Animals have feelings: Like humans, animals are sentient which means they have a heart, brain and central nervous system which allows them to experience feelings, sensations and subjective experiences. They try to avoid harmful situations and move toward more pleasant situations.
Animal rights: Ethical vegans believe that animals have the right to a life free of suffering and pain, and that they are not alive in order to be exploited by humans for food, clothing or other uses.
Animal Cruelty: 99% of farmed animals in North America are raised on factory farms where their conditions are cramped and often filthy and painful, and where they experience extreme psychological and physical stress. Animals are treated like a commodity, not like living, feeling creatures. Most people would say they are against animal cruelty however those who eat meat haven’t made the connection to the animals on their dinner plates. ( using a photo which would you eat with the dog and a pig may illustrate this the best.
Human rights: Because the production of animals for human use has such a huge impact on global warming and climate change, eating animals threatens much of humanity through rising sea levels, drought, famine and illnesses related to poor air quality.
People employed in animal agriculture workers are consistently exposed to high levels of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide gases, particulate matter and bacteria which can cause severe health problems.
“…the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.” – Dr. Albert Schweitzer