On December 2, 2015, I weighed 232 pounds… about 53 pounds overweight.
My “bad cholesterol” levels were too high.
Lab tests indicated I was heading towards diabetes and heart disease.
When I looked in the mirror, and saw the bloated, fat person staring back at me, I felt despair and self-loathing.
I wanted to die, and in fact, due to eating animal-derived food, I was dying.
The weird thing is, I’ve been an athlete most of my life.
I exercised daily, and yet I’d gained weight.
I tried all kinds of diets and eating fads: Paleo. Vegetarian. Pescatarian. Low fat.
You name it, I’d tried it.
But I still consumed dairy products.
I loved pizza, ice cream, gelato, brownies.
If there was a special occasion or social occasion, I sometimes ate meat.
I ate like almost all Americans eat, and it hurt me.
My exercise wasn’t exciting and fun like it used to be.
I was lethargic. I never felt that coveted “runner’s high” I used to feel.
I was trying hard not to be fat, but I was fat.
I was desperate to lose weight and have more energy.
But going vegan wasn’t just about improving my health.
I also did it because my conscience is troubled by the way humans treat animals and the biosphere.
In the months prior to going vegan, I’d been riding my bike on scenic farm roads in rural Michigan.
I’d stop at corrals, farms, and horse ranches and look into the eyes of the horses, cows, pigs, goats, chickens, and other imprisoned animals.
I watched them interact with each other, tried to “be” with the animals as if we were all equals, not the usual human superiority attitude.
It was easy to see that non-human animals have their own lives, thoughts, feelings, and social networks, their own “personhood.”
I realized that if I consume animal-derived food products, I’m complicit in a brutal system that harms me, the environment, and tens of millions of innocent animals.
I realized that all my life I’d been taught that other animals have no rights.
That we can do whatever we want to them.
And that we shouldn’t much care about the cruel ways we make them suffer and die.
So on December 3, 2015, I went 100% vegan.
As I write this today, only a few months later, I weigh 181 pounds. I’m elated to have dropped 51 pounds in less than four months!
I’ve cut the amount of money I spend on food by 35%.
I’m lighter, more agile, more energetic.
I have almost zero body fat.
The XL and XXL size clothes that I purchased as a fattie are literally falling off of me.
People don’t recognize me.
Athletic activities that had been painful or impossible, such as running long distances outdoors, became pleasurable again.
It feels so nice to rediscover my musculoskeletal system.
I realized that the fat was like an anchor, a suit of excess, that had been weighing me down.
My skin cleared up.
My mental clarity, mood, and self-esteem also improved.
My relationship to food has completely changed for the better.
No longer did I crave certain types of food, or feel controlled by food.
But is it hard to be a vegan?
In some ways it is, and that’s the main reason created The Vegan Samurai website and the Vegan Samurai code of honor.
Because as I’ve researched veganism, animal rights, health, culture and other related topics, I’ve discovered that being vegan is like being a samurai… a warrior.
As a Vegan Samurai, you battle internal cravings that come from being raised in a society that programs you to view animals as mere fodder for your dietary pleasure.
You also deal with moral qualms and PTSD that you as a person of conscience feel from living in a society based on harming animals and the earth.
You may feel socially ostracized, or even morally indignant, when you notice everyone around you blindly participates in harming animals and the earth.
The good news is that being a vegan samurai gives you the strength, knowledge, and encouragement so you can become vegan and stay vegan.
Read all the articles here on my website. You’ll find information and inspiration so you experience the health, joy, and other benefits of being vegan.
Donald Trump, his two oldest sons, and many of his top political advisors are blatant enemies of innocent animals.
Let’s examine what a Trump presidency will do to animals and the biosphere…
To see a perfect symbol of Trump’s attitudes towards animals and ecology, look at Trump’s sons Eric and Donald, Jr.
They’re notorious for staged trophy hunts during which they’ve killed an elephant, leopard, buffalo, alligator, waterbuck and other animals in Africa.
Montana media outlets report that businessman Greg Gianforte, the Republican politician who assaulted a journalist and won a House seat anyway, took Donald Trump Jr. on a Montana hunting expedition to shoot Black-tailed prairie dogs.
March through June is peak breeding season for prairie dogs, and Trump Jr. will be shot pregnant females along with males.
When Donald Trump has been asked about his sons’ proclivity for killing innocent animals, he said he was hugely proud of them for doing it.
When Ringling Brothers circuses bowed to pressure from animal welfare lobbyists and ended its elephant entertainment acts, Trump tweeted that he was disappointed.
Trump is a developer.
Developers bulldoze and pave open spaces, springs, rivers, creeks, meadows, wetlands, forests and the animals who call them home, replacing them with asphalt and concrete.
Trump is also a golf course developer, which means his employees demolish native ecosystems, geologic features, and native species, replacing them with non-native grasses and artificial terrascaping and landscaping.
His golf courses are maintained through massive water waste, and require hundreds of tons of herbicides and pesticides per year.
Trump’s inner circle includes mega-millionaires who make money abusing, exploiting, and killing animals.
One of these people is Forrest Lucas, a billionaire whose organization Protect the Harvest works to block and repeal any laws or regulations that limit cruelty in the meat, dairy, pet, and poultry industries.
Lucas also fights against regulations that protect animals in the so-called animal entertainment industries such as circuses, SeaWorld, and zoos.
He even opposes anti-cruelty laws that seek to protect pet animals like dogs and cats.
Also in Trump’s inner circle influencing the new administration’s USDA policies is Brian Klippenstein, executive direct of Protect the Harvest.
Trump is in bed with the gun industry, people who profit from GMOs and chemical-laden industrial agriculture, and people who oppose food quality and organic farming.
Forrest Lucas is only one of several members of Trump’s inner circle who enjoys harming animals and is an advocate of animal cruelty.
Trump is also influenced by Republican Iowa Governor Terry Branstad– the first governor to attack the First Amendment right to free speech by signing a law stipulating prison sentences for people who expose cruelty and criminal behavior in the animal food exploitation industry.
Trump wants Branstad to be his ambassador to China, a country known for brutal treatment of animals and humans.
Branstad’s pro-Big Ag laws are called “ag-gag” laws.
The laws criminalize people who try to expose how factory farming operations harm animals and their human employees.
Trump advisor Republican Ann Sweeney sponsored the Iowa ag-gag legislation.
