Be Veg. Go Green. 
Save the Planet

It is ironical that in India, which is the land of the sages and holy gurus, with the first ray of the rising sun, crores of animals like partridges, turkeys, sheep, goats, pigs, cats, cows, oxen, horses, dogs, monkeys, deer, fish, tortoises and even snakes and pythons lose their lives at the stroke of the butcher’s knife and become part of the dining plates to appease the culinary tastes of the gluttonous human beings.

Just think – are the precious lives of animals and birds limited only to a few grams of protein, fat, carbohydrates, mineral and vitamins? Are their lives meant only to satisfy the greedy of the human beings? Oh No, Never!

These animals are also living beings, like us. They too breathe and their hearts also beat. Their lives are also pulsating with life like the gentle musical sound when you touch the strings of the Veena. They also vibrate with the life force provided by God Almighty to every creature. They too have their own world, their own families – and they too are the co-inhabitants of this world, along with man.

If man gives good and shelter to some animals, they more than repay man by giving us milk, fertilizers, cotton and wool and by carrying our burden, by helping us in agriculture and by fertilizing the plants. In addition to this, they entertain us, and even after their death they provide us with bones and leather. The proverb that “The cow is our mother and the ox is our father” shows that animals are the foundation of our family as well as the business.

When we have the right to live, why don’t they have it too?
Man is vegetarian by nature; meat is not compatible with his constitution.
The animal too is a creature like man – he is not eatable like vegetables or fruit

Dying, you’ll leave everything behind. Then why do you sin?
You drink water – and insist on bacteria-free mineral water.
But you eat meat – how dirty! It is full of countless germs and bacteria.
Yes, the meat is really such.

The atmosphere of the slaughter-house is dirty, polluted, germ ridden, horrible!
Everywhere you’ll find blood, the stench of urine;
And worst of all –remains of animal carcasses –
Carrion, bones, hooves, horns, intestines, amputated heads, blood-stained hair;


Statistics speak louder than words:
 

Do you know that, according to the World Health Organization (W.H.O), the animals slaughtered in the abattoirs are general suffering from one or more of about 160 diseases like cough, pneumonia, cancer, ulcers, dysentery, arthritis, asthma, heart clotting etc.

From the point of view of physiology, there is a radical difference between the physical constitutions of herbivorous (vegetable and grass eating) and carnivorous (meat eating) creatures.
 

Herbivores		Carnivores
1.	Pointed teeth and sharp claws and nails.	1.	Flat teeth and nails.
2.	. The jaws move only upward and downward.	2.	Jaws move both upward-downward and  sideways.
3.	They swallow their food.	3.	They chew their food.
4.	Lap up water with the tongue.	4.	Drink water with lips.
5.	The Intestines are small in length.	5.	Intestine is thrice the body length.
6.	Large sized liver and kidney.	6.	Small sized liver and kidney.
7.	Saliva has a lot of hydrochloric acid.	7.	The saliva is alkaline.
8.	They do not sweat.	8.	They sweat.

Man belongs to the herbivorous group of creatures. Meat is not his natural food. Meat is not his natural food. Meat in itself is a biological matter and is a home to crores of other biological organisms, bacteria, germs and parasites. The major parasites of the meat are salmonella, campylobacter, clostridium botulinum (which is poisonous to the cells and thus poisons the food), yersinia enterocolitica (which can produce severe diarrhea in humans), E.Coli (it can cause serious food poisoning in the human beings), Listeria monocytogenes (which causes meningitis in the new born babies). The experiments have shown that theses germs are not destroyed even after five hours of boiling the meat in water because these are water resistant and heat resistant.

The British Medical Association has proved that meat-eating causes diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, diseases of the large intestine, diabetes, cancer, bone T.B., angina, arthritis, kidney stone, appendicitis, nutritional ulcer, Atherosclerosis (also known as ASVD), food poisoning, acidity, constipation and mental disorder.

More Meat-Eating – Shorter Life Expectancy

Sunday or Monday – Never Eat Eggs

The whole hatchery industry is based on unlimited cruelty and inhumanity to the helpless hens. The one day old chicks are regularly given high protein diet (meat, meal, bone meal, fish meal, soybean, corn, etc) so that they grow and fatten quickly, but unnaturally. Then they are kept in over-crowded, stinking, wire-net floored hen-coops, stuffed likely closely packed goods in a godown (four or five hens in a 20 x 20 inches hen-coop). Due to living in this apathetic condition continuously, the hens go crazy and cry, they fight other hens, tear at their feathers or try to kill one another. In order to deal with this situation their beats are clipped down with hot iron blades and if they still fight, their claws are also clipped.

