Dr Billy Health

What’s not to like about potlucks?

Many of my SAD (Standard American Diet) friends seem to have trouble understanding why some of my CAD (Compassion Affirming Diet) friends sometimes shy away from full participation in potluck functions.

Most CAD people that I know love to eat. Typically we very much appreciate the preparation, presentation, arrangement, color-play, aroma, texture, flavor etc. of a good meal, we even find it fulfilling to contemplate where all of the ingredients came from; the apples in the cobbler starting from a seed, growing into a tree, the tree sprouting fragrant blossoms, blossoms giving way to tiny sour apples, the growing apples drawing nutrients up through the structure of the tree, while swinging in the breeze, basking in the sun and bathing in the rain.

We think about, and give thanks for the nature-given orbs getting juicier and sweeter everyday until their weight demands picking. We are generally delighted at the beauty; aroma, color array and creativity displayed, and appreciate the care and laboring of love that brings such healthful layouts to the party.

The friendly, generous and well-meaning SAD folks in attendance generally offer a distinctly different type of presentation.

The first sensory experience that usually hits me when arriving at the party is a powerful and often nauseating olfactory sensation. This sensation immediately triggers a certain sadness.

Just as the scent of progressively rotting body parts that permeates the ‘common air’ near the meat counter in a supermarket, and most regrettably in many pseudo-natural food stores as well, sickens the sensitivities of the inhaler, so is the scent of ‘heat-treated’ cadavers on display at the party a bit challenging to handle even for the heartiest of plant eating folks who understand what is represented by the sometimes cleverly disguised meaty dishes.

It is well to keep in mind that the ‘scent’ or ‘smell’ results from actual physical particles of the stuff behind the glass or on the table coming into intimate contact with receptors in the scull. The scent of rotting flesh may be experienced as mildly offensive, horrendously objectionable, or even pleasurable, I am told, depending on the mindset, programming, culture affiliation or ‘source-knowledge’ of the person having the experience. So, while some, passing by the bloody counter/table will be powerfully repulsed, many will think nothing of it. It will, in fact smell just like the interior of the refrigerator at home.

But for the oblivious and the aware alike, there is no sensation of smell, no activation of the olfactory mechanism, unless, as stated, particles, millions of them, actually come into contact with living tissue in the head of the person doing the smelling. Along with the particles of flesh, blood and bone, Etc., are also millions of disease-producing microorganisms, mostly bacteria. Everyone breathing that air gets the little bugs, and takes them home, now circulating throughout the bloodstream, for free, like it or not… No purchase required.

Back to the party…

Sure, it’s the smell, the sight. It’s the understanding (Not that any one of us can begin to fully understand) of the terror, the torture, the slavery, the indescribable abuses that culminate in the murder of beings of another ‘race’, but fully conscious, sentient individuals, treated as ‘things’ and then slaughtered while still in the early childhood of their natural life-span. It’s the uncomfortable awareness that the roast is slavery, the cheesecake is rape, kidnapping and involuntary drugging, and the fried chicken is mutilation personified.

And it’s the stubborn difficulty understanding how the good-hearted people partaking of the unholy culinary creations can reconcile the contributions they make to the very things that they would go to war to prevent (Torture, Terrorism, Murder….) Try as I do, I think that I’m unsure how to fully relate to someone who professes a desire for peace, an appreciation of fairness, and an understanding that slavery is just wrong, but who also orders the execution of fully conscious individuals (Over one hundred every year per meat-eating person on average.)

How do you make sense of ‘a very nice lady’ who lavishes love upon the family dog, providing every comfort and sparing no expense for Spot’s care? A ‘very nice lady’ who would prosecute to the full extent of the law, anyone who so much as pulled Spot’s cropped tail, but who with the same mind that designs a life of luxury for Spot, also makes the conscious decision to sentence cows, bulls, pigs, and various birds and others to lives of utter horror day in and day out?

Really, how do you even trust the loving dad who works hard to give the best of everything to the kids, a guy who would swim an ocean or crawl across a desert to keep harm far away from his cherished children, Junior and Princess, but who delights at gobbling down burgers hot off the barbie, the meat of which is an amalgamation of the very bodies of 200 steers, who because they were born to be raised as ‘food’, suffered horribly in an environment totally devoid of dignity, and then were inhumanely snuffed out at the age of 18 months (Yes That’s MONTHS) out of a 25 year life-span potential.

And I wonder how the kids make sense of this confusing rationalization. I mean, this subject is, and will be, more in the inquisitive awareness of many of the younger people on the planet despite the creative and conniving efforts of the meat and dairy purveyors to disguise someone’s body as a ‘happy meal’ with all of the euphemisms that hide whose body is on the plate, all the intelligence-insulting slogans, the white mustaches and so on.

Awareness is growing, and many more of the people who are now children will, I think, see through the greasy smoke screen.

It must be obvious to anyone who thinks about it, it makes no sense, and it is indefensible behavior to support a system which commits the worst atrocities that contemporary civilized people agree cannot be excused. It is a system which, more than any other collective, but personally elective activity literally threatens the life-supportive abilities of the planet that our children would like to live on.

And all for what?

To maintain a habit of learned behavior (As eating ‘tiger-food’ and pink-colored, fake-flavored, perversely sweet, pretend-food is certainly not instinctive) which never serves us, and then pass the habit down to the next generation, the members of which are already inheriting the Planet-choking pollution, the super-bugs, the disappearing forests and dwindling resources, the sickness and the ‘Racist’ thinking that allows the torture and murder of some of those who speak a different language and can’t run fast enough.
Careful not to utter a ‘Moo’ or use a word that may sound like ‘gobble’.

If you think that your God entrusted humans with ‘dominion’, I hope you understand that dominion, by no stretch of Webster’s interpretation can possibly mean ‘unrestricted, mean-hearted abuse’.

This stuff is not in the least appetizing.

All of these discomforting realities cannot be untangled from the addictions that create the problems, the addictions that cover the table.

The Jell-O (Concentrated renderings of toe nails, snouts, hooves, fur and bone mixed with tons of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or even more poisonous artificial sweeteners and various high-tech, un-pronounceable additives) is anything but food. This fact is verified by simply reading the ingredient list, if you know what the word gelatin means and can translate the rest of the poly-syllabic terms. Nowhere on the package of Bill Cosby’s favorite flavor of Jell-O is there a hint of the sins of abuse, the environmental destruction, and the immeasurable pollution that made possible the wiggly treat.
And not even the finest of print on the brightly colored package will make mention of the superb carrier/transmitting medium of incurable Mad Cow Disease that gelatin represents. (The prion molecules which cause Mad Cow Disease, and are present in most of the cattle in all large herds and factory farm feed lots can survive almost any conditions, and gelatin is the medium of choice for growing microorganism cultures.)

That’s not appetizing.

The Mac N’ Cheese is benign enough right?

Well we weirdoes (Plant Eaters) have versions that qualify as food and which don’t incorporate any ‘melted murder’. But generally the namesake ingredients of standard M-N-C are exclusively the starch (Missing the fiber, protein and most nutrients) from commercially grown (Poison to the people and polluting to the planet) wheat, and some gooey stuff which used to be mostly cheese made from cow’s milk and rennet (Rennet is a coagulating agent scraped from someone’s intestines and/or a powder made from the desiccated fourth stomach of a young cow.)

