I am writing this post with hopes of stopping the cruelty that is being done to animals all over the world once and for all. In this post I will talk about the the many areas of your daily lives that causes suffering to animals, and then you decide what you do with that information. Hopefully you will have compassion, and help me start a ripple effect to enlighten people.

When people find out that I am a vegan their first reaction is to panic. They don't understand what the word means. so they come to think of the word vegetarian, and rememer that they heard once that it has something to do with not eating meat. So they ask me what being a vegan means then, and I reply that I don't eat or use animal products of any kind. they then ask me:' but you eat cheese, right?' I reply:'no, cheese is an animal product.' then they say: 'So do you eat fish then?' and I tell them, that a fish is an animal. By that time they will usually feel very uncomfortable and I feel them fishing for something nice to say, so they will compliment me on my boots and ask me if they are made of real leather. It used to make me furious, because it just didn't seem to sink in that all these things are animal products. To produce all the things that have just been mentioned, animals had to suffer and die.

For so many years I have been wondering why people still eat meat, wear leather, use certain beauty produtcs, etc.-Until it actually just recently started to occur to me that they just simply don't know any better. As with so many other things in this world you will only know what the controllers want you to know.

The meat industry

It is hard to feel compassion or to even be grossed out when you go to the grocery store and are able to choose between all the varieties of meat that have been neatly laid out for you in delicious pieces. Even the names disguise what meat really is. For example the labels don't say 'cow' or 'pig' but tender beef or smoked ham. It sounds nice, and so people take it home and cook it for their families cause that is just what you do, not once questioning what actually happens before the meat shows up on your dinner table.

I will tell you what happens.

Cows

Most beef cattle are not well taken care of on the ranges where they live. To mark cows for identification, ranchers restrain the animals and press hot fire irons into their flesh, causing third-degree burns, as the cows bellow in pain and attempt to escape. Male calves' testicles are ripped from their scrotums without pain relievers, and the horns of cows raised for beef are cut or burned off. 

While "on the range," most cows receive inadequate veterinary care, and as a result, many die from infection and injury. Every winter, cattle freeze to death in states such as Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota. And every summer, cows collapse from heatstroke in states such as Texas and Arizona.

After about a year of facing the elements, cows are shipped to an auction lot and then across hundreds of miles to massive feedlots—feces- and mud-filled holding pens where they are crammed together by the thousands. Many arrive crippled or dead from the journey.

Cattle on feedlots are fed a highly unnatural diet to fatten them up. This diet will often consist of bone meal, which means that the cows will have to eat the remains of other cows, when they should be eating grass only. This causes chronic digestive pain—imagine your worst case of gastritis that never goes away. The stomach becomes so full of gas (a condition called bloat) that breathing is impaired because of compression of the lungs. According to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science, this diet also causes potentially fatal liver abscesses in as many as 32 percent of cattle raised for beef. Those animals who escape this fate may still suffer from a severe increase in stomach acid, causing ulcers to form, resulting in a condition (acute acidosis) in which bloody fluid rushes into the rumen and kills the cow. 

The feedlot air is saturated with ammonia, methane, and other noxious chemicals, which build up from the huge amounts of manure, and the cows are forced to inhale these gases constantly. These fumes can give the cows chronic respiratory problems, making breathing painful.

Cattle raised for food are also regularly dosed with drugs such as antibiotics to make them grow faster and keep them alive in these miserable conditions. Instead of taking sick cattle to see a veterinarian, many feedlot owners simply give the animals even higher doses of human-grade antibiotics in an attempt to keep them alive long enough to make it to the slaughterhouse. The lucky ones die on the trip to the slaughterhouse, whereas the remaining ones will suffer the pain of being strung up with their heads down, stabbed in the throat and left to painfully bleed out.

