no; I'm for it 100%.
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Passer-by: I hate to see people kill these animals.
It's very cruel that people go out and kill them for meat and -- I think it's real cruel.
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Protester: I think it's good that the meat industry is finally getting targeted.
97% of the animal abuse in this country is directly related to the meat industry.
And I think it's really funny that people think that farm animals -- which are so removed from the city
and people's every-day lives -- have somehow an idylic life: that they're out there on the farm doing
what their species is naturally intended to do. When the fact of the matter is: confinement farming has
taken over the industry. And for the most part animals are raised totally indoors and it's very
unnatural for them. Pigs, chickens, veal calves, dairy: all raised totally indoors.
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