English Script Request

Breaking laws, from people like Jesus Christ to Nelson Mandela, from Rosa Parks to Martin Luther king, laws have always been broken to facilitate substantive change.

Today's speaker holds a BA in journalism from Oakland University and a radio broadcasting degree from Specs Howards university of broadcast arts. Gary Yourofsky has already experienced more than many people will ever want to in a lifetime. He's been arrested more than ten times and spent seventy-seven days in a maximum security detention center all in the name of animal rights. Gary has lectured in hundreds of schools nationwide including the University of Connecticut, Michigan State, and Bowling Green. Author Charlotte Montgomery even included a chapter about Gary in her book (Blood Relations).

Please welcome national lecturer, Gary Yourofsky.

Alright, good afternoon everybody. My name is Gary Yourofsky. Please take a moment and jot down my e-mail address and my website in case you want to contact me later on. Today we're going to talk about the world's forgotten victims, animals, and the world's oldest and strongest addiction, meat. I'm going to challenge your belief systems today, so certain parts of the speech today will be intense. But let me start with a quick disclaimer: I am not here to be your enemy. The views expressed today do not necessarily reflect the views of your professor or this institution. I am not trying to take you away from your religion. No religion mandates meets eating. The golden rule states, do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Animals qualify as others. And thou shalt not kill. The four most important yet ignored words in all religious teaching. There's not an asterisk next to that commandment saying, "unless you walk on all fours and have fur or feathers, or horns, beaks, or gills." You can keep friends, your politics and your patriotism, still watch your favorite TV shows and listen to your favorite music, even if it's Ted Nugent. I'll be making some sarcastic yet truthful comments throughout the speech. Please feel free to laugh while I'm being sarcastic. Just don't laugh during the serious parts. I'm going to speak for around sixty-five, maybe seventy minutes, but then we'll do a Q and A session after for about a half an hour, so hold your questions until then. In the mean time, I have some rhetorical questions for you. Is slavery, owner, victim, profit exclusive to the human race? Have Blacks, Jews, women and children been the only victims of this atrocity? Have not cows been enslaved? What about pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, sheep? If they're not enslaved, then what are they? Free? Can slavery have a victim that is neither a human nor animal? Have not the oceans, the forests, the earth itself become victims of ownership to? And what about a slaughter house? House of slaughter. Slaughter house. Do you really think there's such a thing as humane slaughter? Exactly what is your definition of humane, besides psychological and physical abuse, torture, dismemberment, and murder? What else do you think happens to animals inside a slaughter house? Do you think they get belly rubs and tushy slaps? And if you think there's such a thing as humane slaughter, I'm curious, do you also think there's such a thing as humane rape? Humane child molestation? Humane slavery? How about a humane holocaust? In fact, what is your definition of a holocaust? Is it a massacre of human beings or a massacre of innocent beings? I thought it was innocent, which brings us to the biggest holocaust massacre of all. Every year in America, without mercy, we murder ten billion land animals and eighteen billion marine animals. Not for health, survival, sustenance or self-defense. People eat meat, cheese, milk and eggs for four reasons: habit, tradition, convenience, taste. I want to define a word that might be new to some people right now, and it's vegan. It's on the screen: V E G A N. Vegans, like vegetarians, do not consume the meat of any land or marine animal. Vegans, however, unlike vegetarians, also refrain from eating cheese, milk, eggs, honey, or any animal product whatsoever. We also don't wear any animal skins, no fur, leather, wool, silk, or down.