Another Trump advisor, former Nebraska governor Dave Heineman, vetoed legislation to end sport hunting of mountain lions.
He’s a staunch defender of animal cruelty practices such as cages that cause electric shocks and “gestation crates” that imprison pigs in spaces so tiny that the animals can’t move at all… for their entire life!
Former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s anti-environment choice to head the EPA, has long advocated animal cruelty and worked against factory farm regulations.
When the Humane Society of the United States fought an Oklahoma ballot measure that would give “farmers” the right to do whatever they want to animals, Pruitt tried to destroy the organization.
The Humane Society sued Pruitt for harassment and defamation. Pruitt finally backed off.
Pruitt is a hero to the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association.
He doesn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming, and he seems intent on dismantling the EPA.
Trump’s failed choice for Labor Secretary was Andy Puzder, CEO of the parent corporation that owns Hardee’sand Carl’s Jr. junk food chains.
He’s famous for creating advertising campaigns showing women in bikinis eating dead cows!
Donald Trump’s highly-publicized chauvinistic views on women are signs of the human impulse to dominate, exploit, harm, and even kill weaker beings, including other humans.
Recall that during the presidential campaign, Trump explicitly stated torture would be an integral part of U.S. military policy.
Consider the fact that vice president Mike Pence looks at women the same way factory farmers look at female cows and pigs.
Pence’s extreme anti-abortion policies would force women to gestate against their will, even in cases of rape, incest, and severe fetal abnormality.
Trump’s now-famous confession that he’s a serial sexual predator goes along with predatory capitalism and other dominator memes that people use to justify harming “weaker” humans and animals.
Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is a lifelong Exxon Mobil executive.
Credible reporting indicates that Exxon knew 30 years ago that fossil fuels when used as directed cause climate change.
Instead of warning the public, Exxon created front organizations that use propaganda against global warming science and scientists.
In Trump’s first months in office, he’s deactivated regulations that protect air, land, water, parks, ecosystems, and human health.
Trump openly says he doesn’t “believe in” climate change.
He’s already removed mining regulations governing the foulest of fossil fuels: coal.
He yanked the USA out of international agreements that fight pollution and global warming.
He wants to sell millions of acres of federal wilderness and other protected lands to developers, miners, loggers, and fossil fuel extractors.
As a sign of how brutal Trump’s police are for animals, he instructed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to remove public access to thousands of reports on Animal Welfare Act compliance for animals kept by research labs, companies, zoos, circuses, and animal transporters.
The same blocking of public access was extended to reports mandated by the Horse Protection Act.
In an act of Orwellian irony, the USDA said it’s blocking access to formerly public reports “based on our commitment to being transparent.”
It’s obvious that Donald Trump will accelerate the cruelty and death inherent to the way humans treat animals.
Those of us who care about innocent sentient beings have a duty to be a voice for the voiceless, to oppose Trump if not have him impeached or forced to resign.
People who adjust their dietary choices for ethical reasons are most often vegetarians or vegans.
But as I’ve pointed out in previous articles, vegetarianism supports animal cruelty and oppression.
Vegetarians want to consume dairy, and some consume eggs.
So they aren’t happy when I explain that dairy products come from mechanical rape of a female cow, the cow’s baby being stolen from it, and the cow’s breasts (udders) being roughly handled to steal the animal’s milk for use by humans.
I ask vegetarians how they’d feel if cows or humans corralled human females and did to them what’s done to cows so that human milk was used as a commercial food.
I ask them how they’d feel if other animals harvested and ate human eggs.
The stark fact is humans are brainwashed from the day we’re born into believing that we’re the only species that really matters, so we have the right to do whatever we want to all other species and the earth itself.
Vegan animal rights activists are part of the very small fraction of humans who do authentic personal and public work against the human dominance and abuse of other species and the planet.
By refusing to consume any products derived from animal harm, we do what we can on an individual level to reduce the harm we cause to other beings.
It’s so very hard to get non-vegan people to see other animals as “persons” who have feelings, memories, social groups, language, intellect, and rights.
The concept of being fair to other animals challenges people’s way of life and their core beliefs.
That’s why I’m glad whenever I see a marketing-savvy, media-savvy approach to educating people about animal rights, animal sentience, and veganism.
Effective, creative, and compelling pro-vegan media activists created a campaign called Be Fair Be Vegan.
Using the most modern public media such as electronic and static billboards in New York’s Times Square, Be Fair Be Vegan points out that animals are people too.
Be Fair Be Vegan media work uses photos of animals, and rhetorical questions, that dismantle people’s defense mechanisms and allow them to see how badly our species treats other animals.
When people see Be Fair Be Vegan materials, their core paradigms are immediately challenged as they’re confronted with the scientific fact that humans and other animals share significantly uniform psychological, social, genetic, and biological characteristics.
Most humans believe that only humans and their pets have feelings, family, intrinsic value, and rights.
Most people believe that animals used for food, vivisection, and entertainment are “living machines” that can be harmed and used without any concern about inherent cruelty and brutality.
Be Fair Be Vegan directly confronts these core delusions by showing that animals have personalities and want to live without being persecuted, oppressed, and murdered.
Their campaign and website explicitly call out the lack of logic, empathy, scientific factualness, ethics, and intellectual consistency that allows people to believe myths such as “humane farming.”
The campaign explains that when you enslave other living beings, it doesn’t matter much if they’re enslaved with less abuse than in some other enslavement venue– such as free range versus caged.
Slavery is slavery.
As a deep ecologist and environmentalist, I appreciate how Be Fair Be Vegan ties non-vegan lifestyles to the destruction of the biosphere.
At present, human population and consumption growth is on track to extinct the entire biosphere.
We’ve become a mass extinction event. Nature itself is being slaughtered. The following video shows the reality of what we do…
The Be Fair Be Vegan website points out that the average non-vegan is responsible for the consumption of 356 animal lives, 401,500 gallons of water, 10,950 square feet of rain forest, 14,600 pounds of grain every year.
And the generation of 7,300 pounds of Co2 every year.
The industrial agriculture grid that supports our unsustainable population numbers is one of the main drivers of climate change, habitat loss, and animal abuse.
Be Fair Be Vegan is probably the most honest and savvy vegan marketing I’ve seen.
Unlike PETA, which often uses questionably salacious and needlessly controversial counterproductive media tactics, Be Fair Be Vegan is precise, solid, and appeals to ethics and the heart.
