Millions of Chickens, Turkeys & Ducks were Suffocated to Death (Source: Free From Harm)

Time to Spread the Joy

By Karen Davis PhD | September 17, 2015 |

Between December 2014 and June 2015, more than 33 million chickens, turkeys and ducks were suffocated to death with firefighting foam and carbon dioxide in the Midwestern states of Iowa, Minnesota and elsewhere in the United States in response to the avian influenza outbreaks that began on poultry farms in 2014.[1] Since June, the number of birds exterminated has grown by many millions more in the U.S. and globally. The concentration of billions of highly stressed, immuno-compromised birds living in filth, misery and fear across the Earth guarantees that avian influenza outbreaks and epidemics will continue to occur.[2]

In addition to using firefighting foam and carbon dioxide to exterminate poultry flocks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture supports exterminating them by shutting off the ventilation in the houses and letting the birds bake to death – a process that can take anywhere from half an hour to 3 or more hours for every bird to die. Shutting off the ventilation in the computer-controlled houses is the cheapest method of extermination. Neither gas nor foam is needed.[3]

Shooting hoses filled with carbon dioxide into the confinement houses, metal boxes and “kill carts” causes the birds to burn, freeze, and suffocate to death simultaneously – and slowly. This is the egg industry’s main method of exterminating “spent” hens, whether from battery cages or cage-free confinement operations, with or without bird flu.[4]

As for fire-fighting foam, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved in 2006, contrary to the lie that the birds are dead within a minute of being blanketed under the foam, Bruce Webster of The University of Georgia told a USDA meeting in June 2006, “You saw a lot of escape behavior for 4-6 minutes. You saw the birds’ heads sticking out of the foam.” Eventually, their movements ceased, as the birds were “worn out” with their “volitional struggle,” Webster told attendees including UPC president Karen Davis at the meeting.[5]

In a firefighting foam trial with turkeys, birds were reported flapping under the foam for up to 6 minutes. This does not mean that the turkeys were unconscious or dead when the flapping stopped or appeared to stop. And foam-covered birds cannot vocalize their suffering. They cannot be seen or heard. Necropsies showed hemorrhages in the tracheas of birds who died under the foam, and “occlusion of the trachea by the foam” was cited by Ruth Newberry of Washington State University as “a serious welfare concern.”[6]

– See more at: http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/birds/#sthash.gBHhq7Vn.dpuf

Reblog from Free From Harm: “They Are All Cecil”

By Lorelei Plotczyk | August 31, 2015 |

Cecil reveals our glaring moral inconsistencies

Few issues cause more discomfort and hostility than openly questioning the practice of breeding, feeding, watering, and slaughtering tens of billions of sentient animals annually, which we do today in the total absence of necessity.

I want to be liked as much as the next gal, so when posting on my personal social media accounts, I try not to alienate myself from friends and family, the majority of whom love animals — or at least wouldn’t intentionally hurt one — but who have not (yet!) peeled back the layers that normalize the pervasive atrocities of animal agriculture affecting animals, people, and planet. For better or worse, I mostly compartmentalize these issues for discussions with like-minded folks. I’m working on that.

But the public’s justifiably outraged reaction to a lion named Cecil being killed by a hunter who paid $50,000 to do so makes it difficult to remain silent about the glaring moral inconsistencies that recently plastered many Facebook feeds.

Animal Rights BC (Before Cecil)

Here’s the deal. A man paid someone to allow him to kill an animal for pleasure.

Most people, on the other hand, pay people to kill animals for them, also for their pleasure.

Yes, in our society today, we eat animals for pleasure, not necessity. More on that in a minute.

It’s a wonderful thing when people speak up for human rights concerning specific races, genders, or sexualities. Most likely, someone who does so is not then proceeding to intentionally exploit humans outside of the group they’re defending at that particular moment. That would just be ridiculous and incredibly hypocritical. Can you imagine, for example, someone with a rainbow profile picture enthusiastically posting a racist photo?

Yet when most people speak up for the rights of certain animals — often dogs, particularly those left in hot cars — they then turn around and proceed to intentionally exploit animals outside of the group they’re defending at that moment, particularly those species they’ve been hypnotized by society to assign little to no moral consideration. This is equally ridiculous and hypocritical as the above example.

For example, over the past few week, I have seen people expressing their outrage over the intentional killing of a defenseless lion hours later posting a photo of themselves chowing down on the body of an intentionally killed, defenseless cow.

