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 13 Nov 2003 @ 13:01, by Susannah Bec
Image title: Do you hear? by Susannah Bec
I first 'decided' to become vegetarian in 1981/2 it was just that...a 'decision', it was thought out mentally....it lasted 6 months much like a diet something you try and don't usually stick to...I then started to eat "normally" again ....I loved fried chicken... Wow! the amount of chickens I've eaten!
Then it started. First time, late at night sitting in a friends car eating our "takeaway" meal my favourite chicken and chips (french fries) when suddenly out of the blue a wave of awareness, a realization that struck me to my core....I was holding a chickens leg....the actual "leg" of a fellow creature, and I was just about to take a great big bite !!! :-) needless to say I went to bed hungry that night.
I tried to ignore it and became angry at the realizations that I was having. I knew at a deep level that I could never be "unconscious" in that area again, as though I had been unwillingly forced to "realise"...a vivid awareness had been thrust into my ample lap.
Still fighting with the decision I came face to face....eye to eye...heart to heart....soul to soul with a brown and white cow gazing out through the mesh fence around a slaughterhouses "holding" field....I was irrevocably changed.
Animals are fellow species and are amongst the largest groups of inhabitants of this planet....we are just another species with some pretty dodgy ideas :-)
I have been vegan now for twenty years and very much believe in rights for all of the species of our planet.
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So this first quote pretty much summed up that day with the cow.
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Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
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Our treatment of animals will someday be considered barbarous. There cannot be perfect civilisation until man realises that the rights of every living creature are as sacred as his own.
Dr David Starr Jordan (1851-1931)
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"Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace."
Albert Schweitzer 1875 - 1965
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For too long we have occupied ourselves with responding to the consequences of cruelty and abuse and have neglected the important task of building up an ethical system in which justice for animals is regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Our only hope is to put our focus on the education of the young.
John Hoyt (1932- )
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People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)
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A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910
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The major cruelties practised on animals in civilized countries today arise out of commercial exploitation, and the fear of losing profits is the chief obstacle to reform.
C.W.Hume (1886-1981)
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Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics. We plow under habitats of other animals to grow hybrid corn that fattens our genetically engineered animals for slaughter. We make free species extinct and domesticate species into biomachines. We build cruelty into our diet.
Jim Mason (1950- )
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As a so-called "civilized" people, and as members of a society in search of lasting peace in the world, we cannot remain callous to our responsibility toward nature and insensitive to the inherent rights of the animals.
Nathaniel Altman (1948- )
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Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
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Category: Articles
3 comments
13 Nov 2003 @ 13:07 by shawa : Same experience
I have the same experience with the chicken in our chicken coop. Somehow the live birds have nothing to do with the corpse my well-meant friend brings me to make "chicken soup". I can´t eat the bird!
29 Nov 2003 @ 14:13 by craiglang : Some things
I've found that there are some meat-type things that I can eat, and some I can't. Usually red meat is one of the "Cant"s, but chicken and fish are not much of a problem. still, it will be interesting to see how/if that changes in the future. My sense is that at some point, I will get hit with a revelation like that, but it hasn't hit me yet. For now, I just find red meat too heavy - or in the eastern tradition: tamasic.
3 Dec 2003 @ 01:21 by susannahbe : Thankyou
Thankyou both for your comments.
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