VEGETARIANISM

You wouldn't stand for someone castrating a dog or debeaking a parrot, all without painkillers, would you? Yet that is what is done to the 8 billion animals in the US that are slaughtered for consumption each year (and the millions more that never make it to slaughter). And what's the difference between them? They're all animals, they all feel pain and fear and frustration? You have the ability to make a positive impact on their lives every time you sit down to a meal. By reducing the amount of animal products you consume, the less suffering you will inflict, and the more life you will give.

Every meat-meater in the US is responsible for the deaths of 2,400 animals in his or her life: 2,287 chickens, 92 turkeys, 31 pigs, and 12 steers and calves.

Animals are abused from birth till slaughter to maximize profits, enduring branding, castration, dehorning, and debeaking, all without painkillers. Animals are packed in so tightly they often don't have enough room to turn around or lie down comfortably. They spend their entire lives on concrete floors, in their own filth, many never seeing the light of day until they are transported to slaughter. During slaughter, many animals are improperly stunned, meaning that they are skinned and dismembered while fully conscious.

DAIRY
Dairy cows, which are made pregnant to produce milk, have their males calves taken away to be put in a crate for 18 to 20 weeks to produce veal. The calves are denied solid food and drinking water, and try to quench their thirst by drinking drug-laced liquid feed.

EGGS
Laying hens are cramped into cages so small they often can't even turn around or spread a wing. Their males chicks are taken away after hatching - tossed into grinding machines, gassed with carbon monoxide, or simply thrown into the trash. After 18 months, and about 300 eggs, the hens are sent sent to slaughter. Broiler hens, used for meat, live for 48 days, when they could live from 15 to 20 years.

ANIMALS AND YOUR HEALTH
Animals' bodies and their products are filled with cholesterol, saturated fat, steroids, and antibiotics, leading to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other diseases. You can get everything you need without any animal products in your diet, and by switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet you can help the animals out and prevent so much suffering.

These are living, feeling animals that need to be treated with more respect than they are. They need grass and fresh air and the company of their kind, and we need to think about the things that we do to them, decide if we really have the right to treat them as we do.

Animal-free foods are easy to find. Most grocery stores stock a lot of faux meat and dairy products, and places like Henry's and Whole Foods (across from UCSD) have everything. For mailorder vegan food, clothing, etc.

"Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals."
-Theodor Adorno