One Vegas billboard features a sweet droppy-eared puppy and a bright-eyed perky piglet. The billboard asks, “Why love one but eat the other?” In another billboard, an adorable kitten and a chick are shown with the same question, “Why love one but eat the other?” The billboards also include Mercy For Animals’ vegetarian website, chooseveg.com and the Vegas Veg* website, vegasveg.com.

In March and April of 2010, nine billboards were located throughout the Las Vegas Valley and were viewed over 10 million times! Then in February 2011 the billboards made a reappearance for one month. And now, for a third time, these billboards are up across the Vegas Valley for four weeks.

The billboards will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people daily. Viewers are encouraged to eat less meat, go vegetarian, or go vegan. The billboards are a peaceful and effective method of saving animals’ lives, slowing climate change, and improving human health.

The billboards were not only less expensive the third time around but they were also more eco-friendly. That’s because there was no need to print out the billboards. That’s right, the original billboards from 2010 were kept in storage and were ready for re-use twice in 2011.

Let’s hope they’re still in good condition for use in 2012!

“In an eye-opening new research paper called The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood, University of Bristol researchers Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole explore how we, as a society, teach our children a separate morality for food animals that intercepts a child’s natural tendency to protect and empathize with all animals. As the paper points out, when we explain to children for the first time where meat comes from, their first reaction is often revulsion. Parents confront this moral quandary by explaining to children why farm animals have a different role in our lives than other animals.”

Read more about the research here >>

But if you’re a vegetarian or vegan parent who wants to nuture compassion and health in your little one, here are some children’s books that do just that >>

The billboard features a puppy and a piglet, and asks the question, “Why love one but eat the other?”. It then suggests: “Choose vegetarian” and directs observers to the CCVN website and to Mercy For Animals.

The billboard is in a prime location just north of the city, on highway 101, one of the busiest highways in the country.

CCVN’s  billboard will remain up until July 10, reaching thousands of drivers every day.

It has always been crucial to the gourmet’s pleasure that he eat in ways the mainstream cannot afford. For hundreds of years this meant consuming enormous quantities of meat. That of animals that had been whipped to death was more highly valued for centuries, in the belief that pain and trauma enhanced taste. “A true gastronome,” according to a British dining manual of the time, “is as insensible to suffering as is a conqueror.” But for the past several decades, factory farms have made meat ever cheaper and—as the excellent book The CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] Reader makes clear—the pain and trauma are thrown in for free. The contemporary gourmet reacts by voicing an ever-stronger preference for free-range meats from small local farms. He even claims to believe that well-treated animals taste better, though his heart isn’t really in it. Steingarten tells of watching four people hold down a struggling, groaning pig for a full 20 minutes as it bled to death for his dinner. He calls the animal “a filthy beast deserving its fate.”

Even if gourmets’ rejection of factory farms and fast food is largely motivated by their traditional elitism, it has left them, for the first time in the history of their community, feeling more moral, spiritual even, than the man on the street. Food writing reflects the change. Since the late 1990s, the guilty smirkiness that once marked its default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing. References to cooks as “gods,” to restaurants as “temples,” to biting into “heaven,” etc., used to be meant as jokes, even if the compulsive recourse to religious language always betrayed a certain guilt about the stomach-driven life. Now the equation of eating with worship is often made with a straight face. The mood at a dinner table depends on the quality of food served; if culinary perfection is achieved, the meal becomes downright holy—as we learned from Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), in which a pork dinner is described as feeling “like a ceremony … a secular seder.”

It’s truly disgusting how warped the foodie ethic is. They simply have no respect for others.

Later, Myers comments:

Note that the foodies’ pride in eating “nose to tail” is no different from factory-farm boasts of “using everything but the oink.” As if such token frugality could make up for the caloric wastefulness and environmental damage that result from meat farming!

The emphasis here is mine.

Lastly, one final quote:

We have already seen that the foodie respects only those customs, traditions, beliefs, cultures—old and new, domestic and foreign—that call on him to eat more, not less. But the foodie is even more insatiable in regard to variety than quantity. Johnston and Baumann note that “eating unusual foods is part of what generates foodie status,” and indeed, there appears to be no greater point of pride in this set than to eat with the indiscriminate omnivorousness of a rat in a zoo dumpster.

The more lives sacrificed for a dinner, the more impressive the eater. Dana Goodyear: “Thirty duck hearts in curry … The ethos of this kind of cooking is undeniably macho.” Amorality as ethos, callousness as bravery, queenly self-absorption as machismo: no small perversion of language is needed to spin heroism out of an evening spent in a chair.

