Vegetarianism

"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi

"The life of an animal in a factory farm is characterized by acute deprivation, stress and disease. Hundreds of millions of animals are forced to live in cages or crates barely larger then their own bodies. Unable to groom, stretch their legs, or even turn around, the victims of factory farms exist in a relentless state of distress." - Humane Farming Association

One of the most important guiding principles of a moral life is ahimsa or nonviolence. There is hardly anything more violent than taking the life of another for our pleasure. If we can't give life to others (except procreation), we don't have any right to take it. And we are not living in jungles, where survival itself is a big question. Even more violent than their day of death are the numerous days of the lives of these animals which are raised distinctly differently than our pets.

There are innumerable reasons of choosing a vegetarian diet. They range from better health, care of the environment, conservation of resources, spiritual benefits etc etc. Will be creating a whole section of articles under this label but for today let's first start by looking at how chickens are treated?

Chickens have natural territory and space needs that are unmet in chicken "farms". They are packed together as closely as possible such that they can't even move. The department of agriculture recommends that they should have a minimum of 2 square feet in which to live (how horrendous), but the biggest companies provide a more 0.55 sq feet.

Imagine yourself in an elevator, which is so crowded that you cannot even turn around. All the people in the elevator are confused and scared. They do not realize there is no way out. So they cry and bite & kick attempting to free themselves. Imagine still that the elevator is titled so that everyone falls to one side and it is nearly impossible to move back up. The ceiling is so low that your head is pushed down to your shoulders. There is no way to straighten. Also the terror does not end when someone comes to open the door, your life does.

The chickens raised to be eaten are fed extraordinary and unnaturally large amounts of food in order to put on extra weight. In today's chicken farms, most of the chickens are so obese by 6 weeks that they can't even walk, and most of them have a disease called leucosis (chicken cancer)

So think of all this the next time you sit to have chicken........