In today’s ‘cheese-like-substances there are, as you might imagine, increasing percentages of chemical plasticizers, colors, flavors, stabilizers and such, and still some actual dairy-milk. Actual dairy-milk of course represents every bit as much torture, pollution and the like as flesh, it is referred to in some circles as liquid meat, and this is not a compliment.

In at least one way, milk is even more heart-wrenchingly inhumane than what people call beef or pork because the short life of a modern dairy cow is every bit as torturous as that of the steers and pigs that people eat, but she (The unfortunate milk-cow) is kept pregnant and nursing continuously and genetically and pharmaceutically altered so that her udder is engorged to the point of dragging on the floor and chronically infected. Yes, that’s horrible, but the really sad thing is that her children (And there is an undeniable strong emotional [two-way] bond which appears equal in intensity to the bond between human mother and child) are taken away on their day of birth, never to be reunited.

This dramatically depressing kidnapping is inhumane… is beyond words.

Her female children will carry on the tradition of providing pus-rich milk for humans’ self-poisoning, and her male calves will be locked in a cage with insufficient room to turn around and force-fed a disease producing diet and soon (After about four months out of a 25 year life-span potential) become the sin that some people call Veal.

The dairy scam is a murderous one indeed. Even if you would boycott veal on the grounds of the extreme abuse visited upon the young male prisoners, murdered in infancy, but still willingly partake of milk products, you should know that each sip of COW’S milk, every cheese melt and scoop of ice cream is a vote in favor of veal. See: MILK MATH

The veal industry exists because of the dairy industry.

Yes, veal is undeniably ‘child abuse’, culminating in peticide/infanticide (Murder of children.)

That doesn’t taste good.

Milk is in part the torture and infantile murder of the cows’ baby boys.

The milk-cow really gives her all.

And I am strongly inclined to suggest that if you like to partake of cow’s milk (Take note of the name here, it is Cow’s Milk… The Cow’s part is possessive) or any of the other dairy products, all of which are profoundly deranging to the HUMAN system (See: Milk, and the many ill conditions it causes
), that you pay a visit to a production facility. If you do, understand that you won’t be visiting a pasture, you will not see any grass. The excursion will be memorable, I assure you. You will want to wear high boots, and you’ll wish you had brought along a Self Contained Breathing Apparatus, and you will know that you are getting close miles before you arrive, your nose will tell you. Upon returning home you will likely want to burn your clothes and shower for a few hours. I think we all owe it to ourselves, to see where (Or Who) our ‘food’ comes from. Such investigations do clearly illustrate what constitutes appropriate food, based on what we are genuinely attracted to in its natural state.

Everyone is different I know, but the sights and sounds and certainly the smells in a 1,000 – 10,000 head dairy complex will not generally make a person salivate with desire to partake. In fact, I doubt that there is one-person-in-a-billion who would be naturally drawn to access cow’s milk in the ‘natural way’ even from a healthy, happy cow milling around in a field of grass. And I’m not sure she would appreciate your crawling up under her anyway. At any rate, the green pastures are only in history or are illustrations on dairy packaging and advertisements.

Eating is one of the most joyous, even blissful activities in life. It seems to be necessary of course, but can be very enjoyable as well, and is in fact ‘truly nourishing’ only when the full spectrum of senses are employed, as when we use our awareness to fully appreciate the color, the scent, the textures and layering of flavors, and when we think about how the dish came-to-be, and mentally / emotionally give thanks. We are, in fact, nourished [only] to the degree that we participate in the experience.

We are nourished to the degree that we are in alignment with our perception of the ‘quality’ of the food. Quality, in this context refers not nearly so much to a measure of vitamin content or the monetary price, but to the overall inherent ‘energies’ contained in, and transferred to us… through the food.

Whole aspects of our being go virtually un-fed if we eat super, new-and-improved, fortified, high priced, vitamin enriched ‘health food’ but don’t fully participate, and in a pleasurable manner, in the partaking of the gift.

Whole aspects of our being are confused and deranged if we choose to eat things for which our bodies are not physiologically designed. Flesh from any animal and the milk from a foreign species or even our own mother’s milk after weaning age (Apr. 18 months) are good examples of poor choices.

Whole aspects of our being are poisoned, if we choose to eat things that contain chemical, biological, hormonal, or energetic qualities or residues beyond our ability to process fully and naturally.

This helps explain why nutritional supplements can have significant shortcomings, why 20 minutes in the sun will serve your Vitamin D needs, and thus your bone density and immune integrity better than a bottle full of ‘D’ pills or a tanker-full of ‘fortified’ Cow’s milk.

This helps explain why the Carotenoids contained in Cole slaw, sautéed veggies, or pumpkin pie will fulfill your Vitamin A needs in ways that a handful of ‘A’ tablets may fail.

And this helps explain at least two reasons why many potluck parties fall short with regards to nourishing, in a healthful way all [any] of the attendees.

When a typical SAD potluck is attended both by folks who like regular junk-food and flesh-food, and by people who prefer to eat a cruelty-free and/or a natural food diet, it doesn’t work well for either group:

The SAD potluck-ers, well, no human or any animal for that matter, will be moved any closer towards wellness/vitality by scarfing greasy chips, other blatant junk food or from any tasty pasta dish, bakery or whatever if the starch bulk comes from refined grain (Flour.)

The SAD folks may also dig into the fried chicken, something cheesy, maybe burgers off the grill or hot dogs (Yes people actually eat that stuff.) Down south (South East U.S.) people really go for ‘barbecue’, that’s Chopped Pig in a sauce of tomato, smoke flavor and almost enough salt and sugar to cancel each other out.

Well, obviously the salmonella and campylobacter in the chicken, the antibiotics, heavy viral loads, zillions of allergens, pus, and hormones in the cheesy stuff or anything from milk, the e. Coli and mad cow prions in the burgers and the Trichinella worms (Trichinella spiralis, a nematode parasite in all pigs which loves to reproduce in humans) in the pig stuff don’t sound good, and they’re not.
The very high concentrations of agricultural poisons used to grow the feed which fattens those animals and which concentrates densely in the flesh, fat and milk is not good.
And that’s all painfully obvious, and easy to demonstrate scientifically.

Even through the thick and expensive smoke screen maintained by the meat and dairy interests, independent, unbiased studies find the for-mentioned bacteria in about 80% of chicken and chicken products (Including organic) randomly selected, and likewise with the other animal sourced stuff. It’s easy to test for the infecting biological contaminants, and also easy to isolate and quantify the chemical residue. There are very long lists of health degrading, highly infective and extremely toxic freeloaders that are delivered automatically with all meaty and milky things, and I think most folks have some sense of that, though many don’t let themselves think about just how severe the situation might be, or they just can’t bear to face it.

I understand that some people think government agencies are monitoring the industries and keeping the food supply safe. Think again!

These are just some of the biological and chemical goodies that you get as unavoidable side dishes with the meat and milk.

What is possibly less obvious, yet also very, very harmful are the endogenous chemical, hormonal, and energetic compounds and influences created in the body of the food animals (Livestock) as a result of, and in response to the intense discomfort, fear and desperation that are the constant life experience of those unfortunate individuals.
One example would be the ‘adrenaline rush’, the inevitable flooding with ‘fight or flight’ hormones that occurs in the body of the animals moving down the conveyor to the end of the line. They are at that time surrounded by the horrific sounds and smells of industrial holocaust, they thrash with all their might, but can’t get free, some hormones spike 150,000 times baseline, moments before the end they lose control, they poop and pee where the floor is deep with urine, feces, blood and guts.

