Articles

Vegetarian Speech
By Sunny Tripathy

Mmm. McChicken sandwich. Crisp, warm and juicy. Who wants it? Here you are. Go ahead and eat it.

�What�s in it?� (Sunny looks onto the burger as Katy takes a bite)

Bread, Lettuce, Cheese, Another creature�s life, and tartar sauce. And if you�re wondering what kind of life went in to your stomach. (Take out a live baby chick in hand) It was her mother and the McDonalds you�ll be going to in three weeks will be serving her. Can you honestly look into her eyes and explain to her why she doesn�t have a mother. Imagine if you were without your mother, and better yet if your mother was killed in front of you, fried and eaten by another. (Put both baby chickens in little box in front of Katy) Imagine - if a group of beings from another planet were to land on earth, and slaughter humans for their meals, would you concede them the rights over you, that you assume over animals?

I do not mean to offend anyone in this room, and my goal is not to criticize, but to educate. No soul should have to give their life to feed our hungry stomachs. I will tell you about the lives of these innocent animals, and about being vegetarian and I do not expect anyone to walk out of this room proclaiming themselves vegetarian, but the next time you chomp on your chicken burger, or any meat for that matter, remember the precious lives that were killed and take a moment to be grateful for its sacrifice.

Millions of people such as Steven Spielberg, Orlando Bloom, Alicia Silverstone, Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, Michael Jackson and Oprah are now becoming vegetarian influenced by a range of factors including health reasons, ethics, and religion. But whatever reason it may be, it is better late than never. I understand that everyone of us in this room knows that an animal had to die for our food, yet the only reason we are not vegetarian, is directly related to our desire for taste. I used to be a fan of Chinese chicken just last year but after realizing how the meat was derived, I became a strict lacto-ovo-vegetarian. However, I am not completely deprived of the taste of meat. I enjoy Morning Star�s Chickless nuggets, corndogs, hot dogs, chili dogs, turkeyless breasts, and bacon just as much as normal meat. And the taste has even a better sensation, when you know that no one had to die or suffer for it. Modern research has shown that meat eating is linked to killer diseases like cancer and heart-diseases. Vegetarians are about 50% less likely to get stroke and about 25% - 50% less chance of arthritis, prostate cancer, kidney failure and colon cancer.

Other than personal health reasons many people are vegetarian due to their religion. �Thou shall not kill,� says the Bible. The great Hindu epic, Mahabharat also says, �He who desires to augment his own flesh by eating the flesh of other creatures, lives in misery in whatever species he may take his birth.�

(Pass around photos, but warn that they are graphic)

Personal ethics also lead people to abstaining from meat. These poor animals that we devour for our so-called �lunch�, are cramped into small cages and then overfed. Cows are tied up in little corners, and are not allowed to move, so their muscle will be soft and not too fibrous. The chicken you eat is not an old one that passed away, but it is a newborn baby chick that is overfed and fattened to increase its body mass about 50% a day. This obesity causes the chickens to have much trouble breathing, and weak bones. And then they are hung by their legs by large machinery, and an assembly line of hanging live chicks get their throats slit one by one, while they are still conscious. The chickens which are hanging upside down, continue down a large assembly line, slowly dying, with their blood oozing down from their throat into large gutters, after about a minute of a most painful suffering, the chickens reach the slaughter, where the heads of the chickens are chopped off. This same process is used even to kill cows, goats, and pigs. Can you but imagine such a life? And for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born to enjoy. Close your eyes. Take a minute to step away from your gourmet meals, warm beds, computers, TV�s, and mp3s, and look deep into the eyes of any animal, and then for a moment, trade places. Their life becomes as precious as yours, and you become as vulnerable as them. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? Now smile if you believe they deserve to live, for in a way, they are us, and we are them.