I highly recommend that all Vegan Samurai provide donations and other assistance to Be Fair Be Vegan.
They’ve gained the support of famous people like actor Joaquin Phoenix, and they deserve everyone’s support.
The gerbils, who are brothers, describe their activities, food, human guardian, exercise, and other fun aspects of their existence.
They have a loving mom, lots of toys, a clean and safe environment, delicious food.
In return, they’re pudgy, cute, sweet furballs.
The gerbils remind me of an episode from the original Star Trek series, called “The Trouble With Tribbles.”
I won’t do a spoiler on it, but I can share with you that Tribbles are cute furballs, perhaps too cute.
You’ll want to watch the Star Trek episode to find out why.
Gerbils are particularly low-maintenance animals to have around the house because their desert origins mean they use little water and thus they excrete a lot less urine than dogs, cats, and other animals humans have as companions.
They’re very smart and loving, without aggressive tendencies or annoying habits. Plus, they’re active and personable.
As a Vegan Samurai, I’m totally opposed to vivisection and any form of animal experimentation.
Unfortunately, Timon and Pumbaa would be outraged to discover that greedy corporations have genetically modified gerbils and use them in all kinds of cruel research.
For example, a sinister corporation called Janvier Labs describes “their” gerbils as “products” and “models,” the same way a car company would refer to cars.
This same company also offers mice, rats, and many other mammals on its “product” list.
The “product description” for gerbils indicates that they’re radiated in some experiments, and subject to all kinds of other tortures.
Indeed, the use of “rodents” in animal testing for the pharmaceutical, chemical, military, surgery, and many other industries is a major source of suffering for innocent, defenseless sentient beings.
More than 100 million mice, gerbils, rats, rabbits, and other mammals are tortured and killed every year to support needless animal testing.
The kinds of things done to these innocent, sweet little creatures are so cruel and grotesque as to defy your darkest imaginations.
Corporate lab techs and academic researchers drill holes in the skulls of unanesthesized animals.
They electroshock them.
They drown them.
They burn them.
They induce cancers and other fatal, painful diseases.
They poison them.
The humans who do these things are cold-hearted and soulless, impervious to the pleading eyes, pain, suffering, and helplessness of the tiny creatures they torment and murder.
When you read the blog postings and look at the pictures on Timon and Pumbaa’s “A Gerbil’s World” website, you feel a poignant pang in your heart.
I often look at the gerbil pictures when I’m depressed, and they always cheer me up and remind me that the universe gives us gifts of living sweetness to counteract the harsh realities of the human world.
Being sometimes depressed is a natural thing for an authentic vegan, living in a world surrounded by humans for whom harming, eating, tormenting, and exploiting animals is considered fun, useful, and totally acceptable.
Our current human culture is extremely disappointing in its careless brutality towards innocent animals and the earth itself.
I’m constantly meeting people who love to hunt, fish, eat animals, go to rodeos and circuses, and who vehemently defend what they see as the “right” of humans to do whatever they want to all other animals, and the earth.
It wears me down, makes me sad, and sometimes makes me angry.
So when I see the many pictures of Timon and Pumbaa, and read of their fun life and how much their human “mom” loves them, it’s a healing moment.
If you love animals and see how cute and sweet they are, how majestic they are, and how every animal feels pain and wants to be left alone to live as Nature intended, you’ll be vegan.
And when you want your own dose of cuteness and relief, visit Timon and Pumbaa.
It’s so good to know they’re loved and pampered, safe forever from the vivisectionists, hunters, dogs, and others who’d harm them.
I used to listen to a bi-monthly health and nutrition public radio program on radio station WMNF.
On the program, a licensed nutritional counselor named Eve Prang Plews accurately warns about bad health effects of pollution, pesticides, herbicides, junk foods, fast foods, GMOs, and unhealthy lifestyles.
I didn’t become vegan until 2015 because I believed Plews when she said vegans were the most unhealthy people she sees in her health counseling practice.
Plews never misses an opportunity to slag veganism by claiming a vegan diet doesn’t provide enough protein, minerals, and B vitamins.
In 2015, after researched proved that her anti-vegan ideas were incorrect, I realized that for the sake of morality and health I had to give up all animal food products.
And now that I’ve gone vegan, I’ve discovered that the fears Plews planted in me about B vitamins, other nutrients, and protein were all unfounded, as long as I understood the simple and easy to follow concepts of whole-food organic vegan eating.
Listening to Plews, who also has a thriving in-person practice in Sarasota, Florida, you’d say she seems well-meaning, caring, and knowledgeable about many health topics.
But her unfounded prejudice against vegans and veganism is a serious problem for her and her listeners.
On that topic, she’s just another lemming in the vast herd of deluded animal-harming humans culturally programmed to believe in two very damaging paradigms: speciesism, and carnism.
Speciesism tells us we have the right to do whatever we want to the earth and innocent animals, including exploit animals for food.
It’s the selfish belief that our species is ultimately the only one that has rights.
We use speciesism to justify killing and otherwise enslaving other animal species– not for “survival,” but for fun, gluttony, pride and ego, and for blood lust.
The second paradigm almost all humans are brainwashed into believing is called “carnism.”
Carnism is the idea that humans eating other animals is a good thing to do and has no moral violation attached to it.
Carnism fosters the worldwide animal enslavement and slaughter industry, creating immense suffering for billions of innocent, sentient animals.
On the radio show, I heard Plews constantly extolling the virtues of eating animals, while downplaying the blatant harms that accrue to humans and “food animals” because of our non-vegan dietary choices.
Plews has recipes for meat and other animal products on her website.
Before I went vegan, when I was eating the kind of diet Plews recommends, I noticed that whenever I ate even small amounts of meat, poultry, dairy, fish, and eggs, I felt sick, sluggish, fat, and had digestive problems.
I wondered why even though I did hardcore exercise nearly every day of the week, I was at least 50 pounds overweight.
I wondered what I could do about my guilty conscience, which bothered me every time I consumed animal food products.
I have to tell you.. if you don’t have a guilty conscience about eating other animals, I wonder if you have a conscience at all.
I’m a deep ecologist animal lover who’s seen undercover videos showing animals enslaved, tortured, butchered alive, and otherwise abused to provide the animal food products that Plews and other carnism advocates claim are healthy to eat.
Eggs, dairy, fish, beef, pork, lamb, etc.– whatever euphemism you use, and no matter if you tell yourself it’s from a “free-range, humane farm,” it’s all produced by exploiting and harming sentient animals.
