Every year, 56 billion animals are killed. These shocking statistics do not begin to include the fish and other ocean species. Humans have been eating animals as far as two and a half million years ago. It is said that they did this as a way of survival. As years have come and gone, and we have progressed as humans, scientific studies have shown the significance of adopting a plant-based diet into your changing lifestyle. It is no longer necessary to inflict in the slaughtering of innocent animals. Veganism is defined as a person who does not eat or use animal products. Most of the motives behind people going vegan is the harsh reality of slaughterhouses and its cruelty. The lives of these domesticated animals are short-lived and painful. …show more content…
In order to produce the mass demand, females are constantly impregnated by insemination. After birthing her newborn, the baby is stolen within hours. The mother will never see her baby again. As for the calf, he or she will receive multiple unrelieved procedures such as branding (using nine hundred and fifty degrees to press onto the skin for several seconds), dehorning, and disbudding (scraping the sensitive horn tissue out of the skull with a knife). Suffering from a similar situation, sows are impregnated at a young age of seven months old and kept in more tight and confined cages than pigs who are not pregnant. When the piglets are born, they are taken from their own mothers and have their teeth ground/cut out and castrated - if males - all with no pain relief. By the age of four to six months, the babies are sent off to slaughter. Chickens do not receive less imprisonment than any of the others. At birth, if the chick happens to be a male, they are immediately gassed and ground up or thrown into the garbage, alive in both case scenarios, due to being seen as useless in the egg industry. Females are soon sent to have their beaks sliced off with a hot blade, under no anesthetic. They are then crushed into tiny battery cages where their lives will be …show more content…
As Forks Over Knives writes, “63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)”, “25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods”, and only “12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods”. Due to such a junk food and high animal-based diet, cholesterol levels are extremely prevalent, especially in Americans. Ischaemic Heart Disease is the number one leading reason for death in the world. Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes is another disease becoming more and more known in the States. Since 1970, the widespread rate of obesity of more than twenty-five percent went from zero to thirty-two. Luckily, obesity and Type 2 Diabetes can be reversed with a vegan diet. Mishra, S from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition ran a study that proved weight loss on a plant-based diet. In an eighteen week stretch, the group which consisted of a vegan diet lost 9.5 pounds whereas the non-vegan only lost 0.2. Ethical benefits play a huge role in why so many chose to go vegan. Farming livestock produce anywhere between 20% to 50% of the world's man-made greenhouse gases. Shrink That Footprint writes that a meat lover has the highest carbon footprint, bring in 3.3 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation is another huge ethical downfall. Natural Resources Canada states,“in the agriculture sector, the result of forests