That right there, that place of poop and pee and blood and guts is the very place where a living, loving being, in an instant, becomes your meal.

One moment he/she was someone you might pet, minutes later, a transformation has taken place. Now the hormones of horror, the neurotransmitters of fear and some of the poop and pee and putrid intestinal contents squirting about become part of your body, your mind, your soul… if, and every time you eat or drink of another animal’s body.

Come on people, this is not fit food.

I have witnessed that sometimes the SAD hosts take offense when a CAD guest declines the generous invitations to try a little… I have, in years long passed even earned the scorn of an aunt and grandmother for excusing myself, and forgoing a slice of Pig (Ham) or some holiday ‘bird’.

“Oh, come on little salad boy, one bite isn’t going to kill you”.

Even though I have long been aware that ‘one wrong bite’ does, in fact kill more than ten million people every year, just from direct infection alone… that never was the point. I knew, as I know today that I would likely survive exposure to the parasites in the slice of ham, and it would take more than one serving of Grandma’s meatloaf to clog my arteries.

Selfish, personal welfare never was the primary motivating factor for dropping the meat. No, one bite of burger, brisket or bacon isn’t going to kill me or you, but you can’t get that bite without killing someone!

What it comes down to is that a standard potluck is rather like a funeral, with some obvious distinctions. The analogy however still works and the differences do not diminish the sadness elicited.

The potluck is a funeral for more than one individual and the attendees probably have never seen the face of, and did not personally know the deceased. At a human funeral the air may offer the smell of flowers, maybe with undertones of formaldehyde, while the air at the potluck is thick with the aroma of the cooked bodies of the ‘victims’.

At the human service, people recognize positive qualities associated with the ‘host’ and excuse any less lovable character traits, while there may be no appreciation observed for the ones ‘laid-out’ at the potluck, no recognition of the supreme sacrifice made, and not a hint of dignity directed toward the individuals lying cooked and hidden under spicy sauce.

That seems quite perverted to me, and a shameful illustration of the character and moral quality of humans.

I have never attended a dinner party with ice age cave dwellers, where the excuse might be that the hosts wanted to serve a lavish fair, but couldn’t acquire a bloodless main course because, after all it was an ice-covered world where plants and grocery stores were hard to come by. In an age when we can grow some food plants if we have a patch of Earth or a balcony and we can, at a whim, exchange dollars for any: vegetable, fruit, nut, bean, grain, fungus Etc., in endless varieties; fresh, packaged, raw, cooked, dried Etc., from anywhere on the globe, some people wonder why others would rely heavily on animals to dress (Or Disgrace) their plates. Why do some folks rely on animals to deliver nutrients ‘second hand’ when that system inevitably incorporates terror, torture, murder Etc. and delivers a dramatically inferior form of nutrition along with high concentrations of a wide variety of poison chemicals and high counts of bacterial and viral agents?

This system of producing food (Cycling nutrients through livestock), also is responsible for the greatest share of pollution, resource waste, human disease, economic waste, hunger/starvation and diabolical meanness of all industries.

If it is variety we are after that induces us to eat animal bodies, well elementary math demonstrates that an exponential explosion of dishes results from starting with a large number of compatible ingredients, as with the hundreds of commonly favored plant foods (Or many thousands, if we include more exotic edible plants.) The worn-out reliance on 3 or 4 animal species (Or expand the number to 6 or 8 if you count the more obscure beasts,) multiplies out to a comparatively tiny number of final entrée possibilities.

Adding 3or 4 animals, or a dozen different animal forms for that matter to the hundreds / thousands of plant varieties will not increase the ‘product’ of possible dishes by a meaningful degree.

The tradition of braking bread with friends is older than bread itself and is literally a ‘soul-nourishing’ activity. The practice of potlucking, where all participants bring an offering adds a further dimension of communal sharing. What is not good about sharing nourishment in the company of friends?

This is a component of the joy of life.

So why would anyone insult the spirit of the party by displaying the guts and pus of others who have been denied any and all of the joys of life that the good neighbors are celebrating at the potluck?

To a steadily increasing percentage of North Americans and Europeans the idea of torture-for-food is obscene and the display of the ‘finished product’ is, as my brother so aptly puts it, pornographic.

In some parts of the world of course, high percentages of the population have always viewed it in these terms.

Fewer than 150 years ago many or most Caucasian North Americans would not have given a second thought to the moral/ethical implications of a system which allowed for the taking control of a black human being at birth, controlling every aspect of the slave’s God-given life and forcing him/her to provide whatever the master ordered, throughout his entire life. It was also, just those few years ago, normal to provide only the most meager and poor quality life support needs, and to abuse in any way, the slave. It was quite acceptable to do whatever it took to squeeze every last bit of productivity out of the captive and end his life at any time, and by any means the master wished.

As with the livestock food production system today, the law was on the master’s side and the prevailing social norm is quite comfortable with the system the way it is. We are allowed, even encouraged to abuse, mutilate and murder members of certain species.

Most of the people around us do it too. It is accepted, daily practice to capture, cage, poison, inflict unspeakable pain upon, and murder at a young age, those individuals considered ‘commodity animals’.

Most of us do it every day, if only by ‘contract’… utilizing the power of supply and demand. Being on the demand side of the system is committing murder just as sure as wielding the cleaver, but with the comfort of hiding from the dirty deed and disguising the act with euphemisms and condiments. It’s all perfectly legal, even supported and heavily subsidized by our corporate controlled, Dark Age government. Strangely though, treating a dog or a cat the way that meat eaters treat pigs, cows and chickens is socially unacceptable and even illegal in some states.
Weird ha.

People may sometimes defend their contribution to the murderous system on the grounds that “my doctor says I must eat some meat or my health will suffer”. The statement, while it has no basis in biological reality suggests: “It is appropriate to torture and kill someone else in order that my desires are met”.

Boy, you don’t want to be on the other side of that arrangement! That rather hollow statement takes my imagination again back to, oh say, 1870, not that long ago, it was already a modern world, automobiles, electric lights and telephones were about to come on line. Many intellectuals, scholars, church leaders and political officials would agree that: “The plantation owner can’t plant the tobacco or bring in the cotton without [driving] the slaves”. That had to change, and it did. Well the process has started anyway.

As an analog to the racism backed by our own government in the near past and still practiced in the shadows today, the ‘Speciesism’ discussed here involves favoring the interests of one’s own species over those of another.

Speciesism is an ‘accepted trait’ among humans, who routinely discount the fundamental interests of non-humans to satisfy the generally trivial interests of humans. The modern agricultural system is designed in such a way that many billions of animals live under horrendous conditions most or all of their lives and then are inhumanly slaughtered while still children, so that some humans can taste flesh. Flesh, for which the humans have no nutritional requirement.

By the way, ‘legal’ is not the equivalent of ‘right’. As recently as 1858 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a black human being “Is not a Person” but “is equal to a wagon wheel or a horse”. That LEGAL ruling stood for some 20 years until another challenge in 1879. Doesn’t that blow your mind? Racism, sexism, speciesism are all equally wrong, and we all know that. One by one, we have been forced to face the injustice fostered by various ‘isms’ that society has been OK with.