Pigs

On hog factories, Mother pigs (sows) are reduced to nothing more than breeding machines. After being impregnated they are confined in gestation crates. These crates are only 7 feet long and 2 feet wide - too small to even turn around. Their pregnancies last 4 months, after which they are transferred to farrowing crates to give birth. Farrowing crates are just wide enough for the pigs to lie down and nurse their babies. Because those crates are very hard and contain no bedding at all, most sows suffer from sores on their knees and shoulders. The piglets are removed when they are about 10 days old. Their mother is immediately impregnated again. She will give birth to more than 20 piglets each year until she is about 3-4 years old and brought to the slaughterhouse. After they are removed from their mothers, the piglets are packed into overcrowded pens with concrete floors and metal bars. This causes stress-related behaviors like tail-biting. For this reason farmers will chop off their tails and break off the ends of their teeth with pliers. For identification purposes farmers will rip off pieces of their ears. No anesthetics are used for any of these procedures. The pigs will stay in the overcrowded pens until they have reached a weight of 250 pounds at about 6 months. They are then called hogs and are ready for the slaughterhouse. Because of the buildup of the pigs' urine and feces in these pens, they have to breathe awful noxious gases every day of their short lives. This causes severe respiratory problems. The majority of pigs arrive at the slaughterhouse with pneumonia. Pigs also suffer greatly during transportation. When they resist going into the trailers, workers will use electric prods to move them along. Within the trailers they are packed so tight together that many of them die as a result. In the slaughterhouse the pigs are hung upside down by their back legs and bleed to death. Because of improper stunning, many pigs are still alive at this point. They will kick and struggle while the slaughterhouse worker sticks a knife in their neck. After this, the pigs are thrown in a scalding tank to soften their skin and remove their hair. Some are thrown in while still alive and fully conscious.

Chickens

Every year, more than 9 billion chickens are raised and killed for meat in the United States. They start out their lives being born in incubator drawers at a chicken hatchery and are delivered to the broiler houses. Shortly after being born, the ends of their beaks are cut off, which is known as "debeaking". Broiler chickens are genetically altered to grow a lot faster and produce more meat. These genetic alterations causes serious health problems for the animals. Their legs have trouble supporting their heavy bodies and their underdeveloped heart and lungs frequently result in congestive heart failure. During their short lives they have to live in huge sheds called "grower houses", which only give them about half a square foot of space. Artificial lighting is used to manipulate the birds into eating as often as possible. Many of the animals will miserably die of stress. Chickens are transported to the slaughterhouse in crates stacked on the backs of trucks. While being transported, the chickens are not protected against the heat or cold. A percentage of them dies by either freezing to death in the winter or from suffocation in the summer. When the chickens arrive at the slaughterhouse in their crates, they are either pulled from their crates or dumped by cranes onto conveyer belts. Some chickens fall off the conveyer belts and are usually left to die. First their heads will be dragged through a bath of electrically charged water, rendering most of them unconscious. They are then taken to an automatic neck cutter, where they are bled. After that they go to a scalding tank, which makes it easier to pluck them. Some chickens are still fully conscious after the electrical bath, especially when the slaughterhouse doesn't use a sufficient stunning current. When their necks are cut, they don't always cut both carotid arteries, which are the major blood supplies to the brain. This means that there are still chickens who are fully conscious when they enter the scalding tank.

Dairy

Dairy cows will spend most of their lives inside, chained by their necksand kept indoors most of the day. Cow trainers hang above the cows to give them a shock when they arch their backs. This forces them to move back to drop urine and manure into a gutter. They are artificially inseminated over and over so they will produce a steady amount of milk. Many times the cows are genetically engineered and are fed growth hormones to produce more milk. This causes their udders to become unnaturally big and heavy, resulting in frequent infections. The average modern dairy cow will produce about 100 pounds of milk per day, which is 10 times more than it would naturally produce. Normally cows can live an average of 25 years. Dairy cows are slaughtered and made into ground beef after about 3-4 years. Because of the intense abuse wrought upon their poor bodies, dairy cows - like beef cattle - also frequently end up being unable to walk or stand, causing them to be severely mistreated.