Now I want to let you all know that I was not raised vegan. I ate meat, cheese, milk and eggs for around twenty-five years. I used to wear leather shoes, belts, and jackets like everyone else. In fact, around twenty years ago, I even owned a fur coat. Needless to say, I understand your life style. It used to be mine. And for people involved in politics, let's get this out of the way right now. I am not a democrat, an anarchist, or some hippy with a closet full of tie-dye shirts. I'm not a republican, a socialist, or a fascist. I'm an activist. Root word is active. I've been banned from five countries so far and arrested 13 times for random acts of kindness and passion on behalf of my animal brothers and sisters. If you want to read up about that, check out my website. And today I would love to give you a chance to actually do something and truly get involved. Because I understand that a lot of people actually want to get involved. Honestly, I do. But putting a "coexist" bumper sticker on your car, wearing a "What would Jesus do" bracelet, or sporting a "peace, and love and sunshine" T-shirt, that is not getting involved. I understand that we're all on a journey in life. We all have different likes and dislikes. Different nationalities and religions as well. But there's one thing we need to have in common with each other, and that's peace. Genuine compassion and genuine peace for our planetary companions. Contrary to political and religious dogma, animals do not belong to us. They are not commodities. They're not property, and they're not inanimate stupid objects who can't think and feel. That Decartesian way of looking at animals like they're machines, is outdated, and quite frankly, one hundred percent insane. Because if we all understand that animals can use their eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, mouths to eat, legs to walk, feathers to fly, genitalia to procreate, bowels to defecate.

I'm always perplexed that most people don't believe that they can also use their brains to think, feel, be rational, be aware and be self aware. Am I supposed to believe that every body part on an animal functions just like it's supposed to except the brain? Those lies are thick. The propaganda from the animal abusers is enormous. I mean when was the last time you turned on TV and saw a commercial for shitake mushrooms? People singing and dancing down the streets having a good time eating mushrooms? How about alfalfa sprouts? Quinoa (that's a seed). Radishes? Raspberries? Tofu? You don't see that stuff advertised on TV. What do you see? Have some more meat! Have some more cheese! Have some more cheese on your meat, meat, cheese! Double cheese! Extra cheese! And how about a little more cheese with your meat! Have some more cow's milk! Have some more eggs! And then what do you see interspersed between those advertisements? "Not feeling so well? Need to see a cancer specialist? How about a heart doctor. Need some Lipitor? Zocor? Crestor? Plavix? Need some diet pills? How about some energy drinks? Some Kaopectate? Tums? Pepto Bismol? You've been duped. They're killing you, they're killing the animals, and they're killing this planet. Those blinders are on nice and tightly. But if you give me an open mind today, that's all I ask for, an open mind, I'm going to take your blinders right off.

My goal is simple. All I want to do is reconnect people with animals - awaken some emotions and some feelings and some logic that has been buried and suppressed intentionally by our society. And the reason why that I say "reconnect", it's because each and every person in this room used to be a real animal rights person at one time - a true animal lover and a real friend of the animal kingdom. And it's when we were kids.

When we were young and were kids - man... we used to be in awe of animals. They used to make us laugh and giggle and smile. They made us pretty happy. And there was a time in our lives when we would do just about anything in the world to make them happy as well - to protect them from cruelty or to at least acknowledge the cruelty that they were receiving.

I mean if somebody was mean to an animal in front of us when we were little, we would have screamed and cried. And that's because we all used to understand right from wrong when it came to the treatment of animals. Until somebody told us and taught us differently. You better believe somebody told us to ignore their suffering. To mock and excuse their pain and their misery. To make fun of their very existence. And this is something I want you to focus on today, tomorrow and beyond. What in the hell happened along the way? Who taught us to be so mean and nasty and vicious and hateful? Or indifferent toward animals when they used to be our friends? These are innocent beings who have done nothing wrong to us. Because I'm pretty sure that we can all agree on at least one thing right now, that hatred in its purest form is a learned behavior. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, antisemitism, misogyny. These are all learned behaviors. When kids are 2, 3, 4 years old playing on a playground, they could care less about the color of their friends' skin or their religious background. I don't think there's any doubt that hatred, in its purest form, is learned. So species-ism is no different. It's gonna be a new word for a lot of people, it's up here on the screen, right below "Vegan." The word species with an "-ism" attached to it. And I want to define this word as the unethical, unprincipled point of view that the human species has every right to exploit, enslave, and murder another species.