So I went vegan in December, 2015.
The first effect was my conscience is now clear. I can look animals in the eyes and assure them my dietary choices aren’t causing harm to their kin.
The ongoing effects are I’ve lost 50 pounds, my skin has cleared up, my mental clarity has improved, my athletic performance has reset to what it was when I was 25 years younger, and my food bill has dropped.
I now can run 7-8 miles per day. I swim 2 miles per day in the open ocean.
On some days, I also bicycle 20 miles.
I’m in my late 50s, feeling like I’m in my 20s.
Going vegan turned the clock back!
Do I have B vitamins deficiencies, calcium, iron, or protein deficiencies as the Plews predicted?
Hell no!
I recently had a doctor test me six months after I stopped eating all meat, fish, and dairy, and I don’t have any deficiencies.
My lean muscle mass and exercise performance have increased now that I’m on a plant-based diet!
The doctor says I’m in the top .5 percentile when he examined health indicators such as LDL cholesterol, and that I’m healthier than most people 30 years younger than me.
I eat organic, plant-based foods rich in protein and/or B vitamins, such as beans, rice, chlorella, hempseeds, fermented foods, leafy-green veggies, legumes, and raw cacao beans.
I avoid all processed foods, including plant oils and tofu.
I’m leaner, stronger, and happier than I’ve been in years.
If you have any worries that being vegan will deprive you of protein, B vitamins, Omega-3s, or other crucial nutrition, consult an intelligent naturopathic or holistic physician, and you’ll find out veganism is by far healthier than carnism or even vegetarianism.
In rare cases, your particular metabolism, genetics, lifestyle, health issues or body type may predispose you to deficiencies in protein, B vitamins, Omega 3s problems.
These problems happen in some people regardless of their dietary choices.
Your physician can tell you about vegan supplements that erase any deficiencies.
Loving Guilty Pleasures Leads to Lies About Veganism
There’s a hidden psychological reason that Eve Prang Plews preaches against veganism.
The problem is, people such as Eve Prang Plews dearly love eating animal foods.
It’s one of their most cherished pleasures and they don’t care enough about the harms their food pleasures create for the animals they eat.
They don’t want to feel bad about their dietary choices. So they look for “evidence” to justify their dietary choices that harm innocent animals.
And then they spread bogus information that discourages people from becoming or staying vegan.
Plews has been brainwashed by the multi-billion dollar animal exploitation industries that dominate nutritional training paradigms in academia and at the USDA.
She mouths anti-vegan propaganda put out by craven, profit-driven corporations that sell flesh foods, eggs, fish, and dairy.
She doesn’t understand nutrition as well as she claims she does.
Many people on all kinds of diets make mistakes in the ratios and sources of protein, carbs, and fats they intake, and in the amount of calories they take in.
Instead of telling people to quit veganism like Plews does, if she was a truly intelligent and creative health counselor, she’d advise them how to adjust their vegan diet to make it work better.
The simple fact is whole food vegans have far lower rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and other disorders than do meat-eaters and vegetarians.
Take a look at the videos in this article from the fitness expert who calls himself “Vegan Gains.”
He doesn’t look weakened by veganism, does he?
Plews should educate herself, by watching videos like this one:
What’s really sad is that when esteemed vegan scientists contacted WMNF and proposed an on-air debate between Plews and a scientist who knows that veganism is the healthiest dietary choice, the station’s programming director Rob Lorei REFUSED to air the debate!
On his own radio show, Lorei is always going on and on about justice, fairness, free speech, open exchange of ideas.
But when it comes to Plews and her lies about vegans, he won’t allow anyone to say anything to challenge her on his radio station.
That’s why I stopped listening to WMNF, and stopped donating to it.
The really ironic thing is, WMNF portrays itself as a “progressive” radio station.
It even has a fantastic, unique, world-class weekly show for animal lovers, calledTalking Animals, that features interviews with the world’s leading animal scientists and advocates.
WMNF portrays itself as an advocate for humans oppressed and exploited by powerful individuals and organizations.
Its political rants are about underpaid fast food workers, illegal immigrants, police misconduct, racism, prejudice against LGBTQ and similar humanist concerns.
And all that is good.
But you’d think they’d extend their proclaimed compassion to the BILLIONS of innocent animals slaughtered every year in the USA to feed people like Eve Prang Plews!
If they truly wanted to serve the public interest, they’d have had the vegan scientist on the air with Plews, and let the public hear both sides of the vegan debate.
Why does Rob Lorei not allow a vegan scientist to debate Plews on the air? I can guarantee you Rob Lorei consumes animal food products.
He’s part of the carnism and specieism team, and has his guilty food pleasures to protect.
The bottom line is, when I stopped following the advice of Eve Prang Plews and adopted a vegan diet, I became healthier than ever.
I guarantee you I’m healthier than Plews or Lorei, healthier than almost anyone who eats animal food products, even people half my age!
So don’t let anyone scare you away from going vegan.
It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, for innocent animals, and for the biosphere.
I was in a health food store buying vegan goodies–organic sauerkraut, barley, lentils, millet, adzuki beans, celery, carrots, cabbage, and lots of other delicious foods that help me stay healthy.
One of the sweetest things about being vegan is knowing nobody tortured or killed an animal to produce the food I eat.
The person ringing up my order noticed I had no processed foods, no animal foods, and she asked if I was vegan.
I mentioned that since I became vegan in December, 2015 I’ve become lean and fit, losing at least 45 pounds of fat, my food bill is reduced, my digestion purrs like a happy cat, my skin cleared up, I have more energy, I run, swim, and bike faster.
Because my life is focused on ethical principles of non-harm, the most important aspect of being vegan for me is I can look a baby cow, a pig, a chicken, or any other animal in the eye and assure those innocent creatures that I’m not supporting systems and people who enslave them, torment them, murder them.
I’d been a vegetarian for years but it hadn’t given me the health benefits and the clear conscience that being vegan gives me.
“I’m vegetarian,” a health store staffer said. “I’ve never thought about a lot of of the things you just said, never heard these concepts or ideas about food. I think I might need to become vegan too.”
The idea most intriguing and persuasive for her is that vegetarians aren’t being morally or logically consistent if they say they’re vegetarian because they care about animal welfare.
Vegetarians consume dairy products and eggs taken without consent from other sentient species. Some people who call themselves “vegetarian” consume fish as well.
