Raven's Restaurant - Vegan Cuisine

Man, meat and dairy taste so friggin' good.

"The ten billion land animals confined and killed every year excrete massive quantities of feces and urine, not just equal to what we humans produce, or even two or three times greater, but according to a study by the U.S. Senate, 130 times greater."

"The dairies in central California create more sewage than a city of twenty million people, and just one mega pig factory farm creates more sewage than New York City!"

"For example, researchers estimate that 2.5 acres of land can meet the food energy needs of twenty-two people eating potatoes, nineteen people eating corn, twenty-three people eating cabbage, fifteen people eating wheat, or two people eating chicken or dairy products, and only one person eating beef or eggs. Everyone on earth could be fed easily because we currently grow more than enough grain to feed ten billion people."

"A day's production of food for one omnivore human requires more than four thousand gallons of water, compared with less than three hundred gallons for a vegan."

"Eighty percent of grain grown in the U.S. and about half the fish hauled in are wasted to grow billions of animals big and fat enough to be profitably slaughtered, or to produce dairy products and eggs at the high levels demanded by consumers. And over ninety percent of the protein in this grain turns into methane, ammonia, urea, and manure that pollute our air and water. A conservative estimate is that the amount of land, grain, water, petroleum, and pollution required to feed one of us the Standard American Diet could feed fifteen of us eating a plant-based diet."

Enjoy.

source: World Peace Diet, by Will Tuttle (excellent book everyone should buy)

Jeff Stanford and I were talking the other day about the boy who was abducted last week in Nevada...It turned out to be drug related. From what I understand, the boy was kidnapped by drug dealers as a way to send a 'message' to the boy's grandfather...So let's just say for the sake of argument that the boy's grandfather was involved in drugs, and most likely would never have thought that his actions would in some way harm his innocent grandson...How could I link this to Veganism? Watch my smoke.

When one consumes animal products, there are the obvious (or what should be obvious) consequences of poor health, and damage to the environment. Somewhat less obvious may be the psychological consequences on humans who know, on some level, the violence they are causing by in effect asking another human being to do the killing (and in most cases abusing) for them.

However, here is a consequence that is most likely unintended by the consumer, and perhaps, never even considered. Namely, the effects of the animal product industry on the workers. In "World Peace Diet," Will Tuttle writes:

"It is well documented that slaughterhouse and factory farm work is ugly and terribly stressful, emotionally, mentally, and phsyically. Slaughterhouse workers, perhaps the lowest caste in the U.s., have the highest rate of work-related injuires and one of the highest turnover rates." (World Peace Diet, pg.168)

Further in the book,Tuttle shares testimonials of slaughterhouse workers who suffer from their jobs--watching cows skinned alive (having not been 'stunned' properly), or this worker whose job was to kill pigs:

" The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in that stick pit for any period of time, you develop an attitude that lets you kill things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's walking around down in the blood pit with you and think, God, that really isn't a bad-looking animal. You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them--beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care...I was killing things. My attitude was, it's only an animal. Kill it. Sometimes I'd look at people that way, too. I've had ideas of hanging my foreman upside down on the line and sticking him." (World Peace Diet, pg. 176)

The point of this writing is that, just as in the case of the innocent boy who was abducted as a consequence of his grandfather's actions that were seemingly unrelated to the boy, consuming animal products also have unintended consequences that I believe should be considered and evaluated. Most of this writing and my other writings come down to this: learn as much as you can about everything you do in your life, about yourself, and about the world. Being informed, educated, will bring one to a higher level of consciousness. Yes, sometimes it means finding out things you wish you hadn't, but mostly, in my experience, 'knowing' is better than not knowing, and the result is inevitably a deeper, more fulfilling experience of life.