What we call a cheeseburger is actually totally vulnerable, sentient, heartbreakingly docile bovines (usually hundreds of them per patty!) whose ground-up remains are so casually consumed, covered in the congealed mammary secretions of their own species, whose formula-fed offspring likely lived out their unimaginable weeks on this Earth alone and imprisoned in a veal crate.

Amongst my many online vegan acquaintances brave enough to point out this glaring cognitive disconnect on social media, I’m seeing two common, knee-jerk reactions from their typically infuriated and offended non-veg friends:

1. It’s perfectly okay to kill (certain) animals that are plentiful, but not those that are endangered.

This would mean that animals have the right to exist, but not to live.

2. It’s okay to kill (certain) animals as long as their bodies are used in some way, especially for (unnecessary) food.

This is saying it’s not okay to kill or use just any animal for food, just certain species as dictated by society. After all, most Westerners would be horrified if someone slaughtered a local unwanted shelter dog to barbecue, defending it by saying

– See more at: http://freefromharm.org/animal-products-and-culture/they-are-all-cecil/#sthash.eBMVCwIX.dpuf

A Post worth Re-Posting: “Animals Rights is the Greatest Social Justice Issue Since the Abolition of Slavory”

By Free From Harm Staff Writers | June 24, 2012 | Categories: Educational / Inspiring Talks

Philip Wollen, Australian Philanthropist, Former VP of Citibank, Makes Blazing Animal Rights Speech

Philip Wollen shakes the rafters of the auditorium with this 10-minute speech to the St James Ethics Centre and the Wheeler Centre debate in Australia on May 16, 2012. The larger debate consists of six speakers, three that make the case for getting animals off the menu and three that make the case against it. Wollen is a former VP of Citibank and Australian philanthropist who is known to keep out of the limelight. But he sure rose to the challenge for this debate to deliver a huge performance and a powerful message. Bravo!

Join Philip Wollen and the Kindness Trust on their Facebook page. Watch the full debate with all six speakers.

This is the transcript to the speech:

On behalf of St James Ethics Centre, the Wheeler Centre,
The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, The Age
The City of Melbourne and the ABC
All of whom have worked together to make this event possible
I would like to welcome
Philip Wollen

((Applause))

King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester “How do you see the world?”

And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”.

Shouldn’t we all?

Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair.
I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realised I had heard these screams before.
In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf.
Their cries were the cries of my father.
I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals.
And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy.
Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco.

CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the livestock industry are killing our oceans with acidic, hypoxic Dead Zones.
90% of small fish are ground into pellets to feed livestock.
Vegetarian cows are now the world’s largest ocean predator.
The oceans are dying in our time. By 2048 all our fisheries will be dead. The lungs and the arteries of the earth.
Billions of bouncy little chicks are ground up alive simply because they are male.
Only 100 billion people have ever lived. 7 billion alive today. And we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week.
10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species.
We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history.
If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus.
It is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions.
The world has changed.
10 years ago Twitter was a bird sound, www was a stuck keyboard, Cloud was in the sky, 4 g was a parking place, Google was a baby burp, Skype was a typo and Al Kider was my plumber.
Victor Hugo said “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.
There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world.
That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union!!
Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer – when it shouldn’t even be a question.
Meat is a killing industry – animals, us and our economies.
Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero!!
They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA – and they still won’t be able to pay for it.
Cornell and Harvard say’s that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO.
Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it.
Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry.
It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef.
1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.

If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.
Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport . . . . . planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.
Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?
The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.
We are facing the perfect storm.
If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age.
But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry.
The good news is we don’t have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it.
George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn’t run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks.

This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever.
The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. This cruel industry will end because we run out of excuses.
Meat is like 1 and 2 cent coins. It costs more to make than it is worth.
And farmers are the ones with the most to gain. Farming won’t end. It would boom. Only the product line would change. Farmers would make so much money they wouldn’t even bother counting it.
Governments will love us. New industries would emerge and flourish. Health insurance premiums would plummet. Hospital waiting lists would disappear.
Hell “We’d be so healthy; we’d have to shoot someone just to start a cemetery!”
So tonight I have 2 Challenges for the opposition:
1. Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet?
2. I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on I DARE YOU.
Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril.

The peace map is drawn on a menu. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.
Justice must be blind to race, colour, religion or species. If she is not blind, she will be a weapon of terror. And there is unimaginable terror in those ghastly Guantanamos.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn’t need this debate.
I believe another world is possible.
On a quiet night, I can hear her breathing.
Let’s get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers.
Please vote tonight for those who have no voice.
Thank you.

