Wirelessly posted
yeah but what about living in urban evironment what are our options and dont forget for those with limited incomes?
Urban gardens. Indoor gardening. Balcony gardening. Rooftop gardening. I know of one couple who cultivate honey on their rooftop to earn a bit of extra income. And my city just passed a bylaw permitting chicken coops in backyards.
I first became a vegan for two reasons: animal cruelty in factory farming and for environmental reasons. When I learned that because of water runoffs from factory farms, there are dead zones in the oceans and fish are picking up farm animal diseases, that was the last straw for me. And when I learned that only 2% of the water on this planet is fresh water and this is running out due to glacier ice caps melting, that was another reason to quit meat since the agricultural industry consumes the most fresh water (for both animals and growing crops for animal feed - 10 billion animals a year in the US is slaughtered for meat, that's a lot of land and fresh water). According to EPA - Environmental Protection Agency - up to 70% of all streams and rivers and groundwater in the USA is contaminated by factory farming - did you know one dairy cow produces as much waste as 23 humans?
People say they love meat and people had always been eating meat. Truth is, up until the 1920s when factory farming first started, people only ate meat a couple times a week. Due to factory farming, people can now eat meat and protein 3 times a day and at a much lower cost. This has become the new norm but at great cost to the environment and results in great cruelty on industrialized farms.
One example of a factory farm: Cal-Maine - largest egg producer in the US (annual income is 1 billion a year, they have 30 millions hens and only 5 workers to look after them) was fined for the following - I should point out that it was due to an undercover investigation that those atrocities were revealed - the agricultural industry now wants to make it a law to make undercover investigations illegal - they lose too much money every time their atrocities are made public. :
HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) reports some of the atrocities found from this investigation (and this investigation occured AFTER Cal-Maine had to recall 300,000 eggs due to salmonella poisoning):
- Birds producing eggs for human consumption confined in overcrowded cages with the rotting corpses of other birds—some of whom had clearly been dead for days or even weeks
- Dead hens, trapped under the trough feeders of their cages, had died with their heads on the egg conveyor belts – exposing passing eggs to the decaying bird
- Birds trapped by their wings, necks and legs in the thin, rusty wires of the battery cages.
- Birds with severely injured legs, unable to reach food or water
- Birds suffering from severe, bloody uterine prolapses enduring the pain of other hens in the overcrowded cages stepping on them
- Hens in the bottom two tiers of battery cages often covered in feces from birds in cages above them
- Escaped hens often becoming covered in liquid manure from the filth of the shallow manure scraping pits, these hens can go from barn-to-barn through manure trenches or on egg conveyors
- Hens drowning, unable to escape the manure trench that runs underneath the cages and into the pipe leading to the outside lagoon
- Discarded dead hens left on floors, cage ledges and tops, and carts
- Eggs covered in blood and feces
And this is not the only factory farm found in violation. If you google factory farm violations, you will find many examples. So, next time you go shopping for meat, eggs and milk at Walmart or buy a chicken burger at a fast food joint, keep in mind what you're buying came from farms like the above.
You may be surprised I have nothing against eating meat. I do eat meat and in fact, ate meat in Alabama because it came from a small family farm up the road that I had visited. Chickens had total reign of the property and were free to run and peck wherever they liked. I am a vegan about 95% of the time but if I knew the meat came from a small family farm where they take excellent care of their animals, then I don't mind eating it.