She really saw the truth when I explained to her how dairy products are sourced. I said to her:
“Imagine if a gang of cows captured you, forcefully impregnated you, kept you in captivity for nine months while your fetus gestated, then after you delivered your baby, the cows stole your baby from you, put your baby in a tiny crate, attached machines to your breasts or handled your breasts with their hands, stole your milk from you, and drank it themselves. How would that make you feel? Would you allow anyone to treat you the way humans treat cows?”
“Of course not!” she replied, shocked.
I saw the dawning of vegan truth in her eyes as she realized the obvious fact: if it’s not right for cows to do those things to her, it isn’t right for her to buy dairy products sold by people who do those bad things to cows.
Of course, you often hear vegetarians defending so-called “humane” dairy farming, claiming that only factory farms harm animals. But the actual fact is there’s nothing humane about imprisoning another sentient animal so you can handle its breasts and take its milk, or steal its eggs.
“Why are people so mean to animals, why are we raised to eat them?” the staffer asked.
I explained to her that part of the reason is a meme called speciesism.
Speciesism is the mega-conceited idea that the human species is the best, the only species that really counts, the one that gets to do whatever it damn well pleases to all the other animals and organisms on this planet, and indeed… to the entire planet itself.
The next time we talked, she said our conversation helped her realize that from the moment we’re born, the adults around us hook our attention and plant a bunch of speciesist memes in our head. The most harmful memes are the ones that tell us we’re “better” than all other animals.
These memes allows us to justify the fact that we cage, rope, plunder, corral, imprison, experiment on, tear apart, torture, chain, flay, skin, hook, trap, shoot, chop, slaughter, and butcher millions of other animals… and plunder the earth itself.
Just take a look at the videos embedded in this article and you’ll see the terrible things caused by these pervasive memes.
And when you see past the culturally-implanted desire to consume products made from milk meant for baby cows, you’ll transition from vegetarian to vegan.
You’ll give up dairy products and all other foods derived from exploiting animals.
If you’re vegetarian, now’s the time to give up the ice cream, omelets, cheese, and other animal-exploited products, and go all the way. Become a vegan. It’s the real deal.
Time to really get a clear conscience in relation to how you view and interact with animals, and become a Vegan Samurai.
Being a parent is probably the most important social role a person can take on.
And being a vegan parent is the most challenging form of parenting.
That’s because vegan parents are guiding children to be part of the very tiny minority of humans who prioritize empathy, ethics, and integrity when it comes to how they interact with animals and the earth.
Vegan parenting takes place within the cruel confines of a technoindustrial grid built from the blood and bones of innocent animals and the planet.
In a world where our entire human culture and infrastructure is constructed from gouging and otherwise using up the earth and its processes, and from imprisoning, exploiting, and killing BILLIONS of animals yearly, it’s hard to raise a gentle, kind, self-restrained child who believes harming animals and the earth is wrong.
Our entire capitalist society is based on a con game in which individuals and businesses capture our minds as soon as we’re born so they can control what we perceive, think, and believe.
The biggest con of all tells we’re the “best” animal on the planet, so we have the right to do whatever we want to the planet and all other animals.
This is why 99.9% of the people think that torturing, killing, and eating other sentient animals is absolutely acceptable.
Hunting and fishing are enshrined as “nice outdoors things to do.”
Most parents feed their kids dead animal parts and products made from milk meant for baby cows.
Cruelty is an unavoidable aspect of modern food production. Being vegan is a rebuke against that cruelty.
It requires extraordinary courage and diligence to be a vegan parent, and I’m here to help you do the job well, and be proud of your efforts.
The War on Vegan Parents
Pregnant and breastfeeding women are falsely told that being a vegan isn’t good for their children.
Government agencies have tried to steal children away from vegan and vegetarian parents, acting under the dubious assumption that depriving children of flesh foods and dairy is bad for their health.
You see alarmist media articles such as this one, in which various experts (and the so-called journalist) are clearly shilling for a meat and dairy diet for children.
I have no problem calling out anti-vegan propagandists for what they are: liars.
The fact is, vegan moms are the healthiest moms, and their children are the healthiest children, as long as the parents follow sound nutritional advice as provided by ethical scientific and medical organizations like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (read their dietary advice for children, here).
Ironically, it’s children whose mothers eat the standard American diet rich in meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, fish, and processed foods who are often born with or soon experience health problems created by that diet, especially if parents feed animal foods and processed foods to newborns and toddlers.
There are plenty of obese, pre-diabetic, and other sick children whose illnesses come from a non-vegan diet.
Non-vegan children are often fed breast milk substitute formulas that contain materials derived from animal exploitation, along with hormones, pesticides, herbicides, chemicals, artificial flavors, sugars, and other problematic materials found in processed and non-vegan, non-organic foods.
A vegan child, eating a properly-balanced vegan diet derived from organic grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, nuts and other vegan sources, has an optimum diet from a nutritional and ethical perspective!
Raising Ethical, Kind Children in an Immoral, Unkind World
Another issue for vegan parents is having the courage to raise miniature vegan samurais.
The vegan parent is raising ethical, animal-defending warriors who are surrounded by a culture of death.
Some parents are afraid to educate their children about the realities of the dark forces at work in our corrupted world.
Other parents, in their admirable but misguided zeal not to “force veganism” onto their children like some parents force religious choices on their children, are unwilling to raise their children vegan, opting instead to “let their children make the choice.”
This is an odd and defeatist way of parenting, and parents rarely have this “let them make their own choices” approach for other issues that are as important as diet.
We know children don’t inherently know what’s right to eat.
In fact, they have to be trained about almost everything—how to use the toilet, how to walk and talk, how to interact with other humans, how to avoid danger, how and what to eat.
It’s not dictatorial or tyrannical for parents to provide only vegan food for their kids, and to explain to their kids (when the kids can understand such explanations) why vegan food is the family’s dietary choice.
When vegan parents are Vegan Samurai rather than Vegan Lite, they refuse to buy non-vegan foods for their kids and they work hard to ensure their children aren’t snared by non-vegan foods and the desire for them that come from influences outside the home.
Remember: carnism (the belief that humans should eat animals), is taught.
It’s a meme brainwashed into society by government, industry, family, and socialization.
The US government’s “food pyramid” and other USDA eating guidelines are wholly the result of animal food industry lobbying and pay-offs, rather than objective, holistic nutritional science.
