Jan 3, 20235 min read

What does it mean to be Vegan, and Why does it matter to everyone?

Updated: Apr 1, 2023

Hello, I’m Jenny, as most of you know, and I am founder of Dalton Moor Farm.

I am going to share a presentation about what it means to live vegan and why it is important that I share this with you.

Vegan is not just a diet.

It is a life philosophy that means living kindly - being kind to all kinds

- all animals, including humans.

It means living a plant based life.

That means

and not ridiculing or using language derogatory to animals or jokes at their expense

It means ..

Aligning our actions with our ethics

In our capitalist, egocentric, western, so-called developed, cultures, humans have become totally disconnected from the natural world, and particularly, disconnected from how our food is grown and produced or how our clothes are made.

We are almost entirely dependent on others to feed and clothe ourselves.

Clever marketing by those with power, money and political influence, has convinced us that eating, wearing, or using certain products in our lives is desirable and good for us.

Sadly it’s all lies and smoke-screens to make a few people richer at our expense and the expense of our beautiful planet home.

A massive industry of cruelty and exploitation lies behind what we eat and what we wear.

But this whole world industry is ultimately owned and controlled by a mere dozen or so people.

That is truly scary

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So what are the harms of animal agriculture?

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Animal cruelty

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Environmental devastation

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Damage to human health

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Cruelty to animals is the reason why most people become vegan

But there is much more to it once you scratch the surface

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There is cruelty, abuse and suffering, beyond your worst nightmares in animal agriculture

It is so common and widespread it has become normalised and even has levels of certification applied to it, such as Red Tractor and RSPCA assured.

but it is far from normal or acceptable.

If we don’t approve of puppy farms or the dog meat trade in Asia, where dogs are boiled alive to produce the best meat, then we shouldn’t support all the cruelty to farmed animals either.

Animal agriculture is brutal at all levels - the human workers suffer too

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The industry does not want you to know the truth and they spend their enormous resources and influence trying to keep that truth hidden, and on clever, wholly misleading advertising.

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This keeps their coffers filled with subsidies, that mean the price paid for animal products is only around 1/3 of their true costs.

Here are sone examples of cruelty in the animal agriculture industry, and these are not exceptions

I considered showing you the gruesome images, but decided the words should really be enough to make you stop and think before you reach for the next dead animal to put in your mouth or on your body.

And then there is the environmental cost

Our growing population cannot be sustained by animal agriculture, as there is simply not enough space on the planet to grow enough animals for us to eat.

Animal agriculture is a very inefficient use of our planet’s resources to feed us

We could however feed every human on earth if we fed all the crops grown for animals to humans instead.

Not only is vegan farming kinder, it is also more efficient in terms of growing food

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And you may be surprised to know that grass fed meat is less environmentally sustainable than intensively farmed meat - but that’s not good news for the animals.

Lots more people are born every day and that isn’t matched by people dying, so our population is exploding. This is generally seen as an over population issue, (that nobody really wants to talk about), but really it’s a humans eating animals population issue - and oddly, no-one wants to talk about that either.

But we will not save our futures or our planet if we continue to eat animals and their bodily excretions

We must stop animal agriculture to save ourselves, or we will face an interesting cocktail of mass starvation, scarcity of clean drinking water, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, disappearing land, and extreme weather.

Doesn’t sound like fun?

The only way to live sustainably and ethically on our planet along with 8 billion other people is to live and eat vegan

You may have heard of earth overshoot day. This is the day when we have used up our allowance of the earth’s resources for the year.

It is moving progressively backwards through the year because we are currently living as if we had 1.7 planet’s worth of resources and clearly we don't.

Choosing a vegan lifestyle is the single most impactful way to change the world,

for animals, for the planet and her human population, and for health

But there is a whole industry trying to hide the truth and protect their income, to the extent of influencing governments to declare animal and climate activists to be domestic terrorists.

Here’s a sobering statistic

'Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021'

Contrary to popular belief, we do not need to eat animals to be healthy.

In fact the opposite is true.

Omnivores eat too much protein, lots of dairy, and too much animal fat and cholesterol,

all of which is seriously harmful to our health

All of this is killing us along with our planet

So, what do vegans eat

Before you try to imagine what would be left on your plate if you didn’t eat meat, it may surprise you to know that 80% of what most omnivores eat is not meat

Vegans though, eat a much larger range of foods than omnivores, and many of my and your favourite recipes, do not need meat at all.

To stay healthy we eat GBOMBS -

Eating a whole food, plant based diet, has been proven to lead to healthier humans.

It can help to ensure good health,

it can also halt, or reverse or even cure many chronic diseases,

and It can help to minimise risks of cancer.

You may have heard of Blue zones

these are areas of the world where people live active lives to very old age, over 100, without illness or disease.

In all of these, the populations eat plant based diets.

What is vegan farming?

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Why am I vegan?

Well I think you know the three reasons now why I am vegan

Primarily for the animals, but after uncovering the truth about the wider harms of animal agriculture, it’s also for the planet and the bonus benefit is for my health

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The real question is