And all because we believe that our species is so more special, so more superior than the other ones. We're the only ones that count, and we're the only ones that matter. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that line of thinking, that thought process, that is the basis of all forms of discrimination. One group saying and thinking they're more special than everyone else. They proceed to exploit them, oppress them, and deny them their right to be free. They treat them like property, they enslave them in many cases, and in many other cases they murder them with premeditation and without penalty. And understand something essential about discrimination. It is never okay to be picking and choosing which forms of discrimination to be opposed to. Which ones to say are evil: racism. And which ones to say are okay: speciesism. Discrimination is evil in it's foundation, or it's not. Cannot have this one both ways. It doesn't work like that. I want to ask you to use some empathy right now. And when I say empathy, what I'm saying is place yourself in the position of the animals, and start to view this issue from the animals' point of view, from the victim's point of view. When you examine any form of injustice, whether humans are victims or animals are victims, please remember the victims' point of view. If you are not the victim, don't examine it entirely from your point of view because when you're not the victim, it becomes pretty easy to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, even murder. But when you're the victim, things look a lot differently from that angle. I want to show a graphic four minute video right now about what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. I want to ask you not to turn away, not to close your eyes during this video. It's because if you choose to eat meat, cheese, milk, and eggs, I think at the very least you are obligated to see the pain and suffering you are causing. But if you do feel the need to turn away or close your eyes during this video, you might want to ask yourself a question: if it's not good enough for my eyes, why is it good enough for my stomach?

Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt!
If you gotta hurt 'em, hurt 'em.
Yes.

Did you ever wonder why McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's never show you those images in their T.V. ads? Instead they show you smiling cartoon caricatures of animals singing and dancing and playing. Lying to you. Brainwashing you. Programming you not to care about things you would normally care about. Things that you used to care about. Right now, at this very moment, on American highways, there are no less than 5000 concentration-camp trucks. Trucks that we've constructed. Inside these trucks, there are living terrified innocent beings, cows and pigs and chickens, these trucks are being driven to concentration-camp slaughter houses that we've carefully constructed all across America. When the trucks arrive, the animals are so frightened they won't even get off the truck. They're not stupid; they know what's next. So people go on the trucks with electric prods and force 'em to walk down the shoots to their own death. Or, if the animals are small enough to man handle like chickens, we'll just grab them off the trucks and toss 'em inside. Inside, these innocent living beings are hanged upside down, fully conscious. In other words, they go in alive against their will and come out chopped up into hundreds of pieces Do you know what's more insane than that? Meat eaters... walking around like their lifestyle isn't causing any harm, like it's normal and natural to be consuming violence and death. How would you feel, if the day that you were born, somebody else had already planned the day of your execution? That's what it's like to be a cow, a pig, a chicken, or a turkey on this planet.

I think this type of behavior is inexcusable, and unbecoming of a species that claims to understand right from wrong. The animals have not done one single thing to us to deserve the wrath and the cruelty that we hurl on them. And I hope you all understand what I'm offering you today. When you hit the door after my speech, are you aware that for the first time ever, you can now directly participate in ending a massacre instead of sitting around and paying lip service to all the massacres and all the problems that are always going on in this planet?! What is so frustrating to me when I travel this country, doing around 250 lectures every year to some 7,500 students is that everybody talks a good game. I've noticed that people are quite the smooth talkers when it comes to peace and compassion, and people always want to tell me-never show me-just tell me how 'peaceful' they are, because of what they believe in! Or what makes them sad. "Hey Gary, I believe in God! And I believe in angels, and I pray all the time. And those earthquakes, the ones in Chile and Haiti...oh, that was so sad!" No shit it was sad. Since when does feeling sad about an obvious tragedy or believing in something make the world a better place or make somebody a good person? And listen, folks: I am not trying to dog you out when I talk like this; I'm not. I'm just not a politician. I'm not a bullshit artist. I don't know how to 'schmooze' people, as you can see. It's kind of beyond me. And I hope you appreciate my honesty and my genuineness today. And I'm not a salesperson. I got no books to sell you after my lecture, no DVDs and no documentaries, no collection plate going around; I don't want your money, I don't want your e-mail addresses, and I don't want your mailing addresses. Keep all that stuff. I am here to talk about the worst form of cruelty and violence talking place on this planet, even though most people don't seem to care about it. But when you sit back in the comfort of your living room, and you start condemning atrocities elsewhere, that is pure, unadulterated lip service. That's the definition of lip service. But veganism, this is now a chance to actually walk the compassionate talk that everybody's always talking about.