– See more at: http://freefromharm.org/videos/educational-inspiring-talks/philip-wollen-australian-philanthropist-former-vp-of-citibank-makes-blazing-animal-rights-speech/#sthash.X6YZ87At.dpuf

“Animal shelters are themselves frequently little more than slaughterhouses.” ~Jennifer and Nathan Winograd, Free From Harm

Where Animal Welfare Gets It Wrong: Part I

By Jennifer and Nathan Winograd | June 13, 2013 | Categories: Animal Rights | Tags: Humane Farming

Animal shelters in this country exist for primarily one purpose: to provide a safety-net of care for our nation’s homeless animals. With half of all animals entering our shelters being killed rather than given the new beginning that they not only deserve, but which the No Kill movement has proven unequivocally is possible, to say that most of our animal shelters are failing in their mission is a gross understatement. But the betrayal goes even deeper than the killing, although by far that is the greatest harm. Because in addition to taking the lives of four million animals a year, animal shelters in this country are rife with abuse and neglect as well. Why? Because they kill. Studies of slaughterhouse workers have found that in order to cope with the fact that they are paid to kill day in and day out, self-preservation motivates those workers to devalue animals in order to make what they are doing less morally reprehensible. In other words, the workers make the animals unworthy of any consideration on their behalf. The two most common methods of achieving this are indifference to animal suffering and even intensifying it, becoming sadistic toward the animals. In too many communities, the implications for shelters are frightening: American shelters are themselves frequently little more than slaughterhouses. By its very nature, therefore, shelter killing breeds a lack of compassion and caring for animals. [continue reading]

SOURCE:  Free From Harm

Enlisting your help because I need a new name for my blog.

Recently I was chatting with Hannah at Gypsy Roller’s Veggie Kitchen about changing the name of my blog. What prompted the discussion is she had posted about changing the name of hers.  At the time she started her blog, she was living in an RV she so eloquently named: The Gypsy Roller, while her house was under construction.  Now that she and her family have moved out of the RV she felt it was time to retire the name seeing as she wouldn’t be *cooking* and *dispatching* from the Gypsy Roller. Which makes total sense. Although, secretly I did love the name:  Dispatches from the Gypsy Roller.  It sounded soooooooooooo, I dunno, Janis Joplin-ish.

😉

The reason Hannah’s post resonated is because like her blog name, my blog and its name was born from a purpose that has since grown and changed.  The original intent or purpose of my blog was to talk about living green and reducing one’s carbon footprint. However, over the course of almost 1 1/2 years, my blog has morphed and now I prefer to focus my attention on an issue I am quite passionate about (almost too much so)  and that is:  animal rights, animal exploitation — exposing the egregious abuse that is taking place on factory farms, back yard butchers, research labs, fur breeders, puppy mills and so on…  Why? Well, since becoming a vegan, I have learned about the dark side of animal exploitation and now that my eyes are open, I can no longer close them or turn my back on what is happening to animals at the hands of very cruel and heartless humans. I can no longer recline back into my velvety world of ignorant bliss. I know what is happening. I don’t like it and dammit, I am going to do something about it, even if it kills me.  I would be incomplete as a woman, a human (!) if I turned my back on the plight of animals. 

Despite my desire to change my name, I have been unable to come up with anything that truly reflects my cause.  I’d like to keep GiRRL (which originally stood for: Grow it, Reuse, Recycle & Love our Earth) but perhaps change the spelling to Girl.

I still care about the earth; however, my focus is the impact that Factory Farming et al.  is having on our planet versus other environmental issues.

I’d also like to incorporate any or all of the following words in my title:  Animal;  Humane; Voice; Compassion…something (!) in the title.  And yet, sadly, no matter what I scribble on paper, nothing seems to work or flow.

[sigh]

😦

I prefer to not burden people by asking for help; however, today I finally decided I needed to move past that fear and  open this up to my few but loyal followers.

If you follow my blog and are reading this, do you have any suggestions for a new name for my blog that would enable me to keep “Girl” in the first part of the title

Or dare I say it: do you think I should just retire this blog and create a shiny new blog with a shiny new name?

Thoughts?

 

Anyone?

 

Hello?

 

Bueller?

 

Bueller?

 

I promise full credit will be given.

 

Thanks and smooches.