It isn’t until children have been brainwashed by the dominant death culture that runs our world that they begin to think of other animals as “food.”
When vegan children see a cow, chicken, fish, rabbit, pig, or other animal, they don’t immediately rush over and start biting the animal, trying to eat it!
In fact, they’re more likely to identify with the animal and find it fascinating, cute, cuddly.
Well-raised children look at the world with innocent eyes that are full of love and empathy.
But when parents allow children to watch television, animal food commercials quickly program children to see other animals as burgers, wings, chicken nuggets, barbecued ribs, fried fish, and other food items.
When parents teach their kids to hunt or fish, they’re teaching cruelty and killing.
When vegan children socialize with non-vegan children, the dominant culture will try to make them feel like weirdoes because they don’t eat dead animals or drink milk meant for baby cows.
Vegan kids go to birthday parties, pool parties, picnics, the school cafeteria, relative’s houses, friend’s houses, and other places where pizza, ribs, steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream and other non-vegan foods are the only food choices.
Vegan parents find out that their relatives, especially the kid’s grandparents, are covertly or overtly trying to subvert veganism, giving kids bad foods, telling the kids veganism is wrong, slagging the vegan parents.
Thus, Vegan Samurai parents have to be very vigilant as they manage the educational and social environments for their children.
We must realize that society and 99% of the people around us are pressuring our kids to participate in an industrial food system that kills billions of animals per year in the United States.
Who’s Trying to Corrupt Your Kids?!?
Just like you don’t want your children going to a school, social event, relative’s house, or friendship setting where cigarette smoking, alcoholism, profanity, sexual perversion, or other antisocial behaviors are on display, you don’t want your vegan children hanging around with people who try to get your kids to eat animals, dairy products, and junk food.
Part of being a parent drawing boundaries for and around your child, to protect them from the world.
We all know about and detest child sexual predators, but your children are subject to a more generalized form of predation called consumer capitalism.
From the time your child is born, the outside world is trying to hook her attention to make her a consumer, a customer, a client.
Corporations try to get your kids hooked on miniaturized, ludicrously expensive, branded Nike clothing and accessories.
Junk food restaurants create playgrounds and lurid clowns like Ronald McDonald to lure your kids in and get them hooked on junk food.
Psychiatrists have created “diagnoses” like ADD and ADHD so they can profit prescribing pharmaceutical psychotropic drugs even to tiny babies, even though the drugs haven’t been tested on children.
Ironically, the problems described as ADD and ADHD most often come from kids eating processed, high-sugar foods, kids trapped indoors, and kids given electronic devices and “entertainment” that entrains their brains to be hyperactive and distracted.
The gender dysphoria and gender reassignment industries tell your kids that their sexual, somatic, and psychological feelings come because “they were born the wrong gender.”
These burgeoning massively profitable industries pathologize and monetize nebulous feelings, reaping stacks of cash from dangerous, needless surgeries, counseling, and hormonal “therapies.”
The gender confusion industry’s marketing is full of false hope and promises.
The sad fact is that many people who buy into a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and get gender reassignment hormonal and/or surgical intervention discover too late that their born physical gender wasn’t the real cause of their problems.
But by then, they’ve been surgically or chemically altered, and sometimes that alteration endangers their physical and emotional health.
The make-up and cosmetics industry wants your daughters to start using their products (many of which are created using animal experimentation) at an earlier and earlier age.
Generalized hedonism culture wants to sexualize your children, and the standard non-vegan diet assists this because intake of meat, poultry, and dairy filled with industrial hormones is causing young girls to reach puberty at earlier and earlier ages.
Media, entertainment, and electronic device corporations want to hook your kids on movies, music, theme parks, computer games, phones, handhelds, and other mindless distractions. They want your kids to be slaves to electronica.
Sexualized music videos are marketed to pre-teens, tweeners, and teenagers.
The Internet is an electronic net, with chat rooms, advertising, entertainment, pornography, and other features where sexual predators and other miscreants lurk like demons, hoping to net your kids.
The military-industrial complex creates video games, ROTC, and other tactics, hoping your kids will love war and consider the military as a career option.
You correctly view your child’s world as a landscape of predators designed to attract them to a baited hook, hook them, and reel them in so they’re captured.
My point is: capitalist society is a predatory system where people with profit agendas are constantly trying to hook your children’s minds to make money off of them.
And the worldwide culture of death symbolized and embodied by the imprisonment, torture, and murder of billions of animals per year is among the most pervasive and societally-accepted predatory traps your children can fall into.
Vegan Parents Are on the Side of the Angels
When your sweet, innocent child, who used to love animals and want to cuddle them, is gradually corrupted by death culture so that he or she starts wanting to eat meat, dairy, fish, or poultry, it’s the same as if your sweet, innocent child started smoking cigarettes, hunting, or engaging in risky, precocious sexual behaviors.
I mean, let’s face it, what life lessons are non-vegan parents teaching their kids?
They’re teaching them it’s ok to create needless suffering and death for billions of animals that have just as much emotional capacity and will to live as the family’s dogs or cats have.
They’re teaching their kids to NOT have empathy, and that it’s ok for the strong to victimize the weak.
That’s what the non-vegan food system is all about: the strong victimizing the weak.
And they’re feeding their kids foods that are bad for them.
None of these are admirable parenting traits.
The good news is that raising a vegan child is more than feeding them the healthiest diet in the world.
It also teaches them character, integrity, self-respect, and respect for others.
A vegan child is a child of ahimsa (non-harm), an empath, a healthy role model, a beacon of kindness and compassion in a world of exploitation and death.
A vegan child is a child whose conscience is clean, who has no blood on his or her hands, who isn’t consuming products created by the death industries.
A Vegan Samurai child is a rare youngster who isn’t afraid to be different when it’s the ethical thing to do, who understands that humans with their dominant paradigms of speciesism and carnism are on the wrong track, are creating a world of hurt.
So be proud and vigilant as you raise your child to be a Vegan Samurai.
Your child will be healthier, happier, and more ethical than non-vegan children.
Your child raised on a plant-based diet will be part of the small but admirable tribe of humans who live ahimsa, who refuse to participate in death culture, and whose hearts and minds are evolved towards kindness, doing what’s right, and standing up for the billions of innocent, sentient beings who deserve better than to be consumed as food and otherwise exploited by our species.