Obviously if we, as a society had been more realistic, honest and compassionate, African Americans, Asian Americans, and women oppressed through sexism, would have been spared much suffering, and the shame and insult built into our history would now be comfortably less. All the long years that it took to change the collective mindset about ‘black slavery racism’ cost the oppressed ones dearly and perversely altered the quality of our society’s character. Some hundred years ago we could not wait for the courts to catch up, we had to face the sin, personally and societal-ly. More and more people stood on the side of ‘right’ and eventually the law followed.

Tremendous unnecessary suffering occurs today because we are too slow, timid, or selfish about standing up for what is right.

People are coming around, but the sluggish, incremental degrees of improvement leave many in sad situations which shames us as a people and will stain the history made today, leaving us unable to answer ‘why’, tomorrow.

Request a vegetarian starter kit today…

Unsavory hypocrisy pops up again and again when present day people support and defend the rights of African Americans and discus ‘civil rights’ over a hamburger.

Even if the welfare of a hungry human were more sacred than that of an intelligent being with fur instead of freckles, the fact is that there is no nutrient, essential for human nutrition that can’t more easily be obtained from plant foods. And ‘direct nutrition’ (Eating Plants) is in every way safer, cleaner and much more cost effective than cycling valuable nutrients through filthy-factory-farm-animals. And direct nutrition, especially if it is organically oriented is kind to the environment.

Conversely, eating mass-produced animals is devastating to the environment and so inefficient that it must be very heavily subsidized (Otherwise a skinny burger would cost $20.00 and a steak more than $80.00.)

A dietstyle which features organically grown plant food (Direct nutrition) can be easy on resources, virtually non-polluting and actually build up the topsoil. These two systems are head-butting, absolute opposites.

Without a doubt, animal agriculture the way it is done today, the way that it must be done to satisfy the everyday meat eating habit practiced by so many of our soon to be 7 billion neighbors is completely un-sustainable. Any first grader can do the math.

Even the United Nations and the prestigious Union of Concerned Scientists have been warning for years that this eating animals nonsense can’t go on. It is so ruinous to the environment that no other industry is worse, and it is so ridiculously inefficient that ‘IT’ alone could be blamed for all the food shortage related starvation in the world.

Ya see this is a very important issue.

In actual fact, every 13 seconds or so another child under the age of five passes away due to food shortage starvation and 800,000,000 humans are malnourished… This while the typical American/European eats animal produce representing on average a 30:1 nutrient and resource input / to food value recovery ratio.

An understatement is that it is hugely inefficient.

A fair analogy is a compact car that gets ½ mile per gallon and pollutes like all get-out. The redirected nutrition realized by switching from animal agriculture to direct nutrition could actually feed all the world’s humans at least three times over.

So you can see, though I realize that you may not have thought about it clearly before, that this actually is a big deal, and it’s not easily overlooked, for supporting modern animal agriculture:

Does harm the environment more than any other venture.

And it is one of the biggest economic blunders ever conceived.

So probably, participation in such a system should not be overlooked anymore. Certainly not, if only for compliance with political correctness.

I think the time has come for those of us who see what’s going on to remember that there is nothing ‘politically appropriate’ whether or not politically correct about:

Making everyone sick.

Sentencing millions of human beings to unnecessary death by starvation…And all the rest.

I have for many long years avoided the issue unless asked about it, but it occurs to me that abuse-by-silence may be abuse just the same. (*1) So it is with a certain respect for my SAD friends, and everyone eating according to television commercials, that I call to your attention the wrongful folly of “Eating Factory Farmed Animals”. And if you refuse to look the issue square in the face but instead, insult me as being ‘one of those holier-than-thou’, be-like-me fanatics, I respectfully ask what do you think truly expresses the holier-than-thou attitude more than terrorizing, torturing and murdering someone just because you can, and doing so to fulfill no actual need, and with the same stroke, laying waste to the environment, which by the way, belongs to everyone or no one equally? The Might is Right attitude is no more a sound a psychological trait than is the holier-than-thou.

Likely, I’m not the only veg’n who has been called antisocial for his reluctance to participate fully in the potluck/dinner party thing.

I know that recognizing and accounting for the rights and welfare of ‘everyone’ is in fact profoundly socially responsible, this makes me pro-social.

Again, we can illustrate the indefensible double standard with the pet/livestock comparison.
Try it sometime.
Walk into a dinner party, notice the flesh, fat and milk from numerous tortured and murdered ‘slaves’, notice the normality and how there is not a smidgen of remorse associated with the sinful spread. Next, speak harshly to the host’s puppy or kitty, just speak sternly, you need not kick the pet, you don’t need to burn a brand into his ear or prod him into a small cage with 200,000 volt jolts. Just for a moment treat him like a little less than a human. The hypocrisy exposed with this experiment is astounding as the master defends the pet’s rights and scorns your un-called-for abuse.

So, as the potluck/dinner party is typically a showcase for ‘ill gotten goods’ and displays the results of torture and murder, it is not really an appealing setting for joyful interaction or for ‘Celebrating Life’.

And if the words torture and murder strike you as too sensational because you like to think that non-human animals can only be mutilated, not tortured… and slaughtered, not murdered, let us not butt heads over terminology and instead agree that the flesh and flesh by-products on the table are there because someone, who would have liked to go on living, and who struggled with all available might to survive was indeed KILLED!

That’s just plain hard to swallow.

Ordering the imprisonment, and murder of livestock individuals so that we may savor a veal cutlet or Mc-scarf some Mc nuggets is a means to an end. Simply because we satisfy our craving does not necessarily justify the means taken, even if we deem the reward very pleasurable.

The pain and injustice inflicted is not lessened by a single degree because we did not personally know those murdered on our behalf.

…Just a means to an end. Stealing is a means to an end. If you covet something you do not have, and steal it from another… Well most people agree that steeling is wrong.

The active conscience behind the moral foundation of most folks won’t let us step on another to advance ourselves up the proverbial ladder. If enough monetary value is involved, it is universally accepted that taking someone else’s diamond ring or big screen TV is wrong, even if the victim does not actually need the item, yet stealing a ‘life’, the only life the victim has, is condoned and supported by most of the same ‘just-minded’ people.

Doesn’t add up does it?

I wholeheartedly appreciate invitations to social events and like it when folks accept my invitations too. Communion with friends and making new ones is psychologically nourishing and life-affirming-ly fulfilling. Yet I can do no less than care about the welfare of all thinking / feeling beings. So when an event showcases the murder of someone(s) who would undoubtedly have liked to live a long, happy life, that event takes on a different light. It in fact becomes more ‘dark’ than ‘light’.

I’m not into torture and murder and so must do what I can to prevent it… And I could use some help.

Whoever you are, rest assured that if I foresaw serious harm coming your way I would intervene, or at the very least call attention to the injustice so as to help prevent future harm. And if you are not available while a loved one is threatened I will defend your friend or family member no matter his/her color, religion or species.

I honestly think that we all understand that dividing rights and justifying treatment standards along lines of color, gender or species is a poor substitute for fairness and in no way exemplifies what is civilized about a civilization. But many people are just too comfortable in their long held comfort zone (Stuck in their rut), and can’t imagine running with the smaller pack, being an outsider. I understand those fears, and that it seems like a socially risky inconvenience.

