A step towards a cruelty-free world, where everyone has the right to live.
Many of us will be familiar with the term ‘Veganism’. But those of you who think it’s no different from vegetarianism, well, you are mistaken.
Vegans are vegetarians who genuinely love animals.
I believe that humans have no right to eat (read: kill) animals. The fact that they are so similar to us and that they have feelings, they can feel pain- doesn’t it say it all? The milk we all drink belongs to the calf of the cow we’re getting it from. We’re depriving that calf of the milk which rightfully belongs to it. It’s equivalent to depriving a human baby of the milk of its mother!
Did you know, an Indian cow, whose life span is around 20 years, dies within five years?
For people who think that their diets will lack proteins and other minerals if they adopt veganism, there are alternatives to milk which are easily available everywhere. For instance— soy milk, almond milk, rice milk etc. Similarly, there are alternatives for eggs, meat, and many other ‘essential’ food items.
Many people assume that humans are superior to all the other life forms (all sentient beings). This is wrong on so many levels. We are simply much more evolved than the rest of them. This doesn’t mean we can practise control on them or use them for our own uses whatsoever. While we think about all the wrong things in the world— people dying of hunger, of various diseases, and so on– we do not think about is what is happening in front of us to the animals. They are not only being eaten but are killed for our leather clothes and fur coats. In many countries, it is done on a mass scale each day. And not only for our materialistic uses but for illogical religious practices too, these innocent animals suffer!
Now the question arises, “What would happen if the whole world became at least vegetarian?”
Marco Springmann, a research fellow at the Oxford Martin School’s Future of Food programme, tried to quantify just how much better the world could be if people stopped consuming meat. Along with his colleagues, he built computer models that predicted what would happen if everyone became vegetarian by 2050. The results indicate that – largely thanks to the elimination of red meat consumption, and consequently, production – food-related emissions would drop by about 60%. If the world went vegan instead, emissions declines would be around 70%.
A worldwide vegan diet would amplify these benefits: global vegetarianism would stave off about 7 million deaths per year, while total veganism would knock that estimate up to 8 million.
Your food had a face.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would stop eating animals.
You may enjoy eating the food which made a life suffer, but I cannot.
Everyone has the right to live.
If these quotes don’t matter to you, I have only one question to ask you. Do you consider yourself that important that someone has to die for you?
I cannot force you all to stop eating, wearing, or using animals but I can surely make you realise what the wrongness of the actions you are committing for your selfish reasons!
Most of us may be familiar with the Nazis and the Jews. Don’t you all think we’re doing the same things with animals that Hitler did with the Jews? He wanted to kill them for his selfish reasons. Are not all non-vegetarians, and the people who are using animals, doing the same thing?
If you want to help animals, you have to stop eating them first.
We need to stop hurting animals in any way possible!
Just remember it’s not our personal choice to take someone’s life.
Veganism is simply this golden rule in action:
TREAT OTHERS THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED.
Thank you.
—Shreya Singh, Class-9, Somerville School, Noida
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