Note that this article doesn’t address a situation where one parent is vegan and the other isn’t, or any other situation in which the children haven’t been raised vegan. I’ll be posting another article about that topic.
And please take a look at this article about a marriage and family dealing with a mixed situation in which the wife is vegan, but her husband and children aren’t.
For more information about vegan parenting, read here, and stay strong because… Vegan Samurai parents are the best parents in the world!
In that article, I mentioned that a Vegan Samurai opposes all forms of animal exploitation and abuse, not just animal exploitation and abuse found in the food industry.
Circuses, zoos, aquariums, and animal theme parks are businesses that imprison, exploit, and abuse animals.
But because those facilities provide “entertainment,” and sometimes education, it’s harder for some people, even some vegans, to give them up and oppose them.
In a recent CNN article about the impacts of the movie Blackfish on SeaWorld, we read the following revealing segment:
But plenty of parents also feel like Laurie Marshall, a mom of two, who has no plans to stop taking her kids to circuses, zoos and aquariums. Marshall, whose kids are 6 and almost 10, just visited SeaWorld two weeks ago and said it was “startling” when you see “how big these creatures are and how small the tanks are.”
Still, her SeaWorld experience didn’t change her mind about bringing her kids to places where they can see animals up close.
“First, I think it is OK to keep some of these animals in a contained habitat if it does not impede on their lifestyle,” said Marshall, who is the founder and president of Marshall Law Group. “Also, I am not the type to boycott as I don’t believe my sacrifice is going to make a difference and it would deprive my kids of their enjoyment.”
Laurie Marshall’s statements perfectly reveal the speciesism and deliberate selfishness that fuels most of the harms humans do to other animals and the planet.
Specieism is our belief that we’re the best species on the planet, and that this assumed superiority gives us the right to do whatever we want to other species and the planet.
Speciesism echoes the fact that humans are the most powerful, deadly, and consumptive species on the planet.
If by “best species” we mean to say “the species with the most power to imprison, exploit, and kill all other species,” then the description is accurate.
But might doesn’t make right, and just the fact that we can and do dominate all other animals and the earth itself provides zero moral justification to do so.
Marshall was being interviewed about notorious SeaWorld, which puts orcas and other marine mammals into small tanks.
Marshall is quoted as noticing how big the animals are, and how tiny their SeaWorld tanks are.
Thus, Marshall’s statement that it’s ok to “keep some of these animals in a contained habitat if if does not impede on their lifestyle” makes no sense at all.
The very definition of a “contained habitat” means the animals are having their natural lifestyle impeded.
I’m saddened by Marshall’s cluelessness and lack of empathy.
The article describes Marshall as the founder of a law firm. On the firm’s website, we read that Marshall for ten years was in-house counsel for Major League Baseball.
Surely an educated, wealthy woman like Laurie Marshall ought to have the brainpower to understand that if the imprisoned orcas were instead native orcas in ecosystems unspoiled by humans, the orcas would be swimming thousands of miles per year, enjoying all the benefits of open ocean and their natural social groupings.
How can anyone who even minimally understands wildlife biology believe that an orca in a tiny SeaWorld tank is living an “unimpeded lifestyle?”
We also see how Marshall’s statement reveals callousness, fatalism, a flawed sense of entitlement, and extreme selfishness.
For example, she describes it as a “sacrifice” if she was to choose not to bring her children to businesses where animals are imprisoned and harmed.
She wrongly says it won’t make any difference if she boycotts businesses where animals are imprisoned or harmed.
The actual truth is that the boycott of SeaWorld, just like boycotts that stopped rights violations such as South African apartheid, are often successful at achieving positive change.
Another animal imprisonment facility that should be boycotted is the Miami Seaquarium, where an orca has been imprisoned for many years in a tiny tank, exploited for entertainment.
In Marshall’s quest to provide “enjoyment” for her kids, she’s willing to be a customer of businesses that imprison and harm animals.
Marshall reminds me of parents who used to bring their kids to public lynchings.
Because American history has been sanitized, many of us don’t know that public lynchings of African-Americans used to be considered “family entertainment.”
Parents made picnic lunches, and a generally festive spirit abounded, similar to what you see at circuses, zoos, and places like SeaWorld.
Thousands of people partied and cheered as blacks and other minorities were tortured and killed.
There were popular postcards depicting lynchings, beatings, people tortured, dismembered, and burned alive.
When I hear someone defending zoos, circuses, SeaWorld, and similar businesses, I ask them the same question I ask people who consume meat, fish, milk, cheese, and eggs.
“If other animals did to you what you think is acceptable to do to them, how would you feel about it?”
I wonder how Marshall would feel if her two children were permanently housed in a small glass chamber where strangers paid to watch them perform tricks.
If Marshall objected to that, but doesn’t object to it being done to orcas, it’s a perfect example of speciesism.
You shouldn’t do it to her precious kids, but it’s ok to do it to other sentient animals… that’s her speciesist “logic.”
The true vegan knows that humans using animals for food is wrong for the same reason that SeaWorld, circuses, and zoos are wrong.
In all cases, it’s our species doing bad things to other species—things we wouldn’t want them to do to us.
The Vegan Samurai goal is to create a deep ecology, egalitarian world, where humans no longer feel the need to dominate, eat, imprison, experiment on, abuse, and otherwise harm animals.
It includes, but goes way beyond, dietary choices. It includes not giving your money to zoos, circuses, Vegas shows, SeaWorld, or any other business that imprisons animals.
Rest assured this article is NOT in any way a spoiler article about the fantastic new, animated Disney movie Zootopia.
This reviewwill enhance rather than take away from your enjoyment of this must-see film.
Here’s what I can safely tell you without spoiling this delightful cinematic adventure…
Zootopia is Full of Cute, Charismatic Animals
This movie has the highest cute animal quotient I’ve ever seen. From the opening scene to the rocking credits finale, you’re going to be saying “Aww, how cute.”
I saw Zootopia 3-D in a theater crowded with children of all ages, including tiny babies.
They laughed and squealed with delight at the animation’s vibrantly stylized, beautifully conceived renderings of animals from bunnies to elephants, and their astoundingly fanciful city habitat.
Zootopia is All About Biodiversity
The mainstream reviews (most of which are spoilers) say the movie’s about prejudice and human ethnic diversity, and I can see why they say that.
But they don’t even mention animal rights, biodiversity, animal liberation… all of which are embedded in Zootopia.