But can such concerns justify unnecessary torture and murder… and environmental ruination? NO!

And if we are so concerned about what others think, can we be comfortable knowing that our grandchildren surely will want to ask how we could have so selfishly and profoundly stripped and poisoned their planet. And as society inevitably moves back again more towards a plant based diet out of necessity and reawakened compassion, what will those people in the near and distant future think of our personal choices of barbaric behavior?
Anyway when you come over to the ‘kinder side’ you will not be alone… Not by a long shot.
No fewer than two of the semi-viable U.S. presidential candidates, from two different parties in the past two races do not eat or exploit animals and have each lived that philosophy for a long time. And in a national poll conducted by Harris Interactive®. for 2006, 6.7 percent of adults aged 18 years or older in the U.S. said they never eat meat. The percentage grows daily of course, and the numbers are higher, much higher in some other counties. There is now a trend, even recently reported in mainstream news of children choosing to reduce their ‘Blood Footprint’ and declaring themselves vegetarian. One young person whose interview I digested with delight made the decision at age three; it was approved by his parents and pediatrician. Many of these kids live in non-veg homes. Fairly typically, as one might project, eventually the parents come around. The poll sited above used the word “never” [eat meat]. Dropping the word never raises the percentage significantly as various other polls have documented. And then there are those folks who simply claim to be Veg because it is becoming more and more a positive status symbol. The point is that it’s no longer an exclusive club, support abounds. Google the word VEGETARIAN today and you’ll get 41,500,000 entries, VEGAN yields 3,300,000.

Few people claim to really know what life is all about, what is the purpose of life, but most seem to agree that it works best when it is lived with attention to the altruistic and that life should be about life and love. Many people even subscribe to spiritually derived ‘commandments’ which include an outright prohibition on killing. From all of my discussions with, and observations of people as well as my own inner investigations is clear that humans innately lean toward the ‘humane’.

A number of developments however have combined to fool people into stunting expression of their (Our) humane-ness and to commit grievous crimes against the humane ideal on a daily basis.

~ Sometimes doctors (Whose average 2 ½ hours of elective nutritional lectures qualify them as ‘Un-Authorities’ in the field of nutrition) indicate by suggestion or example that eating animals is harmless.

~ The government, and it’s relevant agencies which are heavily lobbied by the meat and dairy cartels allows those corporate entities to design the graphic ‘food pyramids’ and food related educational materials for the schools… All of it.

~ Billion dollar advertising specialists effectively convince a brain-dead public that “Beef is what’s for dinner” and “Pus does a body good”.

~ The low class blood N’ guts entertainment on TV and extensive war coverage deadens the senses to the pain of others.

~ Mis-interpretation, poor interpretation, self serving interpretation of some Holy Books make possible justification of anything at all, if you really want to do it.

Whoever you may be, I am convinced that if the essence residing in your human form had been born into the body of someone of the opposite sex, covered with a different color skin or became the spark of life in a curly-tailed pig you would want someone, anyone, everyone to come to your rescue in the event that your rights, even your life were threatened, even if the abuse were ‘perfectly legal’, socially acceptable and in fact supported by regularly practiced, never questioned, learned behavior of the masses.

Plainly, pain is pain, killing is killing. Nobody likes those things; at least no one likes to be on the receiving end of them. Sometimes pain can arise spontaneously and no one is to blame… We don’t yet know how to prevent all pain.

But when a steer, a chicken, a pig or a Korean dog is imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered at a young age so that someone can poke at him or her with a fork, someone IS to blame.

That pain could have been prevented. The premature death, the killing may not have occurred at all. The wrongdoing was the direct result of a simple decision. An entirely different decision could have been made, and at the very next opportunity a more reasonable decision can be made.

As members of the Planet’s ruling species, our ability to do harm far outweighs our right to do harm. This runaway ability in fact, now threatens the well-being of the entire planet and all life-forms residing here, and profoundly reduces the likelihood that our children’s children will know the smell of clean air or the taste of pure water.

Legal rights mean nothing in the realm of actual right and wrong, at least they offer no comfort to the oppressed ones. Consider some places in the Middle East where it is perfectly legal for men to beat and rape women. Recognition of ‘the law’ does not in the least ease the pain, OR EXCUSE THE CRIME!
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
~ Martin Luther King

We can never excuse outright and elective crimes against ‘Humane-ness. And we can ease the pain, as we should of course, at every opportunity, only by preventing it in the first place.

With regards to the issue at the heart of this discussion, preventing the pain is amazingly easy.

Simply remove one category from your personal consumption habits.

Right now, most of us are independently the direct reason for much ‘crying and killing’ that goes on 24/7.
Any one of us… Every one of us can suspend our participation in this horror story.

In an instant you can make one adjustment to your life which will serve to ‘Celebrate’ not ‘denigrate’ life.

Request a vegetarian starter kit today…

You could lay your head down this very night knowing that; no more do others cry and die because of you.

Just preventing some pain, however mild or severe, however little or much is reason enough. Who can argue that?
But it is not a one way street.

The rewards for moving towards a CAD (Compassion Affirming Diet) or ‘Direct Nutrition’ / ‘Plant Based Diet’ are many and major.

Right now, the animals you eat, even though their sacrifice is supreme, provide absolutely nothing necessary for your well being which can’t be supplied more easily and economically through ‘Direct Nutrition’. The animals that people eat do however supply the eater with an unholy host of harmful and dangerous elements which automatically negatively affect well being in many ways and on various levels.

For those who just reduce their consumption of the products of Factory Farms (CAFO = Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), which supply virtually all of the meat and milk that Americans and Europeans use, personal benefits will be both immediate and long term.

Those who very much, or completely kick the habit will surely realize undeniable improvements in personal health, even those individuals who are already quite well.

Making such a sensible lifestyle adjustment will place you among a worldwide group of thoughtful people, a group whose membership is growing every minute, who, while they are not ‘better’ than others are automatically taking a huge load off the accumulative stresses that so harm and poison our only Earth.

Those who opt for Direct Nutrition (A Compassionate Diet) will be very much appreciated by more and more people as time goes on, as the population grows, the planet effectively shrinks, resources become more scarce and as members of the ruling species (Humans) are forced to produce food and other consumer items in sustainable ways.

I am certain that future human beings will curse the short-sighted selfishness that some people may have continued to exercise by relying heavily the biggest product of suffering and the worst offender of planetary health.

Future human beings will of course, praise the wisdom and thoughtfulness which will have spurred many of us to live in the most responsible manner that we can so that everyone, now and in the years to come, can have their fare share of clean air, clean water, fertile/productive soil and a healthy population.

They will thank us for deciding to reduce the collective suffering in this wonderful world. They will understand that because we said NO to useless, pointless abuse and killing, we made the world a better place and helped to make their lives better. And with each new day we will thank ourselves for reducing dysfunction and increasing happiness and health for ourselves, our children and their children.

Ultimately, the only lasting future that we can have in a NON-VIOLENT one because our increasing level of ‘violence technology’ will inevitably remove human life from the future unless we cure the ‘disease of violence’. This makes the responsibility of drastically reducing our participation in, our complacency with and our support of needless violence (Eating Animals) absolutely paramount.

