Forum - Stowarzyszenie Empatia

karis napisał(a):Jako weganka zrezygnuję z takich nawyków.

xpert17 napisał(a):Dodam, że to moim zdaniem to jest dokładnie ta sama postawa ("czego jeszcze ode mnie chcecie"), która powoduje, że wielu wegan, którzy myśląc o rzezi wyeliminowali ze swojej diety mleko i jajka (a z życia np. wełnę czy jedwab) pozwala sobie bezrefleksyjnie na (...)

A Call to Vegetarians
Angel Flinn

“The object of our Group is to state a case for a reform that we think is moral, safe and logical. In doing so we shall, of course, say strongly why we condemn the use of dairy products and eggs. In return we shall expect to be criticized. It will be no concern of ours if we fail to convert others, but we do think it should concern them if, deep in their hearts, they know we are right.”

- Vegan Society Founder Donald Watson, The Vegan News, November 1944

A great many people become vegetarian for ethical reasons, in response to a strong sense that animals shouldn’t be mistreated on factory farms, or that they simply should not be killed for food. However, many individuals who eschew meat out of concern for animal interests continue to consume and use other animal products. Many vegetarians, in fact, upon removing flesh products from their diet, actually increase their intake of eggs and dairy, two products which result from extreme animal abuse.

The production of milk and eggs involves both tremendous cruelty and also the deaths of billions of animals every year. Not only are these animals killed just like those raised specifically for meat, but they are kept alive longer, and subjected to a tragic lifetime of slavery, including the horrific violations that come from the brutal exploitation of their reproductive systems.

Typical dairy cows are only considered "productive" for two years, and are slaughtered when they are only four years old. During their short, wretched lives, they are subjected to annual cycles of artificial insemination, and suffer through several courses of mechanized milking every day. This occurs for 10 out of 12 months of the year, including 7 months of their 9-month pregnancies. When they give birth each year, their calves will be taken away within their first few days. A bovine mother’s newborn has only two possible futures… If she is born female, she will be sent into dairy production, into the same tragic life of reproductive slavery as her mother. If he is male, he will be sold to farmers who will sell his flesh as veal.

As with dairy products, eating eggs also contributes to both immense suffering and the violent deaths of millions of innocent animals. When chickens are bred for egg production, only the females are useful to the industry, so the male chicks are considered byproducts. Each year, millions of male chicks are gassed, crushed, or thrown into garbage bins to die from dehydration or asphyxiation.

But what about organic milk, and free-range or cage-free eggs? The truth is that for any product to be mass produced (and therefore economically viable), animals must be bred in massive numbers, subjected to a lifetime of exploitation, and eventually transported to the slaughterhouse, where they will be brutally murdered. The use of the word “humane” to describe animal products is nothing but a marketing ploy by the animal industry. Animal farming is a huge business which involves vast sums of money, and those with a vested interest are not going to just sit back and do nothing while the news of animal cruelty in their facilities reaches more and more anxious consumers. But those of us who claim to be concerned about the lives of animals ought not to sucked in by such blatant industry propaganda.

If you are an ethical vegetarian, and you have already decided that animals are individuals who should not be subjected to unnecessary suffering, consider using this year's World Vegetarian Awareness Month, which is celebrated each and every October, to question whether your vegetarianism is really an appropriate reflection of the values you believe in. If your conscience is no longer satisfied with your lacto-ovo status, then I have some good news: Veganism isn’t difficult, as you might have been led to believe… There are growing numbers of happy, healthy vegans who enjoy exciting, delicious food, improved health from eliminating all animal products from their diets, and a new lease on life as a result of ending their dependence on industries that cannot exist without consumers who continue to contribute money to support the slavery and abuse of our fellow beings.

What makes veganism even more empowering is that it goes far beyond diet, and eliminates one’s contribution to the entire animal use paradigm. Consider the words of Eva Batt, writing in 1964:

“In our opinion, it matters not one jot to the innocent creature whether it is to be slaughtered for human food, medicine, clothing, sport, or such luxuries as ivory ornaments, horn, bone or tortoiseshell knick-knacks, crocodile handbags, or exotic perfume. Sudden death in the prime of life, or the lingering agony of pain and starvation in a steel trap, must be as terrifying for the field-mouse, stoat or rabbit as for the hunted tiger, whale or stag... Sometimes it is the baby, or rather its skin, which is coveted by man. What the parent seal feels as she grieves over the bloody remains of her clubbed and quickly skinned pup, is probably no different from the anguish of the domestic cow on losing her newly-born calf.”

