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We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts.

Animal Defenders of Westchester
P.O. Box 205
Yonkers, NY 10704

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Stop Factory Farming

Best Choice

Published in NY Newsday, Feb 2, 2004:

In all the controversy about whether mad cow disease poses a serious threat, one thing has been forgotten: cows are living, breathing, sentient beings.

I became a vegetarian 25 years ago. Not for reasons of disease, or what good it would do me; I realized, while eating a chicken leg, that this was part of an animal who bled like me and cried from pain, just like me. Yes, I did feel better physically as a result.

My asthma lessened, gout symptoms and an 'idiopathic rash' (doctor slang for "we don't know what it is") both disappeared.

But more importantly, I was happy that I was getting 'right' with the other beings who share our world. I wasn't being a hypocrite like friends who said, "I'll eat it, but I don't want to think about it." And all these years later, becoming vegetarian is the one decision I've never, ever regretted - noteworthy in a lifetime's worth of choices.

Kiley Blackman

Yonkers

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