Again, my bolding.

You can, and should, read the entire thing online here >>

And/or listen to it read aloud by Colleen Patrick Goudreau here >>

There’s a great interview in the Pheonix New Times with a woman named Natalie Morris. She really “gets it.” What I mean by “gets it” is that she understands the place where vegans and nonvegans share common ground. Take a look:

CB: So do you “flex” and eat meat when it’s organic or humanely raised?
NM: You could say that. I hate the label “flexitarian” or even “vegetarian” to be honest. I’m not either and don’t claim to be. I just don’t eat meat, or seafood for that matter. Most call me vegetarian because its easier for them but I have to specify; I WOULD eat meat if given the ideal opportunity. I’m not against it. For me, the ideal opportunity is having meat that I believe has been humanely raised, has not had any environmental impacts and hasn’t harmed any foodworkers in the process. But in today’s meat industry, that’s asking a lot, even of the smallest and most well-intentioned ranchers and fishermen who are tied down to the laws set forth by the USDA and other government organizations. Bottom line- I will eat meat but I want to see firsthand what’s happened on the farm, that’s just not going to happen most of the time and I’m not willing to take everyone at their word. Meat has too much of an impact on our eco-system to take these things lightly.

The other day I was handing out Compassionate Choices leaflets on a college campus and someone asked me about “humane meat.” I told him it was admirable that he wanted to make kind choices, but I told him it’s very hard to ensure that there wasn’t animal cruelty or environmental damage that occured before he bought the meat at the grocery store or restaurant. I said:

“I challenge you to find animal products that meet your standards of humane and eco-friendly. Please do the research yourself and visit the farms. Remember, if they won’t show you where your meat comes from, you can’t trust them if they say it’s humane, healthy, or eco-friendly.”

Then I reminded him that if he can’t or won’t visit the farms, the easiest way to avoid participating in farmed animal cruelty and CAFO environmental destruction is to choose to eat vegan foods instead of animal products.

It’s just common sense. If you care about animals and the environment, eat like you care.

Just a few days ago, the Washington Post claimed there were about 924,000 vegan kids in the US and that a “growing number of children and adolescents are consciously opting for a vegetarian diet.”

But some people doubt that. Cattlenetwork is claiming the reported growth is too sudden to be real. So let’s take a look at what might cause an increase in vegan children to see if this spike is possible.

Factors that contribute towards the increase of vegan children:

Microtrends reported these factors:

• Increased social acceptance of vegetarianism and veganism
• More meat alternatives and other vegan products available
• Vegan and vegetarian parents who raise their children as vegans
• Parents who value individuality and compassion and let children make their own kind choices
• Prevalence of information about animals and the environment

The Microtrends authors even comment:

“In fact, if you think about it, what’s really remarkable is not so much that more and more kids are becoming vegan and vegetarian – but that kids today eat as many animals as they do.”

I have to agree with the authors! It’s rather astonishing that there aren’t more vegan children. But I think if we just keep doing what we’re doing – promoting compassion, raising our own children as vegans, and increasing the availability of vegan foods – we’ll be living in a very vegan-friendly society in no time!

“Veganism is rapidly shedding its ascetic mantle. It is becoming chic, thanks to celebrities like Alicia Silverstone, Joaquin Phoenix and Ellen Degeneres. And a symbol of power, witness vegan business icons like Ford Motors Executive Chairman Bill Ford, Twitter founder Biz Stone, and Las Vegas entrepreneur Steve Wynn.”

Not to mention Emily Deschanel, Alec Baldwin, Ginnifer Goodwin, Tobey Maguire, Robin Quivers, Natalie Portman, Fiona Apple, Russel Simmons, Daniel Negreanu, and Moby. Plus, many more celebrities, athletes, authors, scientists, and other notable people.

The article continues…

“Perhaps the most important aspect of veganism’s rising star is its emergence in discussions of climate change. As the ravages of animal agriculture on the environment gain notice, veganism might just be the holy grail of personal activism not just for animals and human health, but for the planet. A number of analyses have fingered meat and dairy as leading culprits driving global warming.”

For a list of articles on the subject, check out this previous Vegan Soapbox post >>

The Psychology Today article concludes:

“If everyone went vegan, there would of course be a lot fewer farmed animals. That’s a good thing as most are born into lives of misery. Those remaining would be given a decent life with the chance to experience the inner lives nature intended for them-like the lucky ones who ended up here, and here, and here.”

