American Buddhist Net

Watch our vid here "The List: The many excuses why we eat meat"

Why do we eat meat?

Here are some of our excuses:

* I love the taste.
* I get sick if I don't have meat in my diet.
* My doctor tells me I should eat meat or fish to be healthy
* I hate vegetables
* It will upset my parents if I don't eat meat
* My partner eats meat and it's too difficult to cook two different meals
* I eat meat because of my cultural background
* You're weak if you don't eat meat
* You're not a real man if you don't eat meat
* It's OK for me to eat meat because I didn't kill the animal myself
* The Bible says its OK to eat meat
* It's OK to eat meat because my spiritual teachers eat it
* It's cheaper to eat meat than it is to eat veges
* It's OK to eat animals, they are lower on the food chain
* It's OK to eat animals, it's the circle of life
* Theres nothing wrong with eating animals
* Humans have to eat meatto be healthy
* Humans are meant to eat meat
* Animals will overpopulate the planet if we don't eat them
* God created animals for us to eat and use
* I always say thank you to the animaland say prayers over the meat before I eat it
* Don't be ridiculous, everyone eats meat
* It's too difficult for me to be a vegetarian
* It's the animal's bad karma
* I'm helping the being leave the animal realm and hopefully attain better rebirth
* It's Samsara. It's impossible to avoid hurting or killing animals
* I couldn't possibly do without meatand dairy in my life
* Chickens are stupid, why shouldn't we eat them
* They didn't kill the animal specifically for me so its OK if I eat it
* My father was a hunter, so I am a hunter
* Fish can't feel pain
* You can only get B12 or Omega 3 from meat & fish
and the list goes on

We can find all the excuses in the world

However, we don't think about are
the cries of animals at night in the
factory farms

We don't hear them cry with fear in the
slaughterhouse lines. We don't smell
the stench of blood

We don't see the young bobby calves
only a few hours old, barely able to walk,
suffering on slaughterhouse trucks
standing in line waiting for a bolt
gun to their head

We don't see the chickens who
are too small to reach the
feeders in the broiler farms,
who lay dead from starvation

Nor those chickens genetically bred so
large that their young bones cannot
handle their weight

Nor the chickens pecked to death
by others due to anxiety from
the extreme confinement

We don't see the young piglets
cramming through bars trying to
access their mother's milk

Little piglets who will never feel
grass under their feet, or the sun
on their back, kept in small cages
24/7 unable to move their entire life

We don't see the cows crammed into
feedlots unable to graze on grass,
suffering from illness and disease

We don't hear the cows crying
for their calves who are taken from
them at only a few hours old

We do not see animals being beaten
to death or eaten alive

We do not see the lobster trying
desperately to claw its way out
of a pot of boiling water

We don't see cattle strung up
by their legs struggling in agony
waiting for their throat to be cut

We don't see millions of fish and
other "by catch" struggling or
drowning in hundreds of miles
of fishing lines or suffocating
and thrashing on the deck of a
trawler or boat

We do not see lambs tied to fences
having chunks of flesh cut from
their bodies without anaesthetic

We don't see 10s of thousands of sheep
dying on ships from heat exhaustion,
laying suffering with no one to save them

We do not see the young calves
confined in stalls 24/7 unable
to even turn round, awaiting death

We do not see the millions of pigs, cattle
and chickens who are boiled alive because
stunning methods are often unreliable

We do not see these billions of sentient
beings devoid of hope, crammed
together, lifeless, in an endless nightmare

If they could end their own
life they probably would

We do not want to know also of the
billions suffering in labs, fur farms,
circuses, zoos, in fishing nets, at
the hands of hunters or trawlers,
or in shelters etc .........

Just a tiny glimpse into the nightmare
we have created for other beings

We do not see them, and we do
not want to know

And yet we cry out for the end of whaling
but we ignore the suffering and
murder of billions of "farm" animals
each year for "food"

Meat consumption today is
one of the greatest contributors
to the world food crisis

Meat consumption is a major
contributor to global warming

Factory farming is a major contributor
to non human to human virus mutations
like avian flu and "mad cow"

And all of this for our taste buds

So next time we agonise over the
killing of a whale, the stranding of
a dolphin, or cry over the suffering
of animals in shelters...

Next time we hold our head in our hands
agonising over the melting ice caps, or
the world food crisis

Or next time we pray for peace on Earth

We should take a moment to think of the
billions of sentient beings suffering in factory
farms for our "food" and consider all the
destruction & violence we cause as a
direct result of our own meat consumption

Adopt a plant based diet

Go vegan for peace,
for yourself, for all sentient
beings and the environment

Liberation of Brother & Sister Animals
LOBSA.ORG