This is your chance to show others how truly peaceful you are. This is a chance for a personal revolution. To leave your mark on this planet by causing the least amount of harm possible. Always. Being vegan. Now come on. What's the argument for not causing the least amount of harm? Inconvenience? Indifference? Apathy? Selfishness? I want you to know I don't live in fantasy land. I'm well aware that animals are suffering and dying just because we're here on the planet with them. We build homes through their habitat, we pollute their environment, destroy their habitat. Is their a reason why we have to maximize the suffering? And maximize the cruelty and the death that they already endure by eating them on top of it all? You wanna talk about pouring salt into somebody else's wound? Ninety-eight percent..and I repeat this stat...ninety-eight percent of animals who are abused and killed on this planet are abused and killed by the meat, dairy and egg industries. This is where all the harm is taking place. And in America, from birth until death, each meat eater consumes around three thousand land animals and thousands of other marine animals. Those are U.S.D.A. stats. And they seem to think alot of people eat animals because we've all been told that humans are carnivores, we're omnivores, we're meat eaters and we're supposed to be doing this. Are you aware that, physiologically, the human body is actually one hundred percent herbivorous? Plant eaters. The length of our intestines are somewhere between seven to thirteen times the length of our torso, our trunk. That's the same length of all herbivore animal intestines on this planet. They're very long. But the length of the intestines on real meat eaters....hyenas, coyotes, bears, tigers and lions....only three to six times the length of their torso. They have a short intestinal tract so they can push through quickly decaying and rotting animal flesh. Animal protein, cholesterol, saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, which is why it is impossible...I repeat...impossible for a genuine meat eater to ever clog their arteries. Never happens to a real meat eater. What's the number one killer of humans who chose to eat meat, cheese, milk and eggs? Heart disease from clogged arteries. Atherosclerosis. Humans and other herbivores, we sweat through our pores to cool ourselves. We don't pant like dogs, and cats and lions to cool ourselves down. No claws in the human hand, claws are a trademark of the carnivore and the omnivore. We have carbohydrate digestive enzymes in our saliva. Only herbivores possess that, meaning we're supposed to be eating tons of carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables. Our teeth? Broad, short, blunt, flat. Just like the teeth of other herbivores. And before someone blurts out, "Hey Gary, what about these canines dawg?" Most of the herbivores have canines, incisors and molars. It would not be possible for them, for us to be eating hard fruit like apples without those teeth. Our lower jaw goes from side to side in a grinding, chewing motion like this.....
We grind and chew when we eat. If you grind and chew when you eat like you all do, you are an herbivore. The jaws of carnivores and omnivores can only go up and down vertically, rip and swallow. There's no chewing, grinding side-to-side action. And I'm a fair guy. I mean if somebody out there truly believes that humans are meat eaters, I'll give you two challenges to prove me wrong after class and please do so if you want. I want you to go outside, locate a squirrel on campus. And when you spot that squirrel, put that carnivore speed into effect that everybody has and chase that squirrel down, pounce on him and catch him in your mouth. No tools, no weapons, no cages. No one's allowed to be a cheater and a fake carnivore with this challenge. And when you are done killing the squirrel in your mouth, be my guest. Eat the squirrel.

