I feel the need to clarify my position on animal rights.

I'd like to clarify my stance on animal rights. To most people the words animal rights activists conjure images of masked radicals fire bombing research labs due and PETA activists harrasing people in the streets. I think that it's sad that the idea that non human animals deserve to live free from unnecessary violence is considered so radical. I have recently decided that I no longer wish to be an omnivore. I didn't make this decision because I think that eating meat is wrong, I made the decision because factory farming usurps the laws of nature and is detrimental to the survival of our planet. I follow the Native American view of respecting any animal that you choose to kill and making sure you use it all. If you understand that you are taking the life of something for subsistence and make sure it doesn't go to waste it is not unethical to kill an animal. However factory animals can't fight back when they are confined in cages so small that they can't move, and fighting back is a natural instinct when being preyed upon. Taking away an animals predator and prey instinct is against nature. Not to mention that if we freed up the amount of resources it takes to commercialy raise animals for food we'd have more than enough food for everyone on the planet. Here are the statistics according to www.vegtaste.com

- 70% of grains used to feed animals that can feed the billions of starving people around the world.

- The world's cattle alone need massive quantity of food, equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people.

- Amount of feed needed to produce just one 8-ounce steak would fill 45 to 50 bowls with cooked cereal grains

- The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to make 1 pound of beef.

- Reducing U.S. meat production by 10 percent would free grain to feed 60 million people.


On the topic of violent animal rights activism, I am a pacifist and don't believe that we should bring any more violence into the world than is necessary for our own survival. I don't believe that people should be targeted with violence, but rather the corporate structures that are complicit in the institutional abuse of living creatures. When laws are unjust it is our moral responsibility to break them with out harming anyone in the process.

On the topic of vivesection, technological advances have been made so that live animal vivesection is no longer necessary. Just about anything that can be done to a live animal can be simulated mathmaticaly and programmed into a computer with the same results. Instead of pumping all kinds of money into these labs, we should be putting that money into technologies that will make these labs obsolete. The truth of the matter is that so many different corporate entities have their hands in lab bussiness that they will fight tooth and nail to keep this change from happening. I'm not anti medical research but when inhumane experiments become a multi billion dollar a year industry that's where I draw the line.

On the topic of euthanasia, as sad as it may be untill people stop breeding their pets for greed and neglecting to have their animals spayed and neutered there are going to be more animals than homes. I'd rather see an animal die painlessly than get hit by a car or picked up by an abuser or some other awful fate. I will continue to educate people on the effects of pet overpopulation in hopes that the people I reach can help make a difference in our communities.

I understand that some of my ideology may seem a bit extreme to some people, and it is not my goal to try and force my beliefs on to anyone. I am here to offer an alternative viewpoint to a worldwide problem so that people can inform themselves and act in accordence to their own belief systems. I'm not going to go firebomb medical labs, I'm not going to attack ceo's of farms or any other violent non sense like that. However I am going to continue to help find homes for unwanted pets and to educate people that the survival of the human race depends on the survival of all living things on the planet no matter how much opposition I may encounter. And one final thought, just because I consider my self a proponent of animal rights doesn't mean I condone every thing that PETA and their splinter groups do. People like to assume that just because I'm an activist in the cause means that I agree with everything they do and that's just not true. I'm not willing to go as far as to discredit the organization alltogether beacuase they have done good things however not all animal rights activists follow PETAS brand of animal rights.