Animal lovers: Don’t run or hide from the truth of veganism. It is a liberating experience when you let its significance move in on you… And it is a source of unending joy to spend your life striving to live up to its ideal.

Why vegetarianism should not be advocated
Adam Kochanowicz
August 14th, 2009

I was once a vegetarian who believed so strongly in vegetarian education, I continued to recommend others go vegetarian even when I was a vegan. Eventually, I came to my senses and realized the ethical implications of a vegetarian diet are no better than an omnivorous one.

Yet advocates today are happy to tell people to go vegetarian due to some faulty logic which I will examine. Advocates believe vegetarianism is useful because it leads to veganism and anyone who disagrees is "infighting."

I've been accused plenty of times by vegetarians of being "anti-vegetarian," I was once a vegetarian myself and I wish someone would have written this article for me. For those of you who truly take the rights of animals seriously, I'm asking you to read this article with an open mind.

Should animal rights activists promote vegetarianism?

Of course, advocating an entirely vegan lifestyle can be overwhelming to some but should advocating vegetarianism be our response? While an individual may not be persuaded to give up all animal products, we should keep our message vegan, never recommending vegetarianism as a step. I will explain why I believe this momentarily.

Truly, there are no sets of animal products which are more ethical to animals than another set. All require exploitation which puts an animal in the situation in which poor treatment is inevitable. The general public is lead to believe, for instance, dairy can't be so bad because you don't have to kill the cow to get the milk.

However, pretty much all food animals will end up in the slaughter house once they no longer fulfill their previous role as existing for our use. When a cow stops giving milk, a bird stops producing eggs, an elephant stops doing tricks, what do you suppose a business which relies on these functions will do?

In the case of dairy cattle, you can also add the physical torment of bruised and infected udders, paralysis from long-term standing, and consider the suffering and death inflicted on the calves produced from keeping that cow pregnant. Just like a human female, constant lactation requires constant impregnation. Calves of dairy cattle are sent to veal farms where they are locked up and eventually killed.

What if they just won't go vegan?

So to this person who simply doesn't want to go vegan, I would not say to them "would you at least go vegetarian?" because this implies there is a moral distinction between the effects from vegetarian and an omnivore. Some advocates do recommend vegetarianism because they wish to ease them in with a gradual approach. I also support gradual approaches but vegetarianism is a poor one. Instead, I would tell them, in so many words, to be as vegan as possible.

If you are as surprised as many of my readers are by the statement that there is no moral distinction between the effects of a vegetarian and an omnivore, consider what a vegetarian is asked to do. Vegetarianism essentially says that only food consumption and only food in the form of meat is unethical. This is simply not true. Animals are used for a variety of purposes like labor, chemicals, textiles, entertainment, and research. Meat is only one such product that comes from animal use. All require torture, all require death. Even the supposedly ethically higher-ranking use of animals as domesticated pets.

The fundamental inconsistency of vegetarianism

Vegetarianism does not even demand that an individual eat fewer animal products. In fact, vegetarians often consume more because they are replacing their diet with secondary animal products like dairy and eggs. So vegetarianism is a rule of consuming animals as much as one wishes as long as its not in the form of meat. This does not prevent or speak out against animal exploitation whatsoever.

You may suggest that someone will inadvertently consume fewer animal products as a result of vegetarianism. While that is highly unlikely, an individual will consume fewer animal products not because they're a vegetarian because they're eating fewer animal products. If someone inadvertently consumed fewer animal products because they started eating at a different restaurant, should we advocate to people to eat at a different restaurant?

You may also suggest that vegetarianism is a "step" towards veganism in that it eliminates a part of one's animal palate in preparation of a vegan diet. Indeed, this is the only way it could be a step towards veganism. However, why should meat be the first wave of elimination? I believe it would be more practical for us to tell an omnivore to take out as many animal products from their diet/life as possible.