It is not a difficult decision when you think about it. You either do your only physical body a tremendous dis-service, while spreading disease, pollution, causing extreme pain and committing murder on an ongoing basis, or you clean up the planet, fortify your health, give the kids a good foundation, stop wasting valuable resources… You can kill-no-more, you can add to the love in our world. We all feel the state of our world with some subtle ‘extra-sense’. The collective consciousness running through all of us keeps us apprised of the overall feeling of things in our world.

Every act of kindness instantly and automatically helps everyone, everywhere feel better. And the better we feel, the better we feel!

PEACE!
Billy

PS

I am not judging my human brothers and sisters. I am evaluating the ramifications of our choices and actions… I mean no disrespect by the candid expression of these observations.
Most everyone cares about ‘someone’. And even for those whose concern and compassion is singularly selective, we should be aware that the best we can do for our special loved-ones includes all of the things that we can do to support the health of the planet and everyone living here… As we are all connected… It is all connected.

Acting responsibly and being truly loving to our ‘personal favorite-special loved-ones’ necessitates our non-participation in unnecessary violence, and a supportive attitude (And Action) towards kindness.

Our loved-ones can live in a peaceful world only if we help to make it so.

Our loved-ones can live healthfully in a healthy world only if we help to make it so.

Everyone can have enough, and your loved-ones can have plenty to eat only through efficient/sustainable food production methods.
Using the products of Factory Farm Animal Agriculture cancels out these key ideals and automatically harms your special loved-ones.

This issue must be addressed if only to help yourself and those closest to you. And being on the sensible side of these choices you will also be a saving voice for the billions of feed-lot, hen house and slaughterhouse prisoners… You can help stop the insanity without ever saying a word if that’s your style. By simply not partaking of the ‘cadavers’ you will prevent tremendous suffering and SAVE LIVES. Even if you make the change quietly and live your new and improved life privately, somehow others will be tempted by your example also to eat more of the fruit-of-kindness and less of the root-of-carelessness.
Every time and in every way we substitute the dregs of death with the foods of life everything everywhere is made better.

… Much harm is already done, the crime has been committed and the very real threats to the future represented by this single, void-of-conscience industry have grown at an alarming rate since I first started paying attention to the bloody mess. And the insults upon human health, [other] animal welfare, economic stability and all that is the environment continue to amplify exponentially.

Up until a few generations ago, most of the food people consumed, even in the U.S. was produced on private farms. Before giant chemical companies needed a new market for the chemicals used for munitions and chemical warfare in the World Wars, poison soil amendments, herbicides and insecticides were not used on food / feed crops.

Until that time people ‘round the world ate meat occasionally and sparingly, if at all. The exceptions were some of the filthy-rich who made ‘special occasion’ items into every-day meal components. These were the people who suffered from disease conditions which now are common in the modern population.

Most people younger than myself, have little or no awareness that many folks today (Who are not vegetarian) still eat meat in small portions, and only occasionally. Nor can they conceive of a time, just those few years passed when, even in the U.S. most families had diets of mostly whole-foods, organically grown, and also ate animal flesh only occasionally and generally as a side dish. Understandably, such a different culture would be difficult for a young person living in the U.S. today to imagine. That young person after all, lives in a society where most ‘foods’ come out of brightly colored plastic packages, meat and dairy are components of most meals, and daily meals are named according to the meat portion of the meal. Already by the time I was a kid, if I asked Mom “What’s for dinner”, even though the meal might include coleslaw, mashed potatoes, green peas… the answer was “Meat loaf”, “Hamburgers”, “Pork chops”. The fact that we now take a large percentage of our food bulk and calories as animal produce in many different forms, and at almost every meal, means that we must grow and kill huge numbers of ‘commodity animals’, many more per capita than a few decades ago. Multiply that by the factor of the population increase in the same period and you begin to see why some 1 Trillion animals are sacrificed each year to feed the perverse cravings of humans and their pets.

The condition of tomorrow’s world is decided by the choices we all make today, and the way life ‘feels’ to people everywhere depends very much on how we behave right now, at home, mostly in the kitchen.

No one should be allowed to dictate what we purchase, or what you eat. Likewise no one should be allowed to harm unnecessarily another by his actions.