...eyes, nose, face, toes, tail, anus, inner organs, blood, fur, and don't forget about the brains. You don't get to pick and choose which body parts you wanna eat, and you don't get to cook it either. If people wanna be real meat eaters, I'd love to see people eat raw flesh from the bone, down to the bone with nothing left but the bones, day after day after day.

And challenge number two - find a two-year-old child. Place the child in a crib. In the crib put two things; a live bunny rabbit and an apple. If the child eats the bunny rabbit and plays with the apple, send me an email, would ya? Let me know, 'cause I'm gonna come back and buy everyone in this room a brand new car if that happens - Benz's and Beamers, leather interior too, in fact, next time I'm at Georgia Tech if that happens I will eat a steak sandwich in front of everybody.

Chase it down with a chili dog with extra cheese, a bucket of ice cream, and a bag of beef jerky too. And I'll take the jerky and I'll dip it in the ice cream and eat it like that. Now I'm not holding my breath on these promises, not that I won't fulfill them - I'm a man of my word - but those things cannot and will not be happening because humans also possess zero carnivorous instincts, zero omnivorous instincts when we are born young and growing up. We are all born vegan, we just acquire a taste for meat, cheese, milk, and eggs after they are forced down our throats during childhood. Now all I'm asking you to do is something normal and natural anyways, eat what comes from the earth. Every vitamin, mineral, and nutrient that exists, protein, calcium, iron, potassium, all the B vitamins, have an original source and it ain't the animals. You are aware that people eat animals after the animals have already eaten from the earth. People eat cows after the cows eat up the grass, some of the soil, then we ship them to a feed lot to feed them most of our corn, wheat, oats, and soy, then we take more of the corn, wheat, oats, and soy, shove it down the throats of pigs, and chickens, and turkeys. Stop filtering your nutrients through somebody else's body. It's illogical and irrational.

Go to those sources directly: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes. These things cannot harm you, cannot cause a disease, and more importantly, they harm no one else in the process! But when we consume what walks, what flies, and what swims, that is abnormal. Where does everybody think diseases come from? Broccoli? Asparagus? Kale, collard greens, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, grapes, bananas, avocados, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach? And in case anyone's wondering about those pesky little E. coli/Salmonella contaminations a couple times a year with the vegetables, let's keep in mind the one and only source of E. coli and Salmonella: shit! Human shit or animal shit! Spinach doesn't shit! Broccoli doesn't shit! Peanuts don't shit! Let's stop blaming the plant products when there's an E. coli/Salmonella contamination! That's the fault of the meat-eating society! Why? Well, meat-eaters want billions of land animals to eat, so we have to mass produce billions of land animals. Keep in mind: this has nothing to do with God. Nothing to do with evolution anymore. This is a business! This is Smithfield, ConAgra, Perdue, Tyson, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC. That's why we have animal agriculture classes in college. So when we mass produce billions of land animals, they have trillions of tons of manure. That stuff gets in the waterways, and then there's runoff onto the crops, or they're putting feces-contaminated water directly onto the crops. But all of our main diseases, heart diseases, heart attacks, and strokes, most of the cancers, prostate cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, kidney disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, obesity, asthma: four main factors that cause them. Now I know about other factors. I am not saying that you can't get sick elsewhere; of course you can. Smoking, drinking, stress, chemicals in the environment, high fructose corn syrup, Twinkies... I know about the other things that can lead to an ailment, but the four main factors are found inside of meat, cheese, milk, and eggs. Cholesterol. Saturated fat. Trans fatty acids. Animal protein. And I'll repeat that last one that nobody wants to hear about: animal protein. But when you go vegan, did you know that you eliminate cholesterol entirely from your diet? You can only get cholesterol from meat, cheese, milk, and eggs. And your body makes cholesterol on its own; that's the only such thing as "good" cholesterol. If you bring it in from an outside source, it's automatically bad cholesterol. You can take out around 95% of saturated fat when you go vegan, and you can take out all the naturally occurring trans fatty acids, too. Keep this in mind: between 2-9% of all meats and all dairy -- naturally comprised of trans fatty acids. And you can obviously take out all of animal protein. Now animal protein is way too acidic for the human body. We don't process it properly. It is the main reason why 1 in 3 meat-eaters continually get cancer. And it's one of the main causes of osteoporosis. Were you aware that when animal protein enters the human body, it makes our blood acidic instantaneously, but our blood can't stay acidic for long or else we die, so our body has to figure out instantly how to neutralize the acidity? I have some good news and some bad news. I'll start with the good. Our bodies have figured out how to neutralize the acidity. Bad news: there's only one way to make it happen at this point... with phosphate. There's only one source of phosphate in the human body: bones. Just so you know, our bones are comprised of two things: calcium, phosphate, and they're binded together. So our body leeches calcium phosphate out of the bones, takes the phosphate to neutralize the acidity, and then we pee out the calcium. This is why every single epidemiological study, those are the ones done on human populations, every single one, shows that societies that consume the most amount of animal protein have the worst rates of osteoporosis, bone fractures, and cancers, while societies that consume little to no animal protein, the vegan and vegetarian ones, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Rastafarians, Seventh-day Adventists, have little to no rates of osteoporosis, bone fractures, and cancers.

