Thanksgiving arrives every year with a heated debate over how to best cook that plump and juicy turkey. But the idea of a tofu turkey (also known as a “tofurkey”) has gone from a joke a couple years ago to a reality for many. While vegetarianism has been practiced for over a thousand years in some countries, it is a relatively new concept in the West. And so, with the question cropping up more and more often, should we eat meat?
No one who believes that kindness is a virtue, as we all say we do, can argue that it’s acceptable to be cruel when we have the option not to be. As people become aware that animals are more like us than they are different from us—that they feel pain and fear, love one another, and value their lives—they are becoming less likely to accept activities that cause suffering. A Gallup poll showed that 96 percent of respondents feel that animals should be protected from cruelty.
More than ten billion cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals are confined on factory farms each year in the United States alone. They are debeaked, branded, dehorned, and/or castrated without pain killers. During slaughter, they are often dismembered while they’re still conscious.
The victims may not be human, but why should that stop us from caring? They are made of flesh, blood, and bone. They are terrified of the knife, and they cry out and don’t want to be eviscerated.
PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk actually said, “When it comes to having a central nervous system and the ability to experience pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” This is a statement of biological fact.
Compassion knows no bounds. Surely we can open our hearts wide enough to care about all beings—human and animal—who are abused and exploited. Simply by choosing vegetarian alternatives to meat, people can help stop needless animal suffering, improve their own health and save the environment. See www.GoVeg.com for more information and a free vegetarian starter kit.
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