 

Eggs

Chickens usually start out their life being born inside drawers of huge incubators at a hatchery. After being born, they are sorted. Male chicks are considered useless in the egg industry, since they come from selective egg-laying strains, which are not suitable for meat production. They are discarded by being gassed, ground up alive or thrown into plastic bags or dumpsters. The great majority of all hens are kept in battery cages. Usually 5 hens have to share a cage measuring 18 by 20 inches. Their living conditions are so stressful that their laying span lasts only about 1-2 years instead of the normal 15-20 years. When her egg laying rate drops, she is considered "spent". "Spent" hens are either killed or force molted. Force molting involves being kept in complete darkness without food or water to shock their systems into another egg laying cycle. Being confined to an overcrowded cage also causes excessive pecking. To avoid the hens from injuring each other, they are "debeaked", which means that part of their beaks are cut off. Some people switch to "free-range" eggs when they find out about battery cages and don't want to support that industry. "Free-range" however, does not mean at all that the chickens are treated well. Generally "free-range" means that the animals are not kept in cages. However, they are commonly confined indoors, sometimes in very crowded conditions. Practices like "debeaking" and force molting can also be found on "free-range" farms.

Fish

There are several fishing methods, but I will only post one here. Ranging from 200 feet to more than a mile in length, gill nets are weighted at the bottom and held upright by floats at the top, creating what some have deemed "walls of death." Fish are unable to see the netting, and unless the mesh size is larger than the fish, they get stuck. When they try to back out, the netting catches them by their gills or fins, and many suffocate. Others struggle so desperately in the sharp mesh that they bleed to death. Because gill nets are set and then left unmonitored, trapped fish may suffer for days. Many bleed to death before the ship returns to take them out of the ocean. Those who make it to the deck alive are ripped out of the net by hand and suffocate or are cut open while still alive. Fish who were caught deep in the ocean suffer from decompression, and the extreme change in pressure can cause their stomachs to be forced out of their mouths. Regardless of the method used to catch them, if the fish are still alive at the end of their terrifying journey to the surface, most have their gills cut and bleed out or are tossed onto ice to slowly freeze or suffocate to death—a horribly cruel and painful death for coldblooded animals, who can take a very long time to freeze or suffocate to death. Scientists estimate that fish endure up to 15 minutes of excruciating pain before they lose consciousness.

More than 40 percent of all the fish consumed each year are now raised on land-based or ocean-based aquafarms where fish spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy enclosures and where many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. On aquafarms, high-volume systems control food, light (on indoor farms), and growth stimulation. Drugs and genetic engineering are used to accelerate growth and change reproductive behaviors. Because they are designed to navigate vast oceans and use all their senses to do so, many fish go insane from the cramped conditions and lack of space on fish farms. The tight enclosures inhibit their ability to navigate properly and cause them to knock against each other and the sides of the enclosures. This jostling causes sores and damage to their fins.To increase profits, fish farmers cram as many fish as possible into the smallest spaces possible. Salmon farms are so crowded—with as many as 50,000 individuals in each enclosure—that a 2.5-foot fish spends his or her entire life in a space the size of a bathtub. Trout farms are even more crowded, with as many as 27 full-grown fish in a bathtub-sized space.Aquafarmers have even begun to feed fish oil and fish meal to fish who naturally eat only plants in an effort to make them grow faster. What's more, fish farmers lace fish feed with powerful chemicals and antibiotics to help fish survive the deadly diseases caused by the crowding and filth. It's likely that these fish pellets are the cause of the higher PCB and dioxin contamination levels found in farmed fish, which are seven times higher than the already-dangerous levels found in their wild counterparts.In the United States, there are no regulations to ensure the humane treatment of fish. As many as 40 percent of farmed fish die before the aquafarm operator is ready to slaughter them. Fish who survive are starved before they are sent to slaughter in order to reduce waste contamination of the water during transport. Salmon, for example, are starved for 10 full days. Fish slaughter plants in the U.S. make no effort to stun the fish, who are completely conscious when they start down the slaughter line. Their gills are cut, and they are left to bleed to death, convulsing in pain.

