Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. 

There is no fundamental difference between humans and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. 

A striking similarity between the human and non-human mammalian brain is seen in the electrical activity patterns of electroencephalograph (EEG) readings. A dog, for example, has the same states of activity as man, its EEG patterns being almost identical in wakefulness, quiet sleep, dreaming, and daydreaming. As for the chemistry of the central nervous and endocrine systems, we know that there is no difference in kind between human and other animals. The biochemistry of physiological and emotional states (of stress and anxiety, for example) differ little between mice and men. 

The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and correspondingly complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man--whether this be in entertainment, as 'pets', for food, in research laboratories or any of the other uses to which we subject them. 

The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?' 

Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own. Apart from the complexity of the cerebral cortex (which does not directly feel pain) their nervous systems are almost identical to ours and their reactions to pain remarkably similar. 

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals. 

Every form of life is unique, warranting respect regardless of its worth to man, and to accord other organisms such recognition, man must be guided by a moral code of action. 

The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves--the animals. 

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. 

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done. 

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. 

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals. 

I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. 

The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. 

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. 

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. 

When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure of killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration? 

We must reach the point that killing for sport will be felt as a disgrace to our civilization. 

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. 

A trusting dog is strapped into an unyielding steel restraining device. Then a lab technician forces a hose down the helpless dog's resisting throat and pours a caustic brew of harsh cleaning fluid into the trembling animal's stomach. The frightened dog whines in pain and terror as the chemicals sear and burn. 

We share their (IDA's) goal of trying to eliminate the need for animals in product testing. 

As a board-certified emergency medicine physician who has been practicing for ten years, I have never found data from acute toxicity or eye irritancy tests on animals to be useful in treating patients. I would not rely on these data to treat patients, and I know of no physician who does. 

As an emergency physician who has treated countless cases of accidental poisonings and exposures to dangerous products, I disagree with the contention that animal tests are necessary to determine the safety of cosmetics and household products. Animal tests do not protect consumers from unsafe products. In my 15 years as an emergency physician, I have never found the results of an animal test to be of any benefit in guiding the treatment of patients who have been poisoned. 

You and I are being lied to by corporate America when they tell us all this cruelty is "necessary." We are being fed this lie by the same people who make their living tormenting animals, by the same people who have a vested interest in keeping a $7 billion-a-year animal research and testing business just the way it is. 

Encouraged by laboratories seeking a cheaper alternative to the more expensive animals sold by licensed breeders, "bunchers"--people who sell dogs and cats to professional dealers--often scoop up abandoned animals and sometimes snatch pets right out of people's backyards. 

The shocking truth is that some animal researchers prefer pets which have been given love and care by people...because these animals are healthy, well-mannered and docile. That's why some states already have "pound seizure" laws--legislation requiring shelters to release "unclaimed, stray and abandoned animals" for medical experimentation. And why groups like the American Physiological Association and the American Medical Association have redoubled their efforts to help enact broad new pound seizure laws across the nation. 

By and large, students are taught that it's ethically acceptable to perpetuate, in the name of science, what, from the point of view of the animals, would certainly qualify as torture. By the time they arrive in the labs...it is only too easy for them to justify this suffering on the grounds that the work being done is for the good of humanity. For the good of the one animal species which has evolved a sophisticated capacity for empathy, compassion and understanding, attributes which we proudly acclaim as the hallmarks of humanity. 

I believe I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. 

Surely it should be a matter of moral responsibility that we humans, differing from other animals mainly by virtue of our more highly developed intellect and, with it, our greater capacity for understanding and compassion, ensure that medical progress speedily detaches its roots from the manure of non-human animal suffering and despair. 

If you cannot attain to knowledge without torturing a dog, you must do without the knowledge. 

How can we, the citizens of civilized, western countries, tolerate laboratories which--from the point of view of the animal inmates--are not unlike concentration camps? 

If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as 'human rights'? How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder? 

What sense does it make for dairy products to be considered one of the basic food groups for humans? Billions of humans are incapable of fully digesting dairy products and millions more suffer allergic reactions to them. Homo Sapien is the only species whose members consume dairy products beyond infancy and the only one whose members drink the milk of another species. 

Ice cream is a healthful food made from milk and cream along with other good food. Drink milk at every meal and have some in foods like these: cheese, ice cream, baked custard, bowl of cream of tomato soup, with a pat of butter on top. 

In virtually every school district in the country, the minds of two generations of children have been fed the self-serving pap served up in generous portions by the National Dairy Council. 

The 37 million elementary and 15 million high school students in the United States constitute a special Meat Board audience. 

The modern layer is, after all, only a very efficient converting machine, changing the raw material--feedstuffs--into the finished product--the egg--less, of course, maintenance requirements. 

Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory. Schedule treatments like you would lubrication. Breeding season like the first step in an assembly line. And marketing like the delivery of finished goods. 

What we are really trying to do is modify the animal's environment for maximum profit. 

Estrus control will open the doors to factory hog production. Control of female cycles is the missing link to the assembly-line approach. 

The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine. 

At the Animal Research Institute we are trying to breed animals without legs and chickens without feathers. 

No one can contemplate directly eating 13 pats of butter, but they essentially do when they eat a cheesburger. 