And so we don't get into a debate during Q&A about different medical studies that are out there. A lot of times when people know I'm comin' to class in advance, well they'll spend a few hours online, looking up studies, printing out wait for Q&A they go "Hey Yourofsky, I've got a study here that contradicted everything you told us today. What's up with that?" Well here's what's up with that. You don't need a medical study to show you when people are dying out there, but for the record, every study you can produce showing that humans need meat, cheese, milk and eggs, I'll produce 2. A two-to-one ratio, showing that meat, cheese, milk and eggs are responsible for every major disease. But, we all know medical studies can be manipulated either way. So even though I got a heavy, two-to-one edge on this, I say toss 'em all out. 'Cause you don't need 'em. All you have to do is pay attention to this meat, cheese, milk, egg-eating society that we all live in. So how many of your family members and your friends' family members have a disease already or have died already, from a disease? Because I can't be the only one affected by this. My grandfather died from a heart attack, my grandma died from a stroke. My Uncle Jack died from a heart attack, and last October, on the 15th, I got a call around midnight, and my father had just died from a heart attack. My mum, she's got asthma. My step dad has heart disease so badly he takes 7 pills for breakfast. My best friend Darren, 4 of his aunts and uncles have died from diabetes. His ex-girlfriend Rita has breast cancer at 40 and she's dying. Just found out a few months ago that his current girlfriend Dionne, has ovarian cancer. And yesterday, my girlfriend just found out that her father has prostate cancer. What's the one thing we all have in common with each other besides the air we breath and the water we drink? Meat, cheese, milk and eggs. Animal products all day long. And I know you can blame some of the cancer on environmental pollution, there's no doubt about that. But how're you gonna blame heart attacks and strokes on pollution? And diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity. Here, I'ma (I'm going to) break this down for you in a couple different ways today. I'll show you what's killin' people. And I'ma show you who's lying to you.

Flat out, bold-faced lies that's come in an agreement on the dairy industry. And let me know if I'm being unfair, but this I wanna know. According to the dairy industry itself, the main reason they exist is so you can get calcium. Fair? Is that not their entire claim? "Eat some cheese." "Drink some cows milk." "Strong bones, strong body." Milk does a body good." "Got milk?" Check it out with the USDA: In America we consume the most amount of dairy on the planet. Right here. You can't even get a sandwich anymore without cheese. We put in every nook and every cranny and every single food item. We put it inside the pizza crust now. We put cheese on top of salads too. You can't even get salad anymore without cheese. And if you're lucky to find salad minus the cheese, what's the first thing people say to the waiter? Hey, um, can I get some ranch or some Thousand Island? Can you poor some dairy on these vegetables for me? So in this society where everybody is hooked on cheese, I mean hooked like it's been laced with weed, crack, extasy, morphine, and the antidote.