 

🙂

 

 

 

A letter to the WordPress Powers that Be

Dear Word Press:

I am very angry at you, yah that’s right YOU!  Would you please explain to me why you Freshly Pressed a blogger who openly and admittedly writes about WANTING to harm a feral cat? I’m serious, would you please explain it to me because I found http://mikeallegra.com/2012/11/29/a-natural-cure/’s blog very disturbing!  As an animal shelter volunteer, I have seen and continue to see egregious acts towards animals – acts that are my worst nightmare and yet,  what does Word Press do? They promote someone who clearly and admittedly has no issue, shame or guilt about harming a cat!!!!

I’m so fit to be tied that I am contemplating closing down my blog.  What a disgrace.  How could you be so callous?

I will re-post this  post every. single. day. until I receive an answer.

Yours,

GiRRL_Earth

“Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.” – Philip Wollen

I am a vegan. Yeah, that’s right, VEGAN. I am also an animal rights activist.  Oh I can hear your comments and see your eyes rolling.  I know what you’re thinking — here we go again, another rebel, another radical, another troublemaker.  People who turn a blind eye and closed ears to animal rights assume those of us who protect and speak for the voiceless are nothing more than a pack of troublemakers.   

Think what you want.  Someone has to be the voice of animals. Someone has to fight against the brutality of slaughterhouses. Someone has to end the suffering of the innocent.  I am not interested in taking up space for the sake of taking up space because I feel I am superior to all other organisms on this planet. I am not going to sit idle, narcotize myself with fake “reality” TV, talk shit about people and spend my hard-earned money in retail stores so as to numb myself to the world. Nope, not me kid. I chose to view the world with a different lens.

I have known for a very long time that my purpose on this planet is to protect animals.  I suspect I inherited this trait from my father. He has tremendous compassion for animals that cannot be measured. He instilled this compassion in me.  Throughout the years, my father and I rarely saw eye-eye on anything, except for one: animal rights — this is our common ground.  This is one arena where we merge into one being, one point of view. Animal cruelty of any kind, including the egregious abuse taking place in factory farms and slaughter houses is wrong and must stop.  

People say they care about the planet and to prove it they “recycle”.  (Big deal!) They purchase million dollar houses in upper class neighborhoods so they can prove how accomplished they are. They call themselves wine connoisseurs (snobs really!) and my particular favorite: “foodies” (barf!).  They think because they buy “organic” “free-range” “grass-fed” they are immune to the injustices to animals.  Know this: “organic, free-range and grass-fed” mean nothing.  NOTHING! These are just words, nothing more.  These are labels the industry uses to fool the American public into thinking the animals they are eating, lived at country club farms until they were gently slaughtered. If you truly believe your eggs are free-range, then visit the factory farm and chickens that produced the eggs.  Check out the confined, stressful conditions they live in order to produce the eggs you want to eat.   Do me and all the animals who cannot speak a favor. OPEN YOUR EYES. Stop believing the labels.   If you don’t believe me, read this: http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/marketing-versus-reality-the-myth-of-the-organic-happy-cow/

“I am not giving up my steak, my bacon, my chicken or my milk, sorry. I don’t care how many animals are suffering.”  This is an example of the types of comments I receive when I speak about veganism and animals rights.  I think the phrase: “I don’t care.” sums it up.  Most people do not care. I have met people who say they would never ever eat a doughnut, and yet do not give a second thought as to how their eggs/chicken/pork/beef landed on their tables – the abused life the animal lived before it became food.  In my opinion, if you’re eating all the aforementioned animals with nary a care, then eat the fucking doughnut. What’s the difference? You clearly do not give a shit.  If you saw how most farm animals lived and died, you would be a vegan like me.   

Remember that outbreak of swine flu? Remember how farmers had to kill all of their pigs due to this disease? How exactly do you think they went about killing their livestock? Do you think veterinarians in white coats went around to all the farms, euthanizing each pig? Sadly,  NO! Do you want to know what really happened?  The farmers used a back-ho, dug huge/deep holes and bulldozed all the pigs (Alive!) into this hole and then buried them alive.  Nice, huh?  This reminds me of the Nazi death camps.

A cow is a pig is a human. Soylent Green anyone?  

Still don’t care?  

