REAL MEN DON'T EAT MEAT
By Claudette Vaughan

How is it that so many think it wrong to be cruel to animals while paradoxically being so dogmatic in their intent to hunt, imprison, experiment on, kill and/or eat them? Is it therefore any wonder that the argument about animals and our treatment of them is emotive? As well it should be. This serious and difficult issue is not one of triviality. We who are concerned – who care and want to help the animals – can see that farmers have inherited a way of life (with intensive farming practices) and a set of attitudes that fundamentally rest on a mistaken foundation.

It is arrogance to think all Nature is at our disposal, to disrespect the nature of non-human creatures, to forget our own conscience and then demand the right to remake all things by technology in our own image for profit and greed.

• REAL MEN are kind to animals.

• REAL MEN have no problem visualising a time when we all might easily live in Nature. They have the knowledge that the pleasure gained by some for dominating and exploiting animals is totally unacceptable to most people.

• REAL MEN have no problem accessing the warning signs and seeing truth in a straightforward manner. If we continue to disallow non-human animals their place and their needs, if we continue to keep dictating the way things should go then we will find we have not only denatured the land and abused dejected innocent animals but we have moved one step closer to emotional and spiritual bankruptcy.

For no other reason than the human mind-set we have been the cause of the destruction of billions of farm and laboratory animals because they are regarded as nothing more than a commodity. This negates the constant observable evidence showing us that animals feel affection, anger, terror, relief, and compassion, and that they suffer greatly when mistreated. Vested interests would have the general public believe that animal activists are anthropomorphic. For classification purposes our knowledge has been built up empirically from years of observing the same mindless techniques that substitutes what once was called ‘animal husbandry’. 

• REAL MEN don’t eat meat because animals suffer in the process.

• REAL MEN relish their vegan lifestyle not only because they stay sickeningly healthy but also because they know they don’t contribute to the killing of non-humans.

• REAL MEN know that the bacterial contaminant called salmonella is found in dairy products, eggs and animal-based products. Under scrutiny are modern mass-production techniques used in the slaughtering, processing, dissembling, and preparation of the carcasses that have provided many opportunities for contamination.

• REAL MEN inherently understand that the desire for flesh foods is artificially conditioned. Animals are a source of comfort and tenderness for children who are horrified to learn that what used to be a living, breathing creature is now on their plate.

• REAL MEN are able to distinguish when the Meat Industry mounts a counter-attack against veganistic principles – advertisements indoctrinating public opinion that “white meat” is healthier than “red meat” for instance. As if a catchy meat jingle with a celebrity could wipe out the virtual holocaust that goes on behind the scenes of intensive farming techniques. In spite of this misleading information veganism continues to gain more and more adherents to its cause.

• REAL MEN are well informed that in recent years the huge costs to our environment in pollution and desertification caused by the mechanistic food industry have come to light. We now know that the planet simply doesn’t have enough resources to maintain itself at this present rate of exhaustion.

• REAL MEN know that the strongest animals on the planet are veggo, yet how often is it cited by meat eaters that they must keep up their strength by eating animals? Vegetarian animals include elephants, oxen, horses, mules, camels, water buffalo, and the silverback gorilla.

• REAL MEN show humility in the face of the devastating fact that most farmed animals, including battery hens, are not protected from inhumane conditions by the law. They routinely undergo painful procedures such as branding, castration, debeaking, suffocation, light deprivation and over-crowding. Male cattle are castrated without use of anaesthetics. Farmers, who need to create a more docile animal that gains weight rapidly, allowing profit margins to quadruple, justify this barbaric behaviour.

Finally, REAL MEN thoroughly enjoy benefiting from food that is lovingly cultivated in the full knowledge that they can sleep at night not having inflicted pain or death onto another living being.