Two-thirds to three-quarters of all the penicillin and tetracycline manufactured in this country go for subtherapeutic use in animal production. As a matter of course, poultry, cattle, and hogs in this country are raised on feed that is medicated. 

We feed medicated feed all the way to market. 

If you know that animal food sources contain a lot of these substances which you know are potentially harmful, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go on eating them. 

If the American public knew what garbage they were eating, they would revolt. 

We have had outbreaks of salmonella related to almost every food of animal origin: poultry, beef, pork, eggs, milk and milk products. There are probably between 400,000 and four million cases of salmonellosis a year in the United States. 

People have gone to the store and picked up packages of poultry and taken them off to a laboratory and checked them for salmonella contamination. The numbers of birds contaminated has been shown in several studies to be around a third. 

I believe it's completely feasible to specifically design an animal for hamburger. 

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. 

Look, if you want beef, this is the only way you can have it. There's no room in this business for a 'be nice to animals' attitude. There's work to be done, and that's all there is to it. 

Let no one regard as light the burden of his responsibility. While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on, while the moans of thirsty animals in railway trucks sound unheard, while so much brutality prevails in our slaughterhouses...we all bear guilt for it. 

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth? 

Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another! 

But for the sake of a little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of the proportion of life that it had been born into the world to enjoy. 

...and then I found myself realizing, with an amazement which time has not diminished, that the 'meat' which formed the staple of our diet, and which I was accustomed to regard like bread or fruit or vegetables--as a mere commodity of the table--was in truth dead flesh the actual flesh and blood of oxen, sheep, and swine, and other animals that were slaughtered in vast numbers. 

I was shocked speechless. I just sat there staring at my plate. It was a God Damned Turkey I was eating! I couldn't believe it! Those were its legs, right there in front of me, disguised by all the cranberries and sauce! What did it have to be thankful for on this great Thanksgiving Day? 

...join me in making all holidays celebrations of life. Who wants to celebrate one's own good fortune by robbing others of their pleasure, even of their breath? 

Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends. 

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times. 

No turkey sandwich is worth making a terrified bird rattle down the road in a truck, half suffocated by the bodies of his fellows, then be dragged out by his wings, turned upside down and given a knife in his throat. 

You will find no meat being served at our concerts, either by vendors or backstage. 

If you can't conceive of beating an animal, you shouldn't conceive of eating an animal. 

If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one. 

Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize his rapacity, especially when it comes to something he wants to eat. 

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity. 

Cruelty is acknowledged only where profitability ceases. 

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. 

Each act of denial, conscious or unconscious, is an abdication of our power to respond. 

High protein diets contribute to two problems: kidney disease and osteoporosis. A normally varied diet of foods from plants will provide plenty of protein. If you include meat, poultry, or fish on a regular basis, you are almost certainly getting too much. 

We have a population that eats a high-protein diet, they don't exercise much, they smoke. Those are really the main reasons for the epidemic of osteoporosis. 

We found no correlation at all between calcium intake and bone loss, not even a trend. 

Western man has made more change in his diet over the last six or eight generations--150 to 200 years--than man has made throughout the whole of his sojourn on earth. 

We need not adhere 100 percent to an ideal diet all the time. But change does have to be significant. Small changes are of little or no help. If weight loss, preventing cancer or heart disease, or simply staying healthy are your goals, adherence to sound dietary principles should be as close to complete as possible. The healthiest diet is a low-fat vegetarian diet--avoiding animal products as well as vegetable oils. 

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. 

Prejudice is one of the world's greatest labor-saving devices; it enables you to form an opinion without having to dig up the facts. 

We must never permit the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man. 

As long as we harm animals, we are savages. 

We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also. 

We can judge the heart of man by his treatment of animals. 

Perhaps the time has come to formulate a moral code which would govern our relations with the great creatures of the sea as well as those on dry land. That this will come to pass is our dearest wish. 

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. 

Mercy to animals means mercy to mankind. 

In studying the traits and dispositions of the so-called lower animals, and contrasting them with man's, I find the result humiliating to me. Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to. 

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That is the essence of inhumanity. 

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual development to leave off the eating of animals, as surely as the savage tribes left off eating each other when they came into contact with the more civilized. 

In the relations of humans with the animals, with the flowers, with all the objects of creation, there is a whole great ethic hardly seen as yet, but which will eventually break through into the light and be the corollary and the complement to human ethics. 

To fight cruelty, in any shape or form--whether it be towards other human beings or non-human beings--brings us into direct conflict with that unfortunate streak of inhumanity that lurks in all of us. If only we could overcome cruelty with compassion we should be well on the way to creating a new and boundless ethic--one that would respect all living beings. We should stand at the threshold of a new era in human evolution--the realization, at last, of our most unique quality: humanity. 

Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved. 

A missionary was walking in Africa when he heard the ominous padding of a lion behind him. 'Oh Lord,' prayed the missionary, 'Grant in Thy goodness that the lion walking behind me is a good Christian lion.' And then in the silence that followed, the missionary heard the lion praying too: 'Oh Lord,' he prayed, 'We thank Thee for the food which we are about to receive.' 

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and features so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. 

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them wherever they require it. 

I care not for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it. 

Any religion which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion. 

The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. 
This we know. 
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. 
All things are connected. 
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. 
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. 
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. 

© 1998 frantzs@geocities.com