Dairy anyone?  The next time you tuck into a glass of milk or yogurt, think about this.  When a Dairy cow gives birth, before she even has a chance to bond with her baby, it is taken away from her.  If the baby is female, her fate will be that of her mothers. If the baby is male, then G-d have mercy because one of two things will happen. He will either be killed, or locked in a crate so that in a few months, he can land on your dinner table as veal cutlet.  Mmmmmmmmmm. Not! Recently, I watched a video about egregious activity that was taking place on a dairy farm.  A dairy cow had just given birth (awe!). As she tried to reach down to sniff and nuzzle her newborn baby, an employee of the farm (a barbarian), grabbed the baby by its head, dragged it away from its mother and proceeded to smash its head with a sledgehammer, killing it (because it was a male). He killed the baby, right in front of mother cow with nary a care. The milk she produced for her now dead baby is the milk you are drinking and eating EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  Imagine giving birth to your baby, only to have some person come along and rip away from you and kill it right before your eyes. (Drink up everyone!) Hormone fed or not, all dairy cows are treated this way.   Still don’t care? Well know this: every time you tuck into a dairy product, dairy cows are giving birth, to baby after baby.  In order to keep a dairy cow producing milk, the cow must stay pregnant which means, after she gives birth, she will be hooked up to what is known it the industry as the “rape rack” where she will be impregnated so she can go through the whole process, again, and again, and again.  The average life span of a dairy cow is 3 years.  Do you want to know what happens to her after she is “spent”? Do you think she will be sent to some retirement community for dairy cows? Think again. She will be ground up into hamburger meat.  Oh hey, thanks for your 3 years of dairy producing service. How would you like to become a Bubba burger?   Pass the ketchup please…  

http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/marketing-versus-reality-the-myth-of-the-organic-happy-cow/

Still not convinced? Don’t care? Well if you are so heartless that none of this bothers you, then how about this. Watch the movie Earthlings and circle back with me.  If Earthlings doesn’t shake you to your core, perhaps a terrific speech from a great man will.  Below is a speech by a particularly awesome animal rights activist who I admire greatly.  His name is Philip Wollen. He is the former VP of Citibank and is an Australian philanthropist.  I extracted this speech from here: http://freefromharm.org/videos/educational-inspiring-talks/philip-wollen-australian-philanthropist-former-vp-of-citibank-makes-blazing-animal-rights-speech/

King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester “How do you see the world?”

And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”.

Shouldn’t we all?

Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair.
I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realized I had heard these screams before.
In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf.
Their cries were the cries of my father.
I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals.
And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy.
Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco.

CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the livestock industry are killing our oceans with acidic, hypoxic Dead Zones.
90% of small fish are ground into pellets to feed livestock.
Vegetarian cows are now the world’s largest ocean predator.
The oceans are dying in our time. By 2048 all our fisheries will be dead. The lungs and the arteries of the earth.

Billions of bouncy little chicks are ground up alive simply because they are male.
Only 100 billion people have ever lived. 7 billion alive today. And we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week.
10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species.

We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history.
If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus.
It is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions.

The world has changed.  10 years ago Twitter was a bird sound, www was a stuck keyboard, Cloud was in the sky, 4 g was a parking place, Google was a baby burp, Skype was a typo and Al Kider was my plumber.
Victor Hugo said “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.
There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world. That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union!!

Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer – when it shouldn’t even be a question.
Meat is a killing industry – animals, us and our economies.

Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero!!
They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA – and they still won’t be able to pay for it.

Cornell and Harvard say’s that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO.

Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it. Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry. It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef. 1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.

If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.

Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport . . . . . planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.

Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?

The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.

We are facing the perfect storm.

If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age.
But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry. The good news is we don’t have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it. George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn’t run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks.

This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever.

The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. This cruel industry will end because we run out of excuses.

Meat is like 1 and 2 cent coins. It costs more to make than it is worth.
And farmers are the ones with the most to gain. Farming won’t end. It would boom. Only the product line would change. Farmers would make so much money they wouldn’t even bother counting it. Governments will love us. New industries would emerge and flourish. Health insurance premiums would plummet. Hospital waiting lists would disappear. Hell “We’d be so healthy; we’d have to shoot someone just to start a cemetery!” So tonight I have 2 Challenges for the opposition:

1.)  Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet?

2.) I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on I DARE YOU.

Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril.

The peace map is drawn on a menu. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice. Justice must be blind to race, colour, religion or species. If she is not blind, she will be a weapon of terror. And there is unimaginable terror in those ghastly Guantanamos.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn’t need this debate.

I believe another world is possible.

On a quiet night, I can hear her breathing.

Let’s get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers.
Please vote tonight for those who have no voice.

Thank you.