Animal Rights Community Online Blog

gentle warrior wrote:  ‹ Select ›

Even if plants do feel pain (which is very improbably), care for animal rights in some aspects would still be more important than caring for plants. Why? This is because growing animals for food and other purposes involves taking away their freedom. It involves their suffering in the whole process, from beginning to end. This is clearly not the case with plants.

There is also the numbers issue. Breeding nonhuman animals in order to eat them caused more plant deaths than directly eating the plants.

Rags.

There is a new outlet near me that is called 'The Friendly Farmer' A misnomer if ever there was!!.
The shop has a organic supply of veg, and selection of vegan goodies as well, such as booja booja choc, and other delicious vegan wares. This is my quandary though. I admire these folks in being forward thinking and supplying these goodies and they say they would supply vegan cheezly. BUT my money can/will go towards the butchery dept,. as well and at the end of the day they are farmers. So part of me says I should not support them and yet they are willing to supply vegan food as well.

What would you all do?.
We will not be buying the organic veg as they say that supplier also supplies the turkeys at Xmas.

As my vegan friend says though we are all happy to shop in Asda (walmart) or tesco etc that sell meat.

We both have said quietly we would drop off some AR stickers near the butchery bit next time we are in.

Some telling quotes about vivisection.

"We cannot solve the problems we have created with the same thinking that created them."
Albert Einstein, PhD (1879 – 1955), who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922. His General Theory of Relativity laid the foundation for cosmology and our understanding of physical reality.

"We sacrificed daily from one to three dogs, besides rabbits and other animals, and after four years experience, I am of the opinion that not one of these experiments on animals was justified or necessary."
Dr. George Hoggan (1875), student of Claude Bernard, MD, a leading and ardent vivisectionist. Bernard (1813 — 1878) was France’s most famous physiologist. In his 1865 book, "Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine," Bernard argues that progress in medicine is not possible without animal-based physiological research. He taught that the researcher must not be hampered by the blood and cries of his animal subjects.

"During my medical education … I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary."
Carl Jung, MD (1875 – 1961), the founder of analytical psychology. His break with Freud is an important event in the history of psychoanalytic thought. Jung stressed the human psyche’s quest for spiritual and archetypal meaning vs. Freud’s emphasis on sex and aggression.

"The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I was tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species. I feel that this is not the means of acquiring true knowledge."
Henry David Thoreau, Journal (1854). Thoreau (1817 — 1862) described himself as "a transcendentalist and natural philosopher." His essay, "Civil Disobedience," influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

"Vivisection has done little for the art of the doctor at the bedside, but it has done immeasurable harm to the character and mind of the rising generation of doctors." - Dr. Rudolph Hammer, LLD (1909)

"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), the 1925 Nobel Laureate for Literature. Best known for his plays and essays, he was a theater critic, political activist, socialist, and an opponent of war.

"Whenever people say, ‘We mustn’t be sentimental,’ you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, ‘We must be realistic,’ they mean they are going to make money out of it."
Brigid Brophy (1929 – 1995), English-Irish novelist and playwright.

"We are drowning and suffocating anesthetized animals in the name of science…. We are producing frustration ulcers in experimental animals under shocking conditions in the name of science…. We are observing animals for weeks, months, even years, under infamous conditions in the name of science…."
Robert Gesell, MD, Professor of Physiology, University of Michigan, speaking to his colleagues in the American Physiological Society (1952)

"I abhor vivisection…. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty." Charles W. Mayo, MD (1961), son of the co-founder of the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Charles W. Mayo (1898 — 1968) was a skilled surgeon and a member of the Mayo Clinic’s Board of Governors. The Mayo Clinic is consistently ranked among the top three U.S. hospitals.

"Kindness to animals must be taught to our students early in life."
John Ames, MD, (1969)

"Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is ‘Because the animals are like us.’ Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: ‘Because the animals are not like us.’ Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction."
Professor Charles R. Magel (1980)

"Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it."
Albert Sabin, MD (1986), developer of the live-virus polio vaccine. Sabin (1906 — 1993) was a physician and microbiologist who developed a live-virus polio vaccine that helped curb the spread of the then deadly disease.

"It is totally unconscionable to subject defenseless animals to mutilation and death, just so a company can be the first to market a new shade of nail polish, or a new improved laundry detergent."
Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren, testifying before Congress, (1988). Abigail Van Buren is a well-known syndicated advice columnist and author.

"At present it is a rare person that emerges from medical training with his or her humanity intact."
Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 261, p. 2011, (1989)

"It [referring to dog labs] did more to damage my identity as a physician than anything else. I learned nothing physiological. I learned that life is cheap, and that misery can be ignored."
Murry Cohen, MD, (1990s), founding co-chair of the Medical Research Modernization Committee. He has authored numerous books, articles, chapters and letters on animal experimentation, including "Of Pigs, Primates, and Plagues," a scientific critique of xenotransplantation.

"By and large students are taught that it is ethically acceptable to perpetrate, in the name of science, what from the point of view of the animals would certainly qualify as torture. By the time [the students] arrive in the labs they have been programmed to accept the suffering around them."
Jane Goodall, PhD, Through a Window — My 30 Years With the Chimpanzees in Gombe (1990). Dr. Jane Goodall is a world-famous primatologist whose decades of field research in Africa have contributed significantly to our understanding of chimpanzees and humans. She is author of several books and an internationally recognized lecturer.

“What good does it do you to test something [a vaccine] in a monkey? You find five or six years from now that it works in the monkey, and then you test it in humans and you realize that humans behave totally differently from monkeys, so you’ve wasted five years.�
Dr. Mark Feinberg, a leading AIDS researcher.

People wonder if I'm vegan or vegetarian. I tell them that I am vegetarian (and not vegan) because I still eat cheese. I would much rather be called vegan. I think there is a bit more respect and seriousness behind that title. You may be laughing at this, but it is quite important to me. I want people to take me serious when I say that I don't use animal products. The word "vegetarian" is thrown around so loosely these days. I mean, while having supper at a restaurant, the waitress figured out that I was veg*n and she said "Oh, so am I. I just eat chicken."

I think I'm talking in circles. I guess I wish there was a word for something in between...not vegetarian but not completely vegan. How about a vegan vegetarian?

It's to connote either vegan or vegetarian without having to repeatedly say "vegans and/or vegetarians".

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