The film gives human-like characteristics and cultural habits to dozens of non-human species, but also showcases the actual species-specific talents of animals in ways that educate us that every animal species is as amazing as we are, in its own way.
Viewers leave the movie with way more appreciation for animal diversity than if they’d have gone to an animal imprisonment facility such as zoos and aquarium.
Zootopia is a Female Empowerment Film
In its choice of female protagonist, this sweet movie reminds one of another stellar animated movie: Inside Out.
The female lead character is an inspiring role model for all of us, especially young girls.
She’s a lot more admirable than Hannah Montana aka Miley Cyrus.
Zootopia is clearly making a vivid case for gender equality among all species!
Zootopia is Against Animal Experimentation & Vivisection
Part of the plot is driven by a theme about experimenting on animals, and contains warnings about greed, ego, and political corruption.
Zootopia is Eloquently Voiced By Top Actors & Actresses… And the Music is Great Too
The entire ensemble cast that voices this delightful movie is in top form.
With luminaries like Jason Bateman, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, and Shakira, you’ll enjoy listening to this movie’s dialogue as much as seeing its flawless animation.
The musical score by Michael Giachhino is powerful and hip.
Shakira brings the house down with the cutest animal music video ever in the dance-friendly hit song Try Everything.
Zootopia is Receiving Rave Reviews & Big Box Office
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calls Zootopia “subversive,” and that’s exactly what it is.
Especially for an animated film not released during school holidays, it’s grossing big at the box office, and both critics and audiences are giving it rave reviews.
One critic said it’s the best Disney film since Beauty and the Beast.
Others describe Zootopia as fascinating, thought-provoking, compelling, hilarious, extraordinarily imaginative, as meaningful for adults as for children, and revolutionary.
The film’s plot is funny, sassy, and non-stop fun. There’s not a boring moment in its entire 108 minutes.
Don’t leave the theater until the last frame has run, because this high-quality movie keeps on delivering until the last word of the end credits!
That’s why I’m going back to the theater soon to see Zootopia 3-D again.
I didn’t even do that for Avatar.
Please support this adorable animal-loving movie by seeing it in 3-D on the big screen before it leaves your local theater!
There’s a form of veganism that a Vegan Samurai calls “Vegan Lite.”
Vegan Lite is…
A person doesn’t consume any food products derived from the capture, domination of, enslavement, torture, or killing of animals.
This includes eggs, dairy, fish, and meat.
The Vegan Lite person limits their vegan activism to their dietary choices.
In contrast, an authentic “Vegan Samurai” refuses to participate in any industry that exploits and harm animals.
Here’s what I mean…
The Vegan Samurai Opposes the Animal Entertainment Industry
The animal entertainment industry includes circuses, Seaworld, zoos, rodeos, dolphin encounter businesses, and other facilities that take animals away from their natural habitats, biological pathways, and social groupings.
The zoo and animal theme park industries claim their facilities educate people about and expose them to animals, but the most pervasive message animal captivity facilities implant in peoples’ heads is that animals have no rights to live as Nature intended, and are ours to capture, cage, and gawk at.
There are limited exceptions one could make for wildlife rehab centers and farm animal sanctuaries, although I’ve seen examples where both of these categories are actually exploiting animals rather than helping them.
The Vegan Samurai Opposes Using Animals for Clothing & Other Materials
For centuries, trapping of animals for fur has been one of the most brutal ways humans abuse animals.
In the modern era, so-called “fur farms” imprison, enslave, and often electrocute animals so their furs can be made into fancy coats for humans.
We also see cows, pigs, and other animals skinned alive so leather, pigskin, and other materials can be made into wallets, shoes, gloves, coats, and other items that instead could be made with materials from non-animal sources.
Animals in the wild are hunted for furs, or for ludicrous uses such as “bearskin rugs.”
The Vegan Samurai Opposes Hunting & Fishing
Other than the few remote, indigenous native peoples whose cultures have no choice but to rely on hunting for sustenance, nobody on the planet needs to hunt to eat.
They do it because they like to kill innocent animals, not because they have to do it.
Hunting and fishing are nothing more than humans invading the homes of other animals, using vehicles, dogs, hooks, boats, overwhelming firepower and other means to murder animals that haven’t done anything wrong, and can’t fight back.
The Vegan Samurai Opposes Vivisection (Animal Experimentation)
The horrors of vivisection in some cases are more disgusting even than the terrible atrocities you see in undercover videos that expose the animal foods industry.
And the “benefits” of vivisection are vastly overstated.
In fact, the defense given for vivisection is that vivisection helps humans develop medical treatments and medicines, and is wholly based on specieism (the belief that our species is more important than all other species).
I’ve spoken to animal experimenters who actually say things like, “If I have to stick electrodes into the heads of kittens so I can help even one human, it’s worth it.”
The real truth is that most vivisection is unnecessary if not inapplicable to human medical needs, experiments can be conducted without animals, and a lot of animal experimentation is conducted for ridiculous purposes, such as the torture done to rabbits by eye make-up companies.
A Vegan Samuria also opposes transgenic experimentation, such as the creation of chimeras that are part non-human animal, part human animal.
We oppose Frankenstein experiments done with animals!
The Vegan Samurai Opposes Animals Used for Labor
Have you seen the incredible movie War Horse?
One of the most powerful scenes is when majestic horses are harnessed and used to pull heavy military equipment, which injures and kills them.
Contrary to the nostalgic way we’ve been taught to look at oxen and horses hooked up to plows and other human machinery, the Vegan Samurai opposes ALL use of animals for labor.
Why? Because animals can never give us explicit, non-coerced, voluntary consent to what we want them to do.
And yes, this includes “service dogs.”
I realize that people who are Vegan Lite may initially feel the Vegan Samurai paradigm is challenging, shocking, or “too extreme.”
But I can assure you the Vegan Samurai paradigm is well-analyzed and totally solid from the perspective of logical, ethical consistency.
If it’s wrong to be a customer of a food industry that imprisons, enslaves, and harms animals, then it’s wrong to be a customer of other industries (such as zoos, aquariums, circuses, animal experimentation labs, rodeos, animal labor, etc.) that also harm animals by imprisoning and harming them.
I urge everyone who’s a vegan to adopt the Vegan Samurai paradigm as described above.
It’s the most all-encompassing, morally-consistent vegan paradigm, and it cleanses you from being a participant in any system that harms animals.
The Vegan Samurai 