If we instead tell them that specific products should be eliminated, what does this tell them about these products over non-food animal products and non-meat food animal products? And if we tell them to stop eating meat, we may have missed an opportunity to bring someone to veganism by having them remove other things they could easily get rid of right away!

I'm reminded of a vegetarian friend of mine who was looking over a menu. She read the ingredients of a product and saw it had milk and said to herself "oh, that's vegetarian, I can eat that." So you see that vegetarian advocacy in this particular case prompted the person to abstain from non-vegetarian products rather than to abstain generally from animal products. A false moral distinction is made.

"Veganism is extreme"

Vegetarian advocacy also strengthens the mindset that vegetarianism is the default way to object to animal use and veganism is simply an unnecessary extreme for the truly dedicated. Veganism must be the starting point. Veganism by definition is the only lifestyle choice which seeks to exclude as far as practical and possible all forms of animal exploitation.

Let me suggest to you to just try this. Recommend veganism. If someone asks you about vegetarianism, be politely upfront about the inconsistencies of vegetarianism and see what happens. If you don't tell them, who will? I've been doing this for a long time and I have quickly proven my old mindset incorrect that people will be scared away.

It is for this reason I am passionate about writing these articles. Most of the people to whom I talk about these issues feel offended or that I am fighting with someone who wants the same things as me. However, as you can see, these are important arguments to consider.

"Don't eat meat"

I rarely use the word "meat" alone in my discussion of veganism. I think meat consumption is just as unethical as leather, wool, honey, animal-labored, animal-tested products, etc. I basically use the word "animal product" where others say "meat".

As for breaking the mainstream image, I think this person has transcended from one mainstream image to another. Now this person sees "meat" as the culprit of animal cruelty even though animal death is just as involved in the production of other animal products like eggs and dairy, sometimes with even more cruelty.

Are vegetarians more open-minded to learn about other forms of cruelty? Maybe, as they may also be more close-minded for thinking there are the moral distinctions I listed earlier. For the purposes of this discussion, we're considering someone who is a complete omnivore and is not appealing to veganism. We have the choice of accepting their reluctance by recommending them vegetarianism and the abstinence from meat instead, or reinstating veganism as the only starting point and telling them that only the increased reduction of animal products (any animal products) can be a positive step, a choice they can reasonably consider.

Try recommending just eating vegan at their next meal. Tell them they should try having a vegan breakfast or master a vegan recipe they can make from time to time. Tell them where vegan restaurants and options are. If you're satisfied with them being vegetarian, you'll find that someone who 'can't go vegan' will end up vegetarian by these suggestions without your recommendation. In fact, they may end up smart enough to call themselves someone who abstains greatly from animal products (if not completely).

Does vegetarianism lead to veganism?

Often, the "proof" given that vegetarianism leads to veganism is that a certain number of vegans were vegetarian initially. But does this really prove anything? Does it support vegetarianism as an effective technique for vegan advocacy? As I mentioned before, I was a vegetarian before I was vegan. Even if something about one's personal experience helped him/her to become a vegan, this should be considered along with the very negative impacts vegetarian advocacy has. Why wouldn't you switch for a more logically consistent and efficient form of advocacy?

Shouldn't we be working together?

"Infighting" is a word I hear too often. This word is very problematic in its implication of a unified message. Vegetarian advocacy is often performed by groups who have a fundamentally different position than an abolitionist vegan. We are not in the same boat! Most vegetarian advocacy organizations are not concerned with the fact that animals are used but how they are used. That is, these groups find no moral objection to the use of animals. That is an entirely different position which does not work toward the same goal.

Sometimes disagreements come off as harassments but understand articles like these are bold in their disagreements in order to arrive at the truth. Without a sound logical approach, action goes to waste and can even hurt the movement. This may be the first time you've heard such a disagreement and I'm asking you to consider it with an open mind.

karis napisał(a):

Adam Gac napisał(a):Dlaczego nie są najzdrowsze? Czy szkodzą w jakiś sposób produkty sojowe? Które z nich?

