You Don’t Have To Be A Vegan, Animal Rights Activist

To Save The Animals!

Should I eat less meat?

Go vegan?

Is being vegan really good for my health?

Should I not wear leather?

Does eating eggs cause torture?

Plenty of people want to tell me what to do!

I’ll decide for myself, by thinking it through!

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I’ve provided links to selected ‘save the animals’ resources: access them by clicking here…

As a veterinarian and researcher, I’m busy thinking through the issues. I want to make the best decisions for myself, my family and friends, the animals and our lovely planet.

Science aside click here…

Want to eat healthy, and save the animals?

Support local family farms!

Get to know your local family farmer – I did, and here he is, Simon!

One easy way to save animals:

Eat less meat, to

1. Reduce animal suffering,

2. Improve your health,

3. Combat global warming,

4. Enjoy the meat you do eat, a whole lot more.

Factory: “A building or group of buildings where goods are manufactured or assembled, chiefly by machine.“

Farm: “An area of land and its buildings used for growing crops and rearing animals, typically under the control of one owner or manager.“

Factory Farm: “A system of rearing livestock using intensive methods, by which poultry, pigs, or cattle are confined indoors under strictly controlled conditions.”

When we slaughter animals for food, unnecessarily, we kill our innate human kindness. When we treat animals as ‘goods’ in a factory, we lose touch with our humanity.

I do loving cooking these vegan meals. Lots of choices. Ever wonder what vegans eat? Tasty food! Cooking and photo by FitOldDog

As I look around, I really think people would do well to a eat a little less meat. To save animals and their health.

My recent foray into a vegan diet has changed my attitude to food, considerably. I found that there are lots of great vegan recipes out there. That doesn’t mean I am telling you to eat less meat. I’m just saying that I feel good about it. Just seems to suite my constitution.

Ever wonder what vegans eat? You can see some of my vegan culinary delights on Instagram.

I do love cooking, I must admit. In fact, a love of vegetable gardening and cooking makes a vegan life-style quite straightforward and fun.

Being vegan isn’t a religion to foist on others. It’s a choice!

It is time to phase out factory farms, however. In favor of family farms. Or at least a family farm approach to livestock management.

If we all decided to eat less meat. Just a little less meat, the transition would be easier.

The author, age 6, or was it 5? In post-war England.

Due to the pressures of busy lives, and the efficiency of modern manufacturing processes, our feelings become numb.

We forget where our food comes from.

I suspect that this wonderful country would benefit from a return to family farms. And to rural railways for that matter. Maybe I’m just dreaming of my youth, in England, but I’m horrified by factory farms. Do we have to do that?

As a boy and then a young man, in post-war (WWII) England, family farms played a big role in my life. In fact, there were no factory farms. In Grammar School (High School in the USA), I worked weekends on a ‘small holding.’ A small family farm, of about 20 acres. Such operations were a common part-time source of income. As England recovered from the bombing and loss of life.

Most people had a vegetable garden or an ‘allotment,’ left over from the war. They were called Victory Gardens. We watched our food growing. As opposed to seeing it for the first time in a grocery store.

I do love my vegetable garden.

Pigs for meat. Chickens for eggs. Cattle for beef, milk, cheese and yoghurt. Turkeys for Christmas, of course. Have you ever made real yoghurt – it’s very different from yoghurt in the stores, today. We had lots of healthy work, and a supply of fresh vegetables in the warmer months. In the winter, you could eat from a potato and apple clamp in the garden. Along with some dried and bottled produce. Lots of work! Wholesome food. Later, I turned to making homemade wines, using beetroot or parsnips from the garden. It was just the way we lived.

While England was in recovery, we did eat some meat. Usually a chicken once or twice a month. Between a family of six. It was a highly appreciated treat. Followed by soup or stew within a few days, made from the carcass.

These chickens weren’t puffed up with chemicals (e.g. poly-phosphates). They would look pretty scrawny to kids today, but boy, they were tasty.

As Mom said of family-farmed eggs, “They’re full of goodness.”

Then I became a country vet. Driving from one family farm to another, all day, and often all night.

Families generally care about their critters.

I don’t think factories have such feelings. They create money and a lot of food. Not much happiness for the animals involved. Some of this food is laden with hormones and antibiotics.

As I was crossing a road the other day, I passed a family. This small group included a frail old man, and a woman helping him. I assumed she was his daughter from her manner. She was telling the man to watch the curb. Explaining that it was “a different height.” He replied that he knew what a curb was, long before she was born. I understand how the old man felt.

People don’t like being told what to do.

I don’t plan to tell you what to do. I am hoping that I might persuade some people to less meat. And to refrain from factory farmed products, whenever possible.

I remember the family farms of England, when I worked as a country vet. They were a far cry from the factory farms of today.

Many of you have heard of James Herriot (James Alfred “Alf” Wight). An English country vet, and a wonderful storyteller. If you want to know what life was like for me back then. On the old English country farms. Read ‘All Creatures Great And Small.‘ Tales of rural life in Yorkshire, England. As good today as they were back then.

Dare I say it? I became a competent vet. Liked by many of the farmers. My life took a different turn. After three years of treating cattle, sheep and pigs, in small farming communities of Somerset and Devon, I became a pathologist. Then a researcher.

No longer a saver, but a user, some would say abuser, of animals. I found my calling, research scientist, which I enjoyed for the next 40 years. But I had no desire to kill animals in the process!

A fascinating book. Makes you think!

It’s sometimes justifiable to use animals. But not as often as many people like to think.

When it comes to animal testing, I would love to see people working in the animal testing industry go vegan. At least for a few months.

They would see the world in a different way. I sure do. I began my vegan diet only six months ago. I am enjoying my new food choices. Saving animals at the same time. It helps that I love to cook, and have a vegetable garden.

Veganism seems to be good for my urinary health!

I carried out some crude calculations. This work indicated that people doing animal testing. Such as Toxicologists and Toxicologic Pathologists (that’s me). Could save more animals by going vegan, than they ever would using new technologies. In the short-term, at least.

Their increased sensitivity to animal suffering would also push many to explore alternatives to animal testing more aggressively.

Here are my calculations:

My estimates of the humane benefits of all members of the Society of Toxicology, going vegan. I was a member, now retired from the field.

I finally realized that I don’t need to eat animals.

My Ironman training seems to be unaffected by a diet of vegetables and fruit.

I have eaten lots of animals in my life; most of this was not necessary. So, I at least, should eat less meat. I didn’t know it at the time. I also killed a great many rats and mice, and a few sheep and frogs, in my research. The goal of this work was to reduce both human and non-human animal suffering. Through an understanding of the nature of disease. But I plan to eat less meat, anyway.

Did I do the right thing? I’ve often wondered! Well! I now eat less meat, that’s for sure.

It’s time for me to move on. To focus on saving animals, instead of using them.

I’ll let my veterinary hero, James Heriot, have the last word.

“I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are. How dependent on us. Trusting as a child. Must that we will be kind, and take care of their needs.”

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