I just watched an HBO documentary called I Am an Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and Peta. I highly highly recommend that everyone watch it. It’s educational and, yes, upsetting. I started bawling a few times. It gives a taste of the cruelties inflicted upon animals that happen every day, that we are fortunate enough to turn a blind eye to most of the time. But Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of Peta, forces her eyes open and does everything in her power to help these defenseless creatures. And she has made a monumental difference. She has helped alter the ways of many companies. The big changes are great, but no gesture is too small. Even if that means saving just one turkey out of the thousands that are murdered each day at Butterball. If only more people in the world had the compassion that she does.

She put it well when she said, I didn’t choose to be this way, it just happened. I can absolutely relate to that. I’ve always been very compassionate towards animals. Who knows where it came from, but I have it. And I’m glad. It means I care enough to give a voice to animals that have none. Some people are just more sensitive. Some people are able to understand that animals do have feelings. They are not here for our fashion statements and our veal parmesan. I mean, if we can survive perfectly well without murdering animals for sustenanse, why the hell wouldn’t we? Why is it so hard for others to get that? How many times do I have to hear people say, “I see what you’re saying, but I love a big juicy steak.”

It’s one thing to come from a small farm where you know the animals had a good life… even then I don’t think I’d have the heart to eat an animal. But it’s quite another during this time of mass production, where there are so many animals, with little space and little time to kill them humanely. I mean, are humans so desensitized that this doesn’t bother them? Why is it such a small percentage of the human race that actually tries to avoid animal products? Oh yeah, it’s inconvenient, isn’t it? To the undercover researchers that work for Peta, I am filled with gratitude. You put your lives on the line. You take jobs in slaughterhouses for months at a time, forcing yourselves to participate in the slaughter of animals, so you can get footage showing just how horribly inhumane these companies are. To show how much suffering these animals endure, often times for sheer entertainment of the slaughterhouse workers. Tell me what is funny about ripping a turkey’s leg off while it’s still alive? Or sitting on one as it struggles and suffers under the body weight? What a cruel world we live in. It’s no wonder the people at Peta and the ALF go to extreme measures to stop animal abuse. The less extreme measures often bear no results.

I’m generally not preachy on my posts, but I just get so filled with emotion that I need to express it. This is why I’m a vegan. Even the thought of someone trying to skin my cat for her fur brings tears to my eyes. And to think that many of these animals are skinned while they’re still alive!!! So they can feel the flesh ripping from their bodies.

People who take in pets only to mistreat and neglect them. People who are mindlessly separating the meat in their burger from the cow that gave its life. From the tortured baby cow that gave you the veal in your high end restaurant. How can I not speak out? How do we separate our pets from the animals that are cruelly tested on and slaughtered? I just don’t get it. It does not make sense to me. I wish all the world was as confused about this as I am, and other vegans are. What a difference it would make. If there is a just God out there, I only hope he is able to prevent animals from feeling the horrible pain and torture that is inflicted upon them.