Nie wiem, czy produkty sojowe szkodzą ludziom całkowicie zdrowym, jednak w moim przypadku pojawia się problem, o którym usłyszałam od mojej lekarki. Jest homeopatką i preferuje leczenie niekonwencjonalne. Mówiąc w skrócie, mam problemy z układem rozrodczym i pani doktor stwierdziła, że powinnam absolutnie wykluczyć z diety produkty które zwiększają poziom estrogenu, gdyż mam go zdecydowanie za wiele.

Adam Gac napisał(a):

No cóż, z tego co się orientuję homeopatia to po prostu wielka ściema. Leczenie za pomocą placebo. Odnośnie soi i estrogenów to rzeczywiście polecam to co Kaśka zaproponowała do przeczytania czyli jej tłumaczenie wykładu Jacka Norrisa http://empatia.pl/magazyn/teksty/co_nau ... norris.pdf
Polecam też wykład Małgorzaty Desmond na temat tego czy dieta wegańska ma oparcie w nauce. Podczas wykładu i zadawanych później pytań i odpowiedzi Małgorzata wypowiada się także na temat kobiet w ciąży oraz matek karmiących. Także jest tam też wiele informacji dotyczących zdrowia kobiet - weganek.
pozdrawiam,

Why Vegetarianism Isn’t Enough
Bob Torres, Ph.D. and Jenna Torres, Ph.D

February 14, 2009

The following is an excerpt from the 2nd. edition of our book, due out in September 2009 from PM Press. We wrote the following for those of you who might still be sitting on the ovo-lacto vegetarian fence, wondering if you should take the leap to veganism. Hint: you should! But read ahead if you want to be convinced.

Even though you may agree with the ideas behind ethical veganism on a philosophical level, more than a few of you out there may have the idea that veganism is just too far out there, too much work, and too damn annoying to deal with. As a compromise, you may be either deciding to go or stay vegetarian, because, really, that just seems so much more reasonable a solution. Plus, you could never imagine giving up cheese, or cream in your coffee, or scrambled eggs, or whatever other animal product you regularly crave.

We get where you’re at, but we fervently believe that you need to move beyond this if you truly care about animals. While vegetarianism may be a comfortable place for you to land for animal rights reasons, vegetarianism involves habits of consumption that create conditions of extreme discomfort and death for the animals that you claim to care about. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger: we spent so much time as smug, self-assured “ethical” ovo-lacto vegetarians that we understand the mindset particularly well. We thought we were doing something good with our vegetarianism, but it turns out, we were just part of the problem, and if you’re a vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy and other animal products, you’re part of the problem, too.

Yeah, that’s a bit blunt, but before you throw down the book and get all angry at us for being radical vegan assholes, give some consideration to these two huge reasons why vegetarianism is a poor response to the problem of animal exploitation.

Huge reason #1: Whereas eating meat directly involves the death of the animal to get the flesh, many vegetarians assume that consuming eggs and dairy doesn’t kill any animals. Thus, the reasoning goes, eating those products is not a moral wrong because no lives are taken. This approach is deeply flawed because it does not take into consideration the operation of modern, intensive agricultural production. The one thing that you should never forget is that animal agriculture is a globalized business that strives to maximize profits on the backs of animals and to achieve the greatest possible efficiencies. With very slim profit margins throughout the industry, producers cannot afford to waste anything, and you can bet that they will not keep animals around that are non-productive. So, first and foremost, this means that the chickens who lay eggs are inevitably slaughtered when their productivity declines beyond a certain point. The industry has insidious ways of disposing of so-called “spent hens” that range from miniature gas chambers to electrocution to neck-breaking. In a similar way, the cows who are producing milk meet their end when they fail to “yield” the right averages for the herd; this can be brought on by their age, or even by an infection or other illness. Most dairy cows who have arrived at the end of their so-called “useful” lifespan end up slaughtered many, many years before they would die naturally, after which they are rendered into ground beef and other constituent parts.

The other obvious issue that no one is ever encouraged to think about is the case of the males involved in this whole process. Egg-laying hens and dairy cows are both female. Since animals roughly tend to give birth to females and males in a 50-50 ratio, where do the approximately 50% of males end up? In the case of egg-laying hens, the males are absolutely worthless to the producer. If they can’t lay eggs, and they’re not good for meat,

to raise them would simply be a waste of money, and no egg producer – free range, or not, organic or not – is in this business to lose money by being a farm sanctuary for non-productive animals. Thus, the male chicks are often discarded at birth by being ground up alive and used for “raw protein,” or thrown in dumpsters to starve and suffocate slowly – an act of unimaginable cruelty.