 

Wool

Sheep naturally grow the amount of wool needed to keep them warm in the winter, and they shed when it becomes warm. Sheep in the wool industry have been bred to have thicker coats and some of them even to have been bred to have wrinkly skin so they can produce even more wool. Since domesticated sheep can not shed their fleece themselves, their wool will grow longer and longer while flies lay eggs in the moist folds of their skin. The hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. To prevent this from happening, ranchers will perform an operation called mulesing. Without anesthesia large strips of flesh are cut of the backs of lambs and around their tails. Other procedures performed without anesthesia include punching a hole in the ears of lambs several weeks after birth, docking their tails and castrating the males. The castrations are done when the male lambs are between 2 and 8 weeks old, with the use of a rubber ring to cut off their blood supply- which is one of they most painful ways to do it. Sheep are sheared in the spring, just before they would naturally shed their winter coats. Because shearing too late would mean a loss of wool, most sheep are sheared while it is still too cold. An estimated one million sheep die every year of exposure after premature shearing. Another problem with sheep shearing is that the shearers are not paid by the hour, but by volume. They handle the animals very roughly- there have been reports of ranchers punching the sheep with their sheers or with their fists until the sheep will bleed. The sheep that are not needed anymore will be transported to the slaughterhouse. the lucky ones die on the truck, whereas the sheep that arvive will often still be alive while they are being dismembered.

Animal testing

While you wash your hair in the morning or brush your teeth or take your Ibuprofen or do your laundry, you may not think that millions of animals had to suffer and die for you to be able to use these products, and yet they do. Animal testing should be outlawed because it is hurtful and unnecessary. Do animals feel the same pain that we as humans feel? How do we know that other humans feel pain? We know that we ourselves can feel pain. We know this from direct experience of having your finger slammed in a drawer, or stubbing your toe on a chair. It is said that pain is a mental event; something that can not be observed. Pain is something that is felt, and we can only assume that other humans feel pain from external indications such as our own like crying, screaming, or jerking away from something. If we can justify that other humans feel pain, why is it said that animals do not feel pain? When an animal is poked, burned, or stepped on; they will cry, yelp, or jerk away. Since the external indicators are the same, we can assume that animals feel the same pain that we as humans feel.

Many people are surprised to learn that some cosmetics, personal care products, foods and beverages and household cleaning products are still tested on animals, or that their local university or hospital torment animals in cruel experiments. Although modern alternative test methods exist, huge multiproduct manufacturers, including Unilever, Clorox, Church & Dwight, Johnson & Johnson, and others, continue to poison and harm animals in tests that aren't even required by law.Rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and other animals are forced to swallow or inhale massive quantities of a test substance or endure the pain of having caustic chemicals applied to their sensitive eyes and skin––even though the results of animal tests are often unreliable or not applicable to humans. Even if a product has blinded an animal, it can still be marketed to you.

Universities and hospitals also imprison millions of animals for use in painful and deadly medical training exercises and curiosity-driven experiments that are funded by tax dollars and health charities. Monkeys are addicted to drugs and have holes drilled into their skulls, sheep and pigs have their skin burned off and rats have their spinal cords crushed. Tiny mice grow tumors as large as their own bodies, kittens are purposely blinded, and rats are made to suffer seizures.  In archaic medical training courses, pigs and dogs are cut open and killed and cats and ferrets have hard plastic tubes forced down their delicate throats. 

Most of these barbaric and senseless experiments are funding by the federal government using the public’s tax dollars and by health charities, including the American Cancer Society, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the March of Dimes who are wasting precious dollars on cruel, irrelevant experiments on animals instead of spending the money on promising human-based research.