One simple answer to the question, “Why Vegan?” is this” I’m vegan because animal suffering matters to me. I care.”

From Psychology Today:

An article appeared in PLoS one this May which describes brain differences between Vegetarians, Vegans and Omnivores in the way they process pictures of [human and nonhuman] animal suffering. [...]

All things considered, the study suggests that Vegetarians are more empathetic to the suffering of others, but as I contemplate the well-documented health benefits of a Vegetarian diet, as well as the environmental and social hazards of current meat eating habits and production practices, I think it is obvious that reducing your meat consumption will first and foremost be an act of compassion towards yourself.

When I first heard of this study, I worried that it was just another “vegans are just extra-sensitive” excuse from omnivores, suggesting that vegans are sappy and hyper-emotional. After all, that’s something I’d heard my whole life from people who were intent on maintaining the status-quo. But times have changed. People are less likely to call vegans “bleeding hearts” when it’s obvious that defending the cruelty involved in animal agribusiness is irrational, destructive, and just plain mean.

There is no defense for eating animals.

Besides, as the study showed, vegans tend to be more empathetic to humans, too, not just nonhumans!

Vegas Veg* worked with Mercy For Animals (MFA) to produce pro-veg billboards in the Las Vegas Valley. Nine billboards were located throughout the Las Vegas Valley and were viewed over 10 million times!

One billboard features a puppy and a piglet and asks, “Why love one but eat the other?” In another billboard, a kitten and a chick are shown with the same question, “Why love one but eat the other?” The billboards include Mercy For Animals’ vegetarian website, chooseveg.com and the Vegas Veg* website, vegasveg.com.

Anyone in Vegas looking for vegan options can start by taking a look here: http://www.vegasveg.com/food.html which offers a list of vegan-friendly restaurants in the Vegas valley.

We answer honestly.

Protein is widely available in plant foods from beans, nuts and grains to even just fruits and veggies. So long as we eat enough calories we generally have no problem getting plenty of protein.

At first it can be hard to be vegan, but like all good things in life: it takes some work, but that work is worth it. And it just keeps getting easier as time goes on.

No, they don’t kill the cows in order to get milk, but they do kill the calves. Veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry, not the other way around. Moreover, when the cows are no longer useful to the dairy farmers, they too are killed and turned into cheap beef.  Remember that horrible footage of tortured downed cows in the HSUS investigation in Chino? Those were DAIRY cows. Every dairy cow is destined to a slaughterhouse.

But no matter how skilled we become at answering those questions, we’re rarely engaged in large scale debates where our voices would be heard by hundreds.

Bruce Friedrich, however, is currently involved in college debates about the ethics of veganism. His debates attract hundreds and hundreds of students to listen. And as a skilled debater, he has found some of the best reasons for veganism and he has concluded that it’s not veganism that requires defense. Nonveganism is the lifestyle that everyone should  question. Because modern-day nonveganism is indefensible.

Friedrich writes:

You can watch many of the debates online, if you’re so inclined, but here is the crux of my argument:

First, eating meat wastes and pollutes our land, water and air–as I discuss more thoroughly here.

Second, eating meat drives up the price of cereals, which leads to starvation and food riots — as I discuss here.

Finally, eating meat supports cruelty to animals so severe that it would warrant felony cruelty charges were dogs or cats so horribly abused — and that’s true even of so-called “humane” farms (video).

He continues with even more reasons for veganism:

• “there is no ethical difference between eating a dog, cat, chicken, pig or fish. If anything, eating your dogs or cats would be morally preferable, since they would have led a good life until you killed them.”
• “if we’re eating meat, we are paying people to abuse animals in myriad ways that would violate anti-cruelty laws if these were dogs or cats rather than chickens and pigs. Animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them; they never breathe fresh air, raise their young, develop normal relationships with other animals, explore their surroundings, or do anything else they would do in nature.”
• “meat is absolutely not good for us. The American Dietetic Association — the largest body of nutrition professionals on the planet — conducted a meta-analysis of all the studies that have ever been done on diet and disease, and found that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and obesity than meat-eaters (they believe that the studies indicate causality, not just correlation). Their position paper on vegetarian and vegan diets concludes that vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all people and during all stages of life, including infancy and pregnancy.”

Although I’ve quoted a significant portion of the article, you should still take a look at it yourself. It’s online at this address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/resolved-eating-animals-i_b_671322.html

If you’re not yet vegan, please go vegan today! Do it for yourself, do it for the animals, do it for other people, and do it for the planet. Just do it!