For fattening the hens or for making them yield more eggs, the hatcheries make free use of sulpha drugs, arsenic compounds, harmone-increasing and neutrofuron and antibiotic drugs. The average life of a hen is from 10 to 12. But it starts laying eggs by the time it is six months old and keeps yielding eggs till it is one and half-years old, then before it is two years old, it is handed over to hotels or broiler suppliers for slaughter.

Some ignorant people consider eggs to be vegetarian, machine-produced or lifeless and call it ‘Ram Laddoo’. But this is not true. A vegetarian product is the one which is yielded by plants or trees. But the egg is produced by the uterus of the hen. It is a kind of liquid and immature embryo of the hen. The egg is the mature living cell from the ovary of the hen. There are 25 to 30 thousand minute pores in its shell from which it inhales oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. It starts rotting if kept in a temperature of more than 30 degrees. There is an increase of 450 to 500 mg cholesterol by eating every egg and this high cholesterol causes diseases like heart disease, high blood pressure, eczema, allergy, constipation, rotting of intestines, acidity, etc. Have you ever thought about all these things before eating an egg?

Vegetarianism – The Foundation of Healthy, Nice and Pious Life

You have read that (and have experienced too) that man is a member of the herbivorous family. Vegetarian diet is man’s natural food. The vegetarian die contains all the essential ingredients of food – protein, fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins in the perfect and balanced proportion. Just look at the comparative table:

(Standard – total grams in every 100 grams)
 

The food Item	Protein	Carbohydrates	Fat	Minerals	Calories
VEGETAIAN FOOD
Wheat (Flour)	12.1	69.4	1.7	2.7	361
Corn	11.1	66.2	3.6	1.5	342
Whole Gram	17.1	60.9	5.3	3.0	360
Rice	13.5	48.4	16.2	6.6	393
Soybean	43.2	20.9	19.5	4.6	432
Moong	24.0	56.7	1.3	3.5	334
Groundnuts	26.7	26.7	39.8	2.5	315
Almonds	20.8	10.5	58.9	2.9	655
Cashewnuts	21.2	22.3	46.9	2.4	596
Dates	2.5	75.8	0.4	2.1	317
Cheese	24.1	6.3	25.1	4.2	348
Separated Milk	38.0	51.0	0.1	6.8	357
Ghee	-	-	100	-	900
Honey	0.3	79.5	-	.2	319
NON-VEGETARIAN FOOD
Egg	13.3	-	13.3	1.0	173
Pork	18.7	-	4.4	1.8	114
Mutton	21.4	-	3.6	1.1	188
Beef	22.6	-	2.6	1.0	114
Mutton (sheep)	18.5	-	13.3	1.3	194
Fish	9.0 to 76.0	0 to 13.9	19.4	27.5	413

According to most of the dieticians, man should get 60% of his daily calorie requirement from carbohydrates, 20% from fat and 5.6 per cent from protein. Carbohydrates are found in ample quantity in the vegetarian foods while these are completely absent in the non-vegetarian diet.

According to the theory of Energy steam, there is ten times more energy in the vegetarian foods as compared to the non-vegetarian food. In the world the fastest, the most hard working and most powerful and big sized animals like the elephant, horses, oxen, camels, giraffe, etc. are all vegetarian. The rhinoceros the most powerful land animal and it is completely vegetarian. It is truly said: Beautiful, healthy and disease-free body is the gift of vegetarianism.

Vegetarianism and the Environment

By eating meat, we disturb the symmetry of nature. The nature has produced wild animals like lions, leopards for eating meat. They feed on cattle, goats and other animals in the forests. But by eating meat, we deprive the wild animals of their natural food. That is why there are instances where leopards have strayed into the cities. They care compelled to come in search of their natural food which we have snatched from them.

Moreover, the vegetarian diet is more environments friendly. More land is required for breeding animals for food than is need for growing vegetables. Large tracts of land are required for grazing of meat producing animals like goats, sheep, deer, etc. Apart from this, an animal, for example, a goat takes one year or more to fatten up and be ready for providing meat. It eats 6 to 8 pounds of vegetable matter daily. And when it is slaughtered it provides food for only three or four days for an average family. It means that it consumed food for 365 days and produced food for just four days. The land on which it grazed could have produced lots of vegetables for the consumption of vegetarian people.
 

Apart from this meat takes about five times more time to cook as compared to vegetables. It means more consumption of fuel (gas, electricity or fire) which results in more and more global warming.

