Veggie and Vegan

Time to make Positive Change?

Research suggests that the average meat eater consumes around 2,000 animals (excluding fish) in their lifetime. As you can probably imagine, to an animal welfare charity, those figures appear quite obscene.

If you really care about animals, the best way you can help is to stop eating them! Excluding fish, in the UK alone approximately 1,000 million animals are farmed and killed for food each year. That's not just taking life but something worse ... actually creating life in order to then take it!

If the welfare aspect isn't sufficient to convince you, consider this ... vegetarianism is healthy, environmentally friendly and a much better way to use the worlds precious resources. By going veggie (or better still vegan) the good you are doing will not be for the animals alone, but your health, the planet and the people you share it with too!

Too much to make the change overnight?

Consider this ... livestock production is responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s more than the entire transport sector. The group Compassion in World Farming estimates that if the average UK household halved its consumption of meat this would cut more emissions than if car use was cut in half. Stopping eating meat just one day a week is an excellent begining and something to build on.

For further information, facts and delicious recipes follow the link below and see how giving up meat just one day a week can make a difference to all our futures.

http://www.supportmfm.org/index.cfm

Ready to go veggie?

The links below will take you to sites that are a gateway to all the support you will need to make a permanent change to your diet. Health benefits are explained and nutritional advice is offered. It's easier than you think and a positive contribution to the future of our planet.

http://www.viva.org.uk/goingveggie/index.php

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/

http://www.vegsoc.org/

http://www.vegansociety.com/

Veggie Recipe of the Month

Why not share your new found passion for veggie food (it will happen, you won't be able to stop it) with us at the rescue.

Each month we will print a favourite recipe, but it's up to you to send one in to us. Who knows ... you might even impress a long term veggie!

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One Step Further - Vegan!

Becoming vegan isn't as daunting as at first it sounds. Today a wide range of dairy substitutes are available including milk, cream, yoghurt, cheese, custard, ice cream, margarine and more! Ok, so you will have to do a little adjusting and you can't just pick your favourite brands off the nearest supermarket shelf but availability of vegan products has vastly improved over recent years meaning that for those that are serious, far less effort will be required of you than of previous generations. All the nutrients you need are provided in a varied and balanced plant-based diet - minus the cholesterol and excess saturated fats.

To top this, vegans have been shown to have a lower risk of heart disease, obesity and cancer and to live longer than meat eaters.

Unsurprisingly (given that animal disease runs rife in overcrowded and dirty factory farms) close to 95% of food poisoning cases are caused by eating meat, dairy or egg products. Each year, millions of day old male chicks are killed. They don't lay eggs and are therefore considered useless. Battery, barn, free range or organic eating eggs has no cruelty free option.

The dairy industry acquits itself no better with cows milk, (meant for calves except that they, considered a 'waste by-product' of the industry, have been taken from their mothers at one or two days old and possibly shot or worse sent to continental veal farms), bottled for human consumption yet containing a cocktail of hormones, fat and traces of pus and blood from infected, weeping bladders.

An environmentally-friendly vegan diet is always going to be the cleaner, kinder, ethically sound option.

source - http://www.animalaid.org.uk  http://www.viva.org.uk