The best way to stop companies, universities and charities from using animals is to refuse to purchase their products or give them donations and to write and tell them that you won't support them until they stop testing on animals.

Most animal tests are conducted by:

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States: they are the worlds largest funder of animal experiments.
• The military: tests include radiation experiments, studies on the effects of chemical warfare and wound experiments
• Private institutions and companies: many household products and cosmetics are still squirted into the animals' eyes, pumped into their stomachs, rubbed onto their skins or forced to inhale.
• Agricultural companies: experiment are performed on cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs and turkeys to try to get them to produce more milk, wool, eggs or meat.
• Education and Training: animals are used in classrooms as part of the teaching process. This includes dissecting in biology class as well as training for medical and veterinary students.

Other things to look out for

The paragraphs written above are unfortunately not all the situations in which animals are tortured and killed. Needless to say that you shouldn't support hunting. Please don't wear fur coats as minks and other animals live under horrible conditions and are skinned alive. Please avoid circuses or aqua shows as animals are often severely abused and shouldn't be in a circus for your entertainment to begin with. Please don't buy animals from the pet store such as fish, birds and rodents, as these animals will only suffer in their cramped cages. No one deserves this.

Hidden cruelty

You can find animal ingredient in the most unexpected places. For example gelatin is used in shampoos, face masks, and other cosmetics; as a thickener for fruit gelatins and puddings (such as Jell-O); in candies, marshmallows, cakes, ice cream, and yogurts; on photographic film; in vitamins as a coating and as capsules; and it is sometimes used to assist in "clearing" wines (please buy unfiltered wine). Gelatin is protein obtained by boiling skin, tendons, ligaments, and/or bones with water. It is usually obtained from cows or pigs. Remember to look for gelatin in your vitamin B12 capsules.

Animal foods

One thing you might have never expected is that certain pet food companies such as IAMS actually test their food on animals. Not only do cats and dogs have to live in cages which will drive them stir crazy, but in certain cases they will have their stomachs and intestinals systems cut open to see how the food affects the animal.

Good reasons to become a vegan

There is more than enough food in the world to feed the entire human population. So why are more than a billion people still going hungry? Our meat-based diet is largely to blame. We funnel huge amounts of grain, soybeans, and corn through all the animals we use for food instead of feeding starving humans. If we stopped intensively breeding farmed animals and grew crops to feed humans instead, we could easily feed everyone on the planet with healthy and affordable vegetarianfoods. Raising animals for food is extremely inefficient. For every pound of food that farmed animals are fed, only a fraction of the calories are returned in the form of edible flesh. The rest of those calories are burned away raising the animal to slaughter weight or contributing to feathers, bone, skin, blood, and other parts of the animal that are not eaten by humans. This is why animals raised for food have to eat as many as 16 pounds of grain to create just 1 pound of edible flesh.

Carbon footprint

Burning fossil fuels (such as oil and gasoline) releases carbon dioxide, the primary gas responsible for global warming. Producing one calorie from animal protein requires 11 times as much fossil fuel input—releasing 11 times as much carbon dioxide—as does producing a calorie from plant protein. Feeding massive amounts of grain and water to farmed animals and then killing them and processing, transporting, and storing their flesh is extremely energy-intensive. In addition, enormous amounts of carbon dioxide stored in trees are released during the destruction of vast acres of forest to provide pastureland and to grow crops for farmed animals. On top of this, animal manure also releases large quantities of carbon dioxide.

You could exchange your "regular" car for a hybrid Toyota Prius and, by doing so, prevent about 1 ton of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year, but according to the University of Chicago, being vegan is more effective in the fight against global warming; a vegan is responsible for the release of approximately 1.5 fewer tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year than is a meat-eater.

A German study conducted in 2008 concluded that a meat-eater's diet is responsible for more than seven times as much greenhouse gas emissions as a vegan's diet. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N.'s Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and a vegetarian himself), urges people to "please eat less meat—meat is a very carbon-intensive commodity."

