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Live longer, live better, go
vegetarian If you feel you want to help animals, the simplest, quickest and most effective thing to do is to stop eating them. It is particularly important to stop eating dairy products (i.e. veganism) as these involve gross abuse of cows, serious environmental damage and are very bad for human health. Not only will you save the animals you might have eaten but you will influence many other people by your example of concern and compassion. For more about food animals see: Food and Medicine Animals If you want to help the environment, the simplest, quickest and most effective thing to do is to stop eating animals. An omnivorous human requires ten times more land space for food production than does a vegetarian. Therefore by stopping eating meat, you free up land to feed the world's starving and to ease the pressure on rain forests and other valuable resources. If you want to help your health, the simplest, quickest and most effective thing to do is to stop eating animals. A varied vegetarian, and especially a vegan, diet ensures your optimal nutrition - you automatically cut down on cholesterol, fats and carcinogens and increase your intake of fibre and anti-oxidants - thus dramatically reducing your chances of heart disease and cancer - the major killers in the industrialised countries. A word of warning - strictly speaking, tea and buns or coca-cola and french fries are vegan diets; but they are not healthy! A variety of the four new food groups should be eaten - Vegetables, Grains, Fruits and Legumes. This is not difficult or complicated despite what many people will tell you. On the contrary it is fun and the food tastes great! And the conscience is clear! If you want to enjoy your life, the simplest, quickest and most effective thing to do is to become vegetarian. Your meals will become more interesting and varied, your physical and mental feeling of well-being will improve and you will make better friends. We encourage all who are interested in the theme of compassion to join us. We believe that after you have seen what we have seen, you will wish to give up eating meat - but that must be left to you to consider in your own good time. Please also visit
the Food and Medicine Animal Page.
If you don't find what you are looking for on
one page, try the other. Or use the Search button on the Home Page. You gotta see
this: Meatrix ! What is a Vegetarian?
Vegatopia: Promoting
ethical veganism through academic research and teaching. Who benefits from YOU changing
your diet? http://www.tryveg.com
For an Indian
Vegetarian meal
in Wanchai, try
Khana Khazana, the only Indian
Vegetarian Restaurant on Hong Kong Island. For Chinese Vegetarian food
that isn't made to look like meat, try the
small and friendly
Healthy Mess, 51-53 Hennessy Road, Wanchai. On Lamma Island there are the Bookworm Cafe and the
Green Cottage
- both on
Yung Shue Wan's Main Street.
Organic in Hong Kong
Animals Suffer a Perpetual 'Holocaust'
By Stephen R. Dujack, Stephen R.
Dujack is the editor of an environmental magazine in Washington and a
writer.
Isaac Bashevis Singer fled Nazi Europe in 1935 and came to this country. He married my grandmother, who had escaped from Hitler's Germany in 1940. He went on to become a lauded author and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. His family -- those who stayed behind -- were killed in the concentration camps.
My grandfather was also a
principled vegetarian. He was one of the first to equate the wholesale
slaughter of humans to what we perpetrate against animals every day in
slaughterhouses. He realized that the systems of oppression and murder
that had been used in the Holocaust were the systems being used to
confine, oppress and slaughter animals. He attributed to a character in
one of his books something he believed in himself: "In relation to
[animals], all people are Nazis. For [them], it is an eternal Treblinka."
People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals, or PETA, has come under fire from the Anti-Defamation League for
a campaign highlighting my grandfather's ideas as well as writings from
others -- including German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, who was
forced into exile by the Nazis, and Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, who was
imprisoned in Dachau -- that compare the suffering of Holocaust victims
with that of farmed animals.
The ADL claims that PETA is
exploiting the Holocaust for publicity. The campaign has sparked debate
and controversy in the Jewish community, but my grandfather would have
been proud of PETA's bold campaign.
The Holocaust happened because
ordinary people chose to ignore the extraordinary oppression and abuse
being inflicted on innocents by the Nazis. Millions of people went about
their daily lives, knowingly turning a blind eye to the suffering of those
they didn't relate to, those who were deemed "unworthy of life."
My grandfather often said that this
mind-set, whether it manifested itself as the oppression of animals or of
people, exemplified the most hideous and dangerous of all racist
principles. As Adorno said, "Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a
slaughterhouse and thinks: They're only animals."
My grandfather was a gentle man who
always extended a compassionate hand to those who could not speak for
themselves. He had birds as pets, but he always left their cages open
because he couldn't bear to see any being behind bars. They used to fly
out one window and in another of his apartment. When asked why he was a
vegetarian, he'd reply, "I'm a vegetarian for health reasons: the health
of the chickens." Because of him, I am also now a vegetarian.
Because of my family's history and
the gentle guiding force of my grandfather, I learned the sad lessons of
prejudice and ignorance and the ways to fight them. I learned that to
remember the horrors of the past is not enough -- we must apply what we've
learned and say with conviction, "Never again." But when we say it, we
must mean never again shall we allow this to happen to anyone, for any
reason.
Like the victims of the Holocaust,
animals are rounded up, trucked hundreds of miles to the kill floor and
slaughtered. Comparisons to the Holocaust are not only appropriate but
inescapable because, whether we wish to admit it or not, cows, chickens,
pigs and turkeys are as capable of feeling loneliness, fear, pain, joy and
affection as we are. To those who defend the modern-day holocaust on
animals by saying that animals are slaughtered for food and give us
sustenance, I ask: If the victims of the Holocaust had been eaten, would
that have justified the abuse and murder? Did the fact that lampshades,
soaps and other "useful" products were made from their bodies excuse the
Holocaust? No. Pain is pain.
My grandfather wrote, "[A]s long as
human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be
any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating
gas chambers a la Hitler.... There will be no justice as long as man will
stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he
is."
We all have the power to stop
suffering and misery every time we sit down to eat.
General information and lists of sources of information Other sites of vegetarian
interest
Children and Vegetarianism If you or your
kids enjoy eating at McDonald's, you should check out:
Vegetarian dogs and cats E-mail lists |
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Last revised: 09-Apr-08 |