People on the trigger side of the second amendment, if I may generalize, believe that all responsible citizens have the right to possess a firearm, and to shoot it. But no one believes that it should be permissible to fire the gun when it is pointed at another person posing no threat. We have a right also to purchase and consume food; yet eating factory-farm meat directly kills other people who pose no threat. It kills the individuals eating it habitually as well, but suicide is a right that I choose not to argue.
~~~

Does it seem inequitable, even downright wrong that we, in the U.S. feed 80% of our corn, 80% of our combined grain, and 95% of our soy and oats to the animals people eat; and that we tie up about 90% of all the country’s agricultural land, which equals one half of all our land mass just to feed the steers, pigs and chickens? That’s kind of lopsided don’t you think? If these statistics don’t make you shake on their own, consider please that we always (So far) have enough to feed the pigs, chickens and cows (Who waste at least 90% of the food value they eat just for the energy it takes to maintain life), but we can’t seem to feed the millions of starving humans!

Actually, in a sense, it is not accurate to say that agricultural animals ‘waste’ over 90% of the energy input provided as food/feed.

What does not end up on humans’ plates is converted into body heat, huge mountains of manure, and methane gas, some of which leaves their bodies as burps, most of which enters our common atmosphere as farts. Waste may be an acceptable term because the products of that 90-some percent of energy input which are not used as food are ‘bi-products’ for which we have no useful avenue of application. More appropriate words to describe the bi-products could perhaps be: pollution, poison, disease and the stuff of life threatening climate change.

It is a bummer… that methane gas is about 25 times more potent as a global warming greenhouse gas than is the more talked about CO2, and methane is as noxious as heck.
It is a fact… that most human induced (The vast majority of) methane is produced by livestock animals.
It could be comforting… if we get some cooperation here because, unlike CO2, which lingers in the atmosphere for over 100 years, methane cycles through in about eight years, which means that kicking the meat addiction, or even reducing that vice will have a relatively immediate positive effect on the climate change problem.

Releasing much less methane into our air would of course be a very good thing. But just think of some of the other problems created by the meat habit that might begin to improve as we clean up our act.

Raising animals to eat is so insanely inefficient, wasteful, disease producing and environmentally destructive that:

So far, in modern times, something like three hundred million (300,000,000) acres of ancient rain forest have been laid to waste and converted into short-lived grazing land for cattle. This does not include the countless huge tracts dedicated to growing feed used for the ultimate fattening of the same animals… Every 8 seconds another acre of rain forest is sacrificed for burgers and beefsteak.

One skinny little greasy hamburger ruins 70 square feet of irreplaceable rain forest (The lungs and the medicine chest of the Earth)… interesting to think that just a burger or two will burn down a chunk of forest the same area as the open floor space in the average American kitchen.

That one hamburger could be called a ‘4,000 gallon burger’ because that’s how much fresh water is used to produce it. Much more wasteful than using 10 –15 gallons to produce a potato don’t you think. That 4,000 gallon figure by the way represents only the amount of valuable fresh water used to produce the meat, oceans of water are polluted in the process as well. Both serious, inexcusable insults to a thirsty world.

Is THE reason why the Ogallala Aquifer lying beneath the middle of the U.S., the largest fresh water source in the world is forecast to totally disappear into a bone dry history in fewer than fifty years. The ancient Ogallala Aquifer is a national treasure for God’s sake, one with far greater ‘real’ value than George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or even the original documents of Constitution and Independence. In spite of this, some Fat-Asses sitting on the boards of a few power-bloated corporations, too many political officials and the likes of the American Medical Association will just let it happen… If we are too apathetic to “Just Say No”.

Is the reason for the unprecedented modern phenomenon called ‘The Dead Zone, the best known is an area in the Gulf of Mexico, as large as Massachusetts, and growing, that no longer supports aquatic life.

Actually consumes 3/4ths of the fish pulled from our already stripped oceans.

Is the origin of serious historic infectious diseases and many modern ones.

Absorbs 3/4ths of all antibiotics used in the U.S., a practice which sneaks deadly amounts of these health ruining pharmaceuticals into the bodies of consumers (And eventually ends up in our waterways) and is the genesis of modern, medication resistant Super-Bugs.

Injures critically balanced biodiversity with its reliance on GM crops for feed (See GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) 100… GMOs as food homicide) and the taxpayer funded mass-murder of a wide array of wild animals… The program has been adjusted from one that included plans for a total elimination of domestic wolves to the current ‘accessory’ pact with the meat products industry, which now exterminates 1 ½ million members of our wildlife population annually who pose no threat to people but may interfere with ranchers activities.

… And it’s crazy but true that it is more economical and ‘green’ to drive a Cadillac any distance than to walk the same distance IF YOU EAT A STANDARD AMERICAN DIET, BECAUSE OF THE MEAT/MILK COMPONENT!

(When a significant portion of your calories [energy] comes from meat and milk, the ‘true’ economic cost and negative ecological impact is so great that your body is less efficient than an eight cylinder car… So if you scorn the driver of the Hummer whizzing by you in your economical compact for his blatant anti-green, oil drinking, carelessness, better tone down your Hummer cursing if you’re having Cow, Chicken or Pig tonight.)

Does this gem of a planet, which used to be blue-green and clean, and still could be a peaceful world, really need an industry that so shamefully pollutes and wastes natural resources, starves millions of people and abuses trillions of its other inhabitants, spreads old diseases and manufactures new ones, coerces governments to misrepresent the people and is literally built on lies?

Do we want an industry that weaves pain, suffering and mass execution into its operations model, and is so brutal that its activities lessen the shock and shame of geopolitical wars by comparison… and which is actually is the reason for some warring now and likely to be the most significant conflict initiator in the future, operating in our world and participating in our lives, feeding our kids?

Should we allow the existence of an industry which is obviously unsustainable but will not quit, unless we opt out as patrons, until every last drop of water and wisp of air is foul and poisoned, every grain of top soil is dead and blown away so that no food crops can grow?

Should there even be an industry conceived and managed by individuals who are so inhumane and shortsighted that they would willingly pull the life right out from under their own children and/or are too stupid to recognize what generates their salaries?

… As I listen to my words, it strikes me that the delivery comes across a bit harsh and condemning. But as I audit the thoughts driving the words, I notice that several emotions of genuine concern are attached, including:

Respect. I do, indeed, feel a sincere respect for all of my (Our) brothers and sisters… I can only believe that we are all doing our best.

A rage, because my friends are being deliberately deceived, misled and harmed for nothing more excusable than unholy greed.

A reverence for all life, and a natural, automatic and inborn drive to protect and preserve it.

An urgency aroused by the extreme severity of the problem, knowing that some of the damage cannot be undone and any more that we allow to occur may be very difficult, painful and costly to recover from.

An amazement that so many people would continually participate in such a twisted program… That leads me to the only workable assumption that fits, which is that the general public just doesn’t make the connection(s). No judgment here, but I don’t get that, because it seems like no special effort and only natural that we consider any significant spin-offs to our consumer choices. We all know that everything comes from somewhere and nothing is for free, and that cause-and-effect is always operational.

In the not too distant past everyone was keenly aware of where their food and other consumer items came from and what was required to produce them. The people and the items in their lives were generally much closer to the sources of what they ate and used. People gathered and grew food personally, and traded face to face. And no one relied on government agencies to tell them about ‘food groups’.
In present times, folks in the developed world assume [Mistakenly] that their government knows what is best and designs its recommendations based on what is actually good for them.

Many people still wrongly assume that the allopathic medical community is the ultimate, or the best, or even a reasonably reliable place to access information on dietary and ‘health’ matters. And I guess we are all just too damn busy to bother to make sense of the array of too much information. And when it comes to information, lots of folks rely exclusively on standard media to distil the gobs of info and miss-info into what they will believe. Big Mistake.

We have, operating near the top, the best brainwashing experts money can buy and political representatives (Who are only human); both paid handsomely by the very rich meat and dairy industry operatives. This devilish arrangement has been amazingly successful at programming intelligent people to think that their wares are safe to consume, even healthful and necessary components of a well designed diet.

The true purpose of producing meat and milk is of course, to generate income. It’s one of the world’s biggest businesses.
Enough time has now passed that new arrivals are being born into a world in which most people don’t remember a time before ‘excessive, commercial, factory-farm meat and milk’.

These polluting, poisoned, infected items are standard issue in most American homes.

I’m struggling to appreciate that, now we all get the programming from day one, and that the people all around me don’t really want to hurt others and ruin the planet, but how does one know what to believe even if he does consider the issue, especially when our own government, most of whose members hide from reality and run from decency, can only be counted on to support corporate interests preferentially over ours.

Well actually the science doesn’t lie, the math doesn’t lie, and the screams in the slaughterhouse speak volumes.

It is extremely clear. Growing animals for food doesn’t work. It can never work in a world with so many people who want to eat someone else’s body and drink someone else’s (Not Mom’s) milk.
I strongly appeal to everyone to start immediately to control this deadly addiction.

By the way. Yes, I do take it personally. You see God gave me children for whom I am responsible. And I care deeply also for all children everywhere, and for everyone. Of course who doesn’t? Don’t we all care about everyone?

But if you are eating and drinking factory farm animals, you are directly harming everyone everywhere. You are screwing up everything that is nice on our Earth and helping to create a future world that will be a much bigger mess than the one you were born into. Doesn’t seem fair does it. On behalf of myself, my wife, my children, my extended family, your children, ‘you’ and all the rest of our global family, I TAKE IT PERSONALLY.

I respectfully ask that you consider reducing your ‘blood footprint’ just as much as you can, just as quickly as you can. Every moment you delay represents a sizable step backwards. Really with all that is now known about this addiction and the severity of the problem there can be no more excuses. What the heck could a person be afraid of? Why would anyone not wish to be healthier, keep the kids healthier, clean up our only planet, prevent pain and enjoy the act of eating more than ever before?

Maybe you didn’t know that a plant based diet makes possible the most diverse, interesting, delicious and satisfying, nutritious, even healing (And obviously Humane) eating experiences you will ever have enjoyed.
What do you say we all cooperate on this problem, which can instead be treated as an opportunity. Let’s give the kids the best gift we can. They deserve no less.

Some think: …It is inevitable. All humans will become virtually vegan for
several undeniable reasons.

First, it is healthier / HEALTHIEST.

Second, it is compassionate.

Third, it is sustainable, the common alternative is not.

And eventually technology will create food alternatives
which duplicate those animal foods which we now eat.

It may take the human race 100 years to adopt a
totally plant-based diet. It may take one-thousand
years. It will one day happen because we continue to
evolve intellectually and spiritually. Today, we are
witnesses to the infancy of that lifestyle change.

By adopting a universally accepted plant-based diet,
the threat of animal diseases which now plague man
will one day be eliminated.

If we [humans] are truly evolving, if we are in fact not ‘De-volving” we must, however slowly, be moving towards a more humane relationship with non-human animals, with fellow ‘human animals’ and developing also a more responsible attitude with our Earth.
The Vegan way is the one way that avoids mean-hearted exploitation, arrests the worst pollution and resource waste, allows for everyone to be fed and live healthfully. It dramatically reduces the generation and transmission of infectious and degenerative diseases, thereby making everyone happier and saving us tons of money. Greater acceptance of the vegan way reduces and/or removes much of what we [will otherwise] fight about and makes possible the peace that is long overdue.

Thanks!

Potluck Epilogue:

Ya know, last year someone very close to me was attacked and abused, while in the company of… actually BY a group of spiritual seekers. Funny, because the people at the potluck were all, I think, well meaning, thoughtful folks who regularly gather to study spiritual stuff and work on self improvement. Part of what they work on, very importantly, is about ‘acceptance’ and there is also interest among them of living ‘lightly’ on the Earth and of ‘Being Kind’. That said, when my dear friend declined an invitation to eat [I don’t know what], someone took offence and simply would not settle for a sincere “No Thanks”. I have been in the same situation countless times, and understand how uncomfortable it can feel for the person who says “No Thanks” when we sense the discomfort and even anger well up in the other person. I (We) feel badly for the other guy too. As the story was told to me, my friend declined repeatedly and respectfully, and tried to not get into ‘why’. Sometimes you can sense which way the discussion/debate is likely to go, and choose to act in a manner most likely to keep the energy peaceful.

But when pressed even more,.. and when a detailed explanation was demanded, my friend finally complied. Then the pushy person and others in attendance really got upset because they “Did not see it that way.” The pushy person (Who asked but didn’t like the answer), with some back-up, felt it necessary to defend his position, which he thought could only be done by attacking my friend’s philosophy and futilely trying to blow holes in the opposing view… In the process of course, he displayed the familiar moral schizophrenia that is undeniably expressed by the behavior of ‘animal lovers’, spiritual devotes, environmentalists, health-nuts and civil rights sympathizers who eat animals.

There are those Veg’ns, (usually new to the philosophy, still enamored and surprised by each new realization of the endless benefits to self, mankind, the environment Etc. tied to the veg’n way), who may play the missionary roll, working to convert everyone in their sphere, and like any other born-agains, can be an annoyance to those heathens not yet saved. Generally, I have noted these folks settle into a more socially acceptable manner of living their cleaner life, and speak when spoken to on the subject, eventually coming to realize that ‘example’ is the best teacher.
At any rate the principal in this story is a veteran veg’n who long ago learned how to interact harmoniously and to find interesting and respectable traits in the people around him… Not the type to start trouble.

If as in the words of George Bush 1’s speech writer, which George senior may have rehearsed while munching his favorite snack of pork rinds (Some poor, sick pig’s deep fried skin) we are to have a “Kinder, Gentler World”, we probably should not attack or try so hard to find fault with people who are quietly stepping a little lighter, and finding ways to reduce their ‘Blood Footprint’ specifically, and negative impact generally, during their time here.

I doubt that anyone walking around in a physical body and thinking with a little human mind has all the answers and knows what is right / best on any subject. But most would agree, I think, that when there is a choice between murder or mercy, environmental degradation or preservation, maliciousness or kindness, one choice is distasteful and the other is easier to swallow… One is indefensible, the other clearly and naturally best.

Acts of kindness reverberate endlessly and everywhere as do malevolent ones.

Dietstyle discussions can come with attached emotional charges. Of course they would; torturing and killing are ‘emotion-rich deeds’. Efforts to protect and preserve life and liberty are emotion rich as well. Destroying the ‘cleanness’ of the Earth often has an apathetic component, and it may not be strong emotions which drive such poor choices, working to foster reverence for, and protecting the ‘cleanness’ of our Mother however, generally does seem to be attached to something emotional.

An attempted defense of the violence-dependent typical western dietstyle, it seems to some, can only come from destructive selfishness and/or regrettable but understandable ignorance. The ignorance may be understandable because it can result directly from the sloppy ways that we are encouraged to live our lives and by the cleverly deceptive advertising strategies relied on by the meaty corporations.

I respectfully submit that ignorance can be no excuse when the welfare and vary life of someone is at stake. Some one trillion individuals every year are mercilessly relieved of their miserable lives because some people just don’t know and others just don’t care.

Why not simply take a look and evaluate what our behavior and consumer choices mean to those around us, to the planet which sustains us, and what our choices will mean to our own individual future. It just takes a little attention. Anything less is as smart as stepping into a busy street with your child at your side without looking.

Please look!

Well, if you made it this far and have enough tolerance left to fill in some of the blanks, please avail yourself of some of the info and resources found in the links below. At least consider the first few paragraphs in: Milk, and the many ill conditions it causes as that nasty white stuff with the ‘way-to-good’ reputation is so closely linked, an so integrally a part of the problem. See also the relatively short and concise: MILK MATH

Back to: Dr Billy Health .com

Request a vegetarian starter kit today…

Request a vegetarian starter kit today…

