The supermodel Naomi Campbell was once a spokeswoman for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and appeared naked in a high-profile poster campaign with four other models. Now this super (hypocritical) model wears fur??? You can read the whole article by clicking here

If you don’t like fur either – see my article on Elle magazine advertising it http://www.tishtashtoys.com/blog/2009/11/100-anti-fur-complaints-to-elle-magazine/

Great article on the BBC site today about vegetarians http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8341002.stm

Can you eat fish and still be a veggie? I think not ! I’ve been vegetarian for over 25 years now. Why? Quite simply I don’t believe we have the right to kill another living being. Just as it is wrong to kill and then eat a human – I think it is wrong to kill horses, cows, dogs, cats, sheep, goats, fish and other animals. I don’t rant on about it as much as I used when I was in my teens and waging war on the world of meat eaters – which could be anything between 90 and 97% of the world. I realise I am in the minority and live my life the way which makes me feel I am doing the right thing.

I grew up eating meat and to be honest loved just about everything that was put in front of me, but like most kids never really connected meat with beautiful living creatures. My stepfather’s family were butchers and we ate a classic meat and two veg diet. What changed? When I was about 11 or 12, the family golden retriever got into my pet rabbit’s run and….well basically retrieved my little grey rabbit (called Jenny). Fern shook Jenny back and forth in her bloody jaws until Jenny was no more and this incident affected me profoundly.

I made a connection between animals killing animals and accepted it’s what they do, they don’t know any better, and they are driven by instincts, hormones and the desire to eat, fight etc. But I made a personal decision that as a human I was not as driven by these base insticts to destroy lives, and also that I just basically did not have any right to do so.

25 years on, with two small children who are veggie, I still don’t understand why most of the rest of the planet think they have the right to kill living things. Like I said earlier, I don’t make a big deal out of it nowadays, hubby gets nagged every now and again but I realise I can’t change him and can’t change others.

If you are reading this though and do eat meat. Please just take one minute to think about this – why do you think you have the right to kill things. How is it right to murder animals to eat them?

Me and my children are all as healthy as the next person – we have an interesting and delicious diet. We don’t miss out on anything. We don’t really see it as missing out. It’s just a simple fact that we don’t kill things.

Would love to hear your comments (be nice though!!)

Sharon

This is an article I found today on http://forums.treehugger.com It’s written by Bruce Friedrich. Like many people these days,  I’m trying to encourage our family to be more environmentally friendly and globally responsible all the time. It’s nice to know that as I’ve been veggie for almost 25 years, and have two vegetarian children – the very fact we are not eating meat – is actually making a difference to the planet. Enjoy the article…

Environment Agency: Go Vegetarian to Stop Climate Change

I’m tempted to move to Britain, and not just because I saw an early screening of Michael Moore’s amazing new movie, Sicko (go see it; tell all your friends). What got me is that an official with the UK’s Environment Agency has acknowledged that humans can significantly help stop global warming by adopting a vegetarian diet.

Of course, the science could not be more clear. When U.N. scientists looked at all the evidence, they declared in a 408-page report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow that raising animals for food is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all vehicles in the world combined. And scientists at the University of Chicago showed that a typical American meat-eater is responsible for nearly 1.5 tons more carbon dioxide a year than a vegan.

But for someone in government to admit this is something special, since even Al Gore refuses to talk about it (which makes me think that perhaps he is planning to run). What happened is that someone posted a comment on the Environment Agency’s Web site asking, “Adopting a vegan diet reduces one person’s impact on the environment even more than giving up their car or forgoing several plane trips a year! Why aren’t you promoting this message as part of your [World Environment Day] campaign?”

In response, an Environment Agency official wrote that the “potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant” and offered assurances that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working on a set of “key environmental behaviour changes” to mitigate climate change—including promoting vegetarianism.

Indeed, study after study has shown that animal agriculture contributes to global warming and environmental destruction, yet instead of urging people to go vegetarian, most U.S. politicians and environmental spokespeople just continue to hype hybrid cars, recycling, and fluorescent light bulbs as solutions to our spiraling environmental problems.

This is just not good enough. Vegetarians in Hummers do more for the planet than do meat-eaters who cruise around in hybrids or collect recyclable soda cans. Now that George Bush has finally acknowledged that global warming is a reality, perhaps he could follow his vegetarian niece, Lauren Bush—and former first daughter Chelsea Clinton—in adopting a vegetarian diet. I’m not going to hold my breath until this happens, but it would be gratifying for representatives of the U.S. government to acknowledge the absolute fact that what people eat is more important than what they drive.

Carbon dioxide emissions aren’t our only environmental concern, of course. There’s deforestation, water and air pollution, world hunger, and more. According to Greenpeace, chickens raised for KFC and other companies that “produce” chicken flesh are fed crops that are grown in the Amazon rain forest. And according to the U.N. report, raising animals for food is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”

To whit, more than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals; farmed animals are fed more than 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains grown in the U.S.; and almost half of the water and 80 percent of the agricultural land in the U.S. are used to raise animals for food.

There is also the unappetizing synopsis by Scripps Howard of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on animal waste and the environment: “[I]t’s untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased. … It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick. … Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. … Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick.”

If that’s not enough to make you feel a little queasy, consider this: Consuming animal products isn’t just making the environment sick—it’s making us sick, too. Meat, eggs, and dairy foods are high in cholesterol, saturated fat, calories, and concentrated protein. Animal products are known to contribute to heart disease, diabetes, certain types of cancer, obesity, and other debilitating diseases.

And don’t forget that more than 10 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S. alone to feed our meat addictions. We’re talking about an awful lot of suffering.

And for what? Chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, cheese pizza, scrambled eggs, and other foods that have healthy, humane, and environmentally friendly counterparts. I can’t imagine why anyone would cause such suffering and devastation when there is a better option: a vegetarian diet. Why not give it a try?

If you need some tips, please check out www.VegCooking.com for recipes, meal plans, cookbook recommendations, and more. It’s not too late to reverse the changes in our climate, but all of us need to take steps to reduce greenhouse gases, and we need to take them soon. Your next meal would be a good time to start.

also see:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/the-warming-globe-and-us/[img][/img][img][/img]