The billions of chickens, turkeys, cows and pigs who are crammed into factory farms each year in the U.S. produce enormous amounts of methane, both during digestion and from the acres of cesspools filled with feces that they excrete. Scientists report that every pound of methane is more than 20 times as effective as carbon dioxide is at trapping heat in our atmosphere. The EPA shows that animal agriculture is the single largest source of methane emissions in the U.S.

Healthy body

Even if you don't care about the animals it should be in your own interest to be healthy. To maintain a healthy body, you should avoid acidic and acid forming foods such as meats and dairy products. An acidic pH can occur from an acid forming diet, emotional stress, toxic overload, and/or immune reactions or any process that deprives the cells of oxygen and other nutrients.  The body will try to compensate for acidic pH by using alkaline minerals.  If the diet does not contain enough minerals to compensate, a build up of acids in the cells will occur. For example the body needs calcium to balance out the acidity in your body, but if you do not take in sufficient amounts of that, the body is forced to derive it by other means- it will then take it from places such as your bones, which is one of the common reasons for osteoporosis and bad teeth. An acidic balance will:  decrease the body's ability to absorb minerals and other nutrients, decrease the energy production in the cells, decrease it's ability to repair damaged cells, decrease it's ability to detoxify heavy metals, make tumor cells thrive, and make it more susceptible to fatigue and illness.  A blood pH of 6.9, which is only slightly acidic, can induce coma and death.

Please click this link for a full list of alkaline vs. acidic foods:

http://rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm

Since we're already talking about the body, I want to briefly touch upon the role of fats and sugars. To be used as fuel for our cells, the sugars we eat travel a three-stage journey through our body

• Stage 1 Sugars start out in the digestive tract when we eat them.

• Stage 2 They pass through the intestinal wall, into the bloodstream.

• Stage 3: They then move smoothly and easily out of the bloodstream and into our cells. This occurs rapidly, often in minutes.

When we eat a high-fat diet, the sugar gets trapped in stage 2, and the body works overtime, sometimes to the point of exhaustion and disease, in an effort to move the sugar out of the intestinal wall. Meanwhile, the sugar backs up in the blood, creating sustained, elevated blood sugar that wreaks havoc on the body in the form of Candida, fatigue, diabetes, etc.

What happens in the presence of fat that causes sugar to pile up in our bloodstream? It has to do with the pancreas. Under the direction of the brain, the pancreas is responsible for producing a hormone known as insulin. One of insulin's roles is to attach itself to sugar molecules in the blood and then find an insulin receptor in the blood-vessel wall. The insulin can then transport the sugar molecule through the blood-vessel membrane to the interstitial fluid (the fluid between the cells) and continue to escort sugar across another cell into the cell itself.

In the body, fat provides many needed insulating functions, including conserving body heat, absorbing shock, preventing too much water from escaping through the skin, and protecting nerve fibers. But excess dietary fat in the bloodstream creates some negative insulating effects. When we eat too much fatty food, a thin coating of fat lines the blood-vessel walls, the cells' insulin-receptor sites, the sugar molecules, as well as the insulin itself. These fats can take a full day or more to "clear" from the blood, all the while inhibiting normal metabolic activity, and preventing these various structures from communicating with each other.

Thus, too much fat in the blood impedes the movement of sugar out of the bloodstream. This results in an overall rise in blood sugar, as sugars continue to travel from the digestive tract (stage into the blood (stage 2) but cannot escape from the blood so they can be delivered to the cells (stage 3), which await their fuel.

Just because you eat meat, doesn't necessarily mean that you eat a lot of fat too. A lot of times you'll see people that eat meat and look very fit and cut, but trust me their bodies need to work a lot harder to break down the meat. I can write down loads of reasons for why people are not carnivores, but I think the following should suffice: Our intestinal tracts measure roughly 12 times the length of our torsos (about 30 feet). This allows for the slow absorption of sugars and other water-borne nutrients from fruit. In contrast, the digestive tract of a carnivore is only 3 times the length of its torso. This is necessary to avoid rotting or decomposition of flesh inside the animal. The carnivore depends upon highly acidic secretions to facilitate rapid digestion and absorption in its very short tube. Still, the putrefaction of proteins and the rancidity of fats is evident in their feces.