~~~

Just a few relevant quotes from notable people:

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher

“The standard four food groups are based on American agricultural lobbies. Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby.”
—Marion Nestle

“Whether industrialized societies…can cure themselves of their meat addictions may ultimately be a greater factor in world health than all the doctors, health insurance policies, and drugs put together.”
—The China-Oxford-Cornell Project on Nutrition

We all love animals. Why do we call some “pets” and others “dinner?” ~ K.d. Lang

Pigs may not be as cuddly as kittens or puppies, but they suffer just as much. ~James Cromwell

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~Albert Einstein

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” ~ Pythagoras, mathematician

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
~ Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
~ Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”
“What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.”
~ Leo Tolstoy author

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
~ Thomas Edison, inventor

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
John F. Kennedy

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” ~ Pythagoras, mathematician

Commenting on the UN-cleanliness of poultry, Gerald Kuester, USDA said “Birds are no cleaner than if they had been dipped in a toilet”

“We used to trim the shit off the meat, then we washed the shit off the meat, now the consumer eats the shit off the meat” ~ Carl Blenn, USDA inspector

“The less the consumer knows about what’s happening before the meat hits the plate, the better” ~ Peter Cheeke, Professor of Animal Science

“Based on my experience… my advice to the people is not to eat meat” ~ Gregorio Natavidao, Meat inspector

“I don’t eat chicken anymore, I won’t eat it, I won’t allow it in my house” ~ Rodney Leonardo, U.S. poultry inspector

Farm animals produce 130 times the poop that humans do… And no farm or feedlot is required to have a proper sewage system. ~ Just a fact
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(*2) I have for many long years avoided the issue unless asked about it, but it occurs to me that abuse-by-silence may be abuse just the same.

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th U.S. president

A time comes when silence is betrayal.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.