Vegetarianism is a means by which we can withdraw our support from animal agribusiness. Each of us can use our everyday choices to work for a better world.
There are strong health, environmental, and ethical reasons for choosing a vegetarian diet, while the reasons against are habit and convenience. When you think of the consequences of eating animal products in today’s society, it seems that vegetarianism is the prudent choice.
When people use terms such as "pig," "cow," "chicken," and "turkey" as insults, they demonstrate contempt for these animals, contempt that derives from a desire to justify unnecessarily killing and eating innocent beings. By rejecting the violence inherent in animal agriculture, vegetarians can relate to nonhuman animals with caring and compassion, appreciating them as fascinating and beautiful creatures.
Contact us for copies of this booklet, as well as our starter pack (which includes the ADA’s 1997 position paper on vegetarian diets, recipes, essays, questions & answers, information about other organizations, etc.). Printing of this booklet is paid for with donations, which are tax-deductible.
When I met my first vegetarian, he told me he had not eaten meat for fourteen years. I looked at him as if he had managed to hold his breath that entire time. Today I know there is nothing rigorous or strange about eating a diet that excludes meat.
Erik Marcus
Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, 1998
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Do we, as humans, having an ability to reason and to communicate abstract ideas verbally and in writing, and to form ethical and moral judgments using the accumulated knowledge of the ages, have the right to take the lives of other sentient organisms, particularly when we are not forced to do so by hunger or dietary need, but rather do so for the somewhat frivolous reason that we like the taste of meat? In essence, should we know better?
Peter Cheeke, PhD
Contemporary Issues in Animal Agriculture, 1999
It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.
Peter Singer
Practical Ethics, 1993
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to fore only when its recipient has no power. Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984