Also keep in mind that what was fed to the animal will get into your body as well when you ingest it. So to avoid putting strain on your body with antibiotics and growth hormones etc, please don't eat meat.

Karmic reason

As Sevan has already pointed out several times- and what should also be common sense is- that if a creature runs away from you, it obviously doesn't want to be eaten. The consumption of animals will only be perpetuating the problem of exterminating life, which results in karmic consequenses that will be detrimental to your spiritual evolution. Keep in mind that when the animals are being slaughtered they're in states of extreme fear. This will lower their frequency, and you ingest the meat that way, and it will lower your frequency as well. There is nothing stupid about respecting all forms of life, and protecting those who are the weakest.

Alternatives

I have been a vegetarian for 18 years and a vegan for 4 years now, and I assure you that I look really good, smell lovely, and am very energetic, strong and healthy. People that have never tried a vegan lifestyle before usually don't know where to start. Let me tell you first of all that you really don't need to buy any special products unless you want to. A lot of brands that you can buy at your every day super market don't test on animals, and you don't need to buy special foods- just look at the ingredients list if you buy processed foods or shampoos etc., and avoid animal ingredients. When it comes to food, you can just cut out the meat entirely from your diet, and you will still be left with a plethora of delicious dishes, but of course if you like the taste of meat or need milk or cream for whatever reason, there are great alternatives, such as a wide variety of soy based fake meats, soy-, nut- and cereal milks and creams. So I thought I'd provide a bunch of links to places where you can buy vegan products and find loads of yummy recipes. I have ordered a lot of things from some of those online shops, and the products are great!

Vegan Shops

UK

http://www.veganstore.co.uk/

 US

http://www.veganstore.com/

 Canada

http://www.karmavore.ca/index.php

 Australia

http://crueltyfreeshop.com.au/

 Germany

http://www.vegan-wonderland.de/catalog/index.php?osCsid=e6ad18bfdca...

 

Vegan foods and non foods

 http://www.sodeliciousdairyfree.com/

http://www.faithinnature.co.uk/

http://www.paulmitchell.com/en-us/Pages/home.aspx

http://uncleeddiesvegancookies.com/

http://www.methodproducts.co.uk/

http://www.lavera.com/

http://www.drbronner.com/

 

 

Peta's 'do not test list'

To find out if your favorite brands are testing on animals please refer to PETA's 'do not test list'. Also you can look for PETA's bunny logo and/or the Vegan logo on the product itself (these logos vary by country).

http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/defau...

Vegan Recipes

I try not to say vegan food, because somehow food becomes weird and people get scared as soon as you add the word 'vegan' to it. I assure you I cook very 'normal' food such as pasta, soups, stews, rice, potatos etc. In fact for the past 3 months I have been cooking every day and have not made the same dish twice- and I still have more dishes left to cook. I frequently eat very creamy ice cream, cakes, cookies, winegums and other sweet things, and I don't miss anything. I am planning on making a resistance cook book with healthy and unhealthy dishes for those of us who still like their fried stuff and their sweets every now and then ; ) But until then Please check out this website:

 

http://vegweb.com/index.php?action=recipecategories

 

Links

 

http://www.vegansoapbox.com/non-graphic-pro-vegan-videos/

 

http://www.meatvideo.com/

 

http://www.chooseveg.com/meet-your-meat.asp

 

http://www.peta.org/

 

 

 

No one expects you to be perfect and make the transition from one minute to the other, but please do as much as you can to protect our fellow creatures. This post was just scratching the surface, but I hope you found this post helpful- please share as you see fit, and help stop this cruelty once and for all. Thank you for taking the time to read this.