Vegetarian

Right : Hour old lamb being taken for slaughter
Photo by John Cogil in Irish Times.

Article by Joan Smith in the (British) Independent on Sunday.
Sample : "Isn't it time somebody stood up for animals? Up and down the country, cows, pigs and sheep with the equivalent of a heavy cold, and others without symptoms that have been in contact with the affected animals, are being slaughtered and burned on ghastly funeral pyres. We have all seen pictures of the sky glowing a baleful red, while yet more animal carcasses are silhouetted starkly over the pits of death. Yet the whole business makes as much sense, in everything but economic terms, as putting down an entire primary school class because a few of the children happen to have sore throats."...Full Article

Famous Vegetarians (Einstein...Ed Moses...Pamela Anderson Lee...Prince...Joe Namath...Martina Navratilova...Richard Gere...Hank Aaron...Kim Basinger...Carl Lewis...Danny De Vito and many more.)

Some personal points : -

(1) As a vegetarian I find the concern over the current mass slaughter of animals to be hypocritical, given that millions of animals are slaughtered anyway simply because people like the taste of animal flesh.
(2) I would disagree with the total slaughter policy even if I were not a vegetarian.
(3) I resent being imprisoned in the city, denied access to the countryside I love, and losing much of my income because markets and craft fairs are being cancelled, all in order to help save an industry I fundamentally disagree with.

NONETHELESS I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE IRISH FARMING COMMUNITY RUINED, AND I DO NOT WANT TO SEE FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE SPREAD IN THIS COUNTRY - GIVEN THE KNOWN ATTITUDE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, THE RESULT WOULD INEVITABLY BE MASS SLAUGHTER OF FARM ANIMALS AND WILDLIFE. SO I WOULD ASK EVERYONE TO FOLLOW GOVERNMENT ADVICE.
More on Foot and Mouth Disease

"Sir, - Even determined omnivores must now wonder if the catch-cry "Meat is Murder" could have some justification. For if there is a problem with BSE, with a beef mountain, or with foot-and-mouth disease, the preferred solution is always the same: kill, kill, kill.

Foot-and-mouth is a mild illness from which animals recover naturally. There may be some loss in milk yield or in weight gain, but rather than accommodate itself to this, the livestock sector embarks on an animal holocaust. We could vaccinate against the disease, but then we would lose our FMD-free status and exports would suffer. Rather than accept this and adjust to it, we'll embark on the mass slaughter of healthy animals. Finally, if foot-and-mouth spreads to the Republic, the response will be not only further mass killing of farm animals, but also - and this is perhaps the greatest crime - a massacre of wildlife. It is mainly for this reason that I, personally, walk on the mats.

None of these farm animals or wild animals are clones. Each animal sacrificed on the altar of our economy is an individual with its own life to live and its own death to die. It is a presumption and an insult to treat them as disposable commodities, means to our enrichment.

The meat industry is just an appalling killing machine, oiled with cruelty, callousness and a total denial of respect for the lives of individual animals. It is monstrous and barbaric that we should intensively breed and kill animals and then eat bits of them, when we know that we can live happily and healthily without doing so. If not murder, meat is at least gratuitous killing, or, to wheel out another catch-phrase, slaughter of the innocent. - Yours, etc."

Ruarc Gahan in a letter to the Irish Times.

Put this banner on your website! - click here
Some quotes on vegetarianism

Viva Sample : "Viva! has secretly filmed inside 18 UK factory farms. Some of the scenes....require a strong stomach to watch. They include dead and rotting piglets alongside living brothers and sisters; mounds of dead pigs left in the open to decay, prey to dogs and wildlife; dead piglets beneath a sea of writhing maggots; an imprisoned sow covered in flies and blood; a pregnant sow about to give birth into her own excreta; pigs coated in their own faeces with filthy, wet concrete on which to sleep; animals with ruptures the size of footballs; pigs dragging themselves around, unable to walk.... more

Some Famous Vegetarians

Einstein...Ed Moses...Pamela Anderson Lee...Prince...Joe Namath...Richard Gere...Hank Aaron...Kim Basinger...Tolstoy...Martina Navratilova...Daryl Hannah...Carl Lewis...Danny DeVito...Buddha...Alicia Silverstone...Gandhi...Bob Dylan...Brooke Shields...Dennis Weaver...Leonardo Da Vinci...Belinda Carlisle...Moby...Ralph Waldo Emerson...Paul and Linda MacCartney...Candice Bergen...John Lennon and Yoko Ono...Billy Jean King...George Harrison...Larry Hagman...Lenny Kravitz...Bryan Adams...Ringo Starr...Jerry Seinfeld...B52's...Natassja Kinski...Brad Pitt...George Bernard Shaw...Olivia Newton John...Henry Ford...Dre...Patrick Duffy...Billy Idol...K.D.Lang...Charles Darwin...Annie Lennox...Benjamin Spock...Henry David Thoreau...David Carradine...David Duchovny...Doris Day...Drew Barrymore...Dustin Hoffman...Jean Jacques Rousseau...etc...etc...Full list

If you're thinking of becoming a vegetarian, do it right. Consult your doctor if you have any health problems or worries. Don't just cut out meat - the diet of many meat eaters is deficient in fruit and vegetables. To check that your new diet is adequate see Health and Nutrition

Living in Harmony with Vegetarians

Comments by Vegetarians on above article

Last updated March 2001.

If you have any enquiries, complaints or suggestions please e-mail me at earrings@eircom.net