So you see that the meat eaters greatly contribute to the degradation of environment.

Religion does not teach to hate one another

All the holy books and the religious leaders of the world have preached about having the feeling of welfare for all the creatures and not killing anyone. Because of the effect of Kaliyuga, the tendency to eat meat developed, but the basic feeling of all religions and holy persons has remained that of compassion and non-violence.

The Hinduism: The Hindu holy books have the proud name of godly Jain Food to all creatures. Considering them the part of 23, they have preached “Ma hinsayat sarvabhutayani” (Don’t kill any creature). It is written in the Skanda Purana: “Anyone who wants to become healthy by eating the flesh of a creatures, he lives in the hell for as many days as were the pores in the body of that animal” The Hindu Teerathakar Parshavanathji saved the snake couple from the burning wood of the yajana. And the king Meghrath saved the life of a pigeon by donating the flesh of his own body. Many organizations like Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Deo Samaj, Sanatana Dharma, Radha Swami, Saccha Sauda, Bishnoi Community, etc., all of them have accepted vegetarianism and boycotten meat-eating as the main principle of their faith.

The Jainism: The very foundation of the Jain religion is non-violence. All the Teerathkar Gurus have preached the sermon compassion of protecting the creatures of the world. For protecting the creatures of the world, the Jain Sadhus walk all their life barefooted, keep their mouths covered with a strip of cloth and keep a duster tied with a stick on their shoulders (with which the sweep the ground before them as they walk, lest some small creature be killed under their feet). They have insisted on vegetarian food in the major airlines of the world.

The Sikh religion: The Sikh gurus have clearly forbidden violence against animals. The first Guru, Guru Nanak called the meat eaters the demons and gave the naam-daan to those who gave up this habit. No Gurudwara in the world serves meat or eggs in their langar (community kitchen). When administering Amrit in the Gurudwara, the disciple is forbidden to consume meat, eggs or wine for the whole of his life.

Islam: Islam lays stress on the animal rights and their welfare. In the Quraan (22.37), it is clearly written their religion does not allow the killing of any creature. This holy book exhorts the true Muslim to sacrifice his own soul because the blood and flesh of the slaughtered animal will not reach God – only the true worshipper’s prayer will reach God.

Christianity: Jesus Christ got the spiritual enlightenment from John the Baptism who was strictly against meat eating. Two of the Ten Commandments of Jesus Christ say: (1) Thou shall not kill (2) Love Thy Neighbour. In ‘The Gospel of Peace ‘ Jesus Christ says, “The fact is that one who kills another, kills himself. And he who eats the meat of a dead animal, eats his own flesh.” Saint Matthew and Saint Paul considered meat eating a symbol of religious degradation. The Christian Faiths named The Methodist and The Seventh Day Adventists clearly forbid meat eating and wine drinking. Leo Tolstoy and Dukhobor (Russian Christians) also considered meat eating against religion.

The Spread of Vegetarianism in the World

Although meat eating is prevalent in a major part of the world, yet after knowing the benefits of vegetarianism and the ill-effects of meat-eating, the spread of vegetarianism is taking the shape of People’s Movement. Vegetarian Societies have come up in America, Europe, Australia and many Asian countries, the detailed knowledge of which is available at www.worldanimalnet.com Thousands of organizations like PETA, SPCA, PCRM, VRG, SPEAK, CIWF, HFA, BWC, PFA, Earth Save Foundation, Fund for Animals, American Vegan Society, etc. are doing very constructive work in the field of environmental protection, promoting vegetarianism, prevention of cruelty to animals, etc.

Vegetarian food is now not the food of the Dalits and the backward people. Many famous people of the world now feel pride in adopting vegetarianism. Some of these great men are: The former President of India, Abdul Kalam, The former President of the USA, Al Gore, Sir Paul McCartney, Pamela Anderson, Amitabh Bachchan, John Abraham, Hema Malini, Madonna, Long distance runner Paavo Nurmi, The English Channel Swimming record holder, Murray Rose, World record holder in Triathalon, Sixto Liners, Olympic Gold Medalism in 400 meter hurdle race, Edwin Moses, nine times Wimbledon Champion Martina Navaratilova, nine times Olympic winner, famous runner Carl Louis, Leg Spinner Anil Kumble are completely vegetarian. For the protection of the environment, adopt vegetarianism. Famous American actor Alec Baldwin says, “Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice. Please choose vegetarianism. Do it for animals. Do it for environment and do it for your health.”

 

Be Veg. Go Green.  Save the Planet.