For dairy cows, the male calves face a similar end. Males cannot produce milk, and so are worthless for the dairy farmer, who, like the egg producer, does not want unprofitable mouths to feed around his farm. Male calves, then, are usually forcibly separated from their mothers and sold at auction within days after they are born, often ending up as veal calves. Deeply confused and likely terrified by the absence of their mothers, these newborns with a herd instinct scarcely have a chance to understand the world before they are chained by the neck, all alone, inside tiny crates where they can barely move, lest their muscles grow too much. Because veal with a pinkish hue fetches the best prices at market, these horribly unfortunate animals – animals who are clearly sentient, who clearly feel and comprehend the world around them – will spend their entire short lives this way, suffering and confused, sentenced to what is demonstrably a hell on earth, all because of that supposedly “harmless” system of dairy production that provides milk to ovo-lacto vegetarians. As you can see, harmless eggs and harmless milk are a fantasy, and if you’re a vegetarian, now is the time to own up and stop living the lie. You might soothe yourself with excuses for why you cannot change, but ultimately, those excuses do nothing to help the animals that you, as a so-called “animal rights vegetarian” claim to care about.

Huge reason #2: The other big reason that so-called “animal rights” ovo-lacto vegetarianism is pointless has to do with the essential problem of the relationship of dominance that humans assert over animals. Veganism as a social movement – and if we’re going to get serious about veganism, we have to begin building a movement that goes beyond mere consumption – seeks to redefine the ways in which humans relate to animals. To be vegan is to demand that animals are accorded rights that cannot be violated for mere reasons of convenience, taste, or tradition. Many of the basic rights that abolitionist vegans push for are rights would look pretty similar to the ones that we all cherish, including the right not to be the property of another, the right of bodily integrity and safety, and the right not to be used solely as the means to another’s ends (we treat these rights at great length in the next chapter). Put most simply, we are looking to abolish animal slavery by according animals a set of inalienable rights.

Thus, even if it were somehow possible to produce dairy and eggs that did not result in the death of billions of animals a year, a producer still must confine and control animals to produce these commodities for consumers – consumers which clearly include legions of ovo-lacto vegetarians. Fully the property of their owners, the animals involved in these forms of production are little more to their owners than living machines for profit, slaves who day in and day out for every single day of their lives suffer solely to fulfill demands extraneous to their own desires and needs. Though the particulars of confinement and slavery may differ slightly by setting, the same basic and underlying dynamic holds whether the products in question are the typical ones in your grocery store, or whether they are labelled “cage-free,” “local,” “organic,” or even “free-range.” The myth of a compassionate animal product is just that: a myth.

As people who care about animals, we have a heavy burden to bear, one that deserves our utmost attention and our greatest effort. The enormity of the task is overwhelming, but we can all begin to make a change if we work at it together. The good news is that you are in a position to do something about it, and to make positive changes in your life that recognize the inherent worth of animals as fellow beings. The bad news is that as billions – yes, billions – of animals die each year, we can no longer afford self-indulgent half-measures and wishy-washy excuses that damn more and more animals to lives and deaths of total misery. Instead of looking for the path of least resistance, we have to seize our lives and live as examples. We have to work constantly to redefine and rethink the relationship between humans and animals, and to model changes in this relationship in our daily lives to those around us. We owe at least this much to those that we purport to care about, those who cannot speak for themselves. It comes down to this: If you care about the well-being of animals, and you object to their needless suffering and death, you must stop remaking the dynamics that exploit animals in the first place. As a lived form of protest, veganism is the expression of this desire for justice, a visceral and logical reaction to the horrors visited on others in our name. It is time to give up the quaint relic that is vegetarianism, and take the first and most essential step in combatting a system that treats animals not as creatures who can feel and love and think, but instead as mere engines for the production of profit. It is time to take that step and go vegan.

gzyra napisał(a):A jak wam się podoba Wegeraider?