Most people can't even fathom one meal, let alone one day or a lifetime without cheese.In fact, if you want to know why vegetarians never go vegan: CHEESE! Cheese on their baked potato. Cheese on their broccoli. Cheese on everything in sight. Even lactose intolerant people eat cheese. And I don't care what anybody says about this, they might avoid straight up cow's milk, but slap a double cheese pepperoni pizza down in front of a lactose intolerant person- no hesitation, right down the hatch. So we've got all these animal products going into our diet. Did you ever wonder why there are no less than 3 TV commercials being run for calcium supplements? Actonel, Boniva, Citrical. You've got to be kidding me! Calcium supplements in America? How come there's osteoporosis at all? How come at the vitamin stores, I say plural STORES, because when I travel the country poor meat eaters pull me aside all the time and say, "Hey Garry, we eat meat because you get everything you need from meat.All the vitamins, all the minerals, all the nutrients."

Well how come in this meat, cheese, and egg eating society that we all live in every city has not only 1, but 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 vitamin stores? How come Rite-Aid, CVS, and Walgreens now have complete vitamin sections too? With a whole shelf devoted to calcium supplements. I thought everybody was getting calcium from the animal products; that's what the meat and dairy people say. News flash! You don't. Animal protein won't allow it. Animal protein makes your blood acidic so your body takes calcium phosphate out of the bones; phosphate to neutralize, calcium gets excreted through the urine.

There are 4 commercials for fiber: Metamucil, Fibercon, Fibersure, and Benefiber. If people ate a friggin' apple or a pear once in a while, nobody would need help taking a shit. Now pay attention and look around and see what's going on.

Now with all this being said, we've established the 4 reasons why people eat meat, cheese, milk and eggs. No debating, no discussing it. Habit, tradition, convenience, taste good. Yeah I know why people do it. I did it for 25 years myself. We don't do this to be ethical and stay healthy. That's obvious. And we don't do this to help the environment out either. Two quick things on the environment. And by the way, go to my website click on "all about veganism" click on the environment section. World hunger and environmental pollution. Root cause of world hunger: meat-eating societies. 65% of the world's grains are set aside every year to feed 53 billion land animals that are killed every year on this planet and 10's of billions of marine animals - we've got fish farms nowadays - instead of using those crops for 6 and a half billion people. Do the math on this, you don't have to be Einstein to figure this equation out. And again environmental pollution, air pollution, water pollution, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions. Number one cause is animal agriculture.

Now I wanna get back to "tastes good" though, because I think meat tastes great. Now it may shock you to hear me say that, but if you're doing some kind of extra credit essay on my speech and you wanna quote me, quote me right now. I love the way meat tastes! Love it! Cheese..Love it! Cow's milk and eggs..Love it! Guilty as charged.

I did not stop eating this stuff because of the taste issue. I stopped for ethics, morality,
decency. Compassion [for] the animals that I share this planet with. But here's the
coolest thing about being vegan in this day and age: it's never been easier. You can
have the same smell, taste texture of meat, cheese, and milk without it! Nobody has to
suffer and die for dinner anymore, including you! They make all the products that you
like to eat in a vegan version. They make it from soy, and wheat, and rice and hemp. I
wanna show you some of the products that are out there. I am not receiving any
compensation from these companies....

These are my selections: the best tasting mock meat. I'm gonna put 'em up on the screen so we can all see it clearly. You guys like bacon? Lightlife, Smart Bacon, bacon made from soy. This company, Lightlife, also makes smokey tempeh bacon. Now tempeh is a fermented version of soy, so it tastes a little different than the other stuff, but keep in mind, I would not recommend products to you if they didn't taste fantastic. I am trying to win you over, so you go veg. I'm not showing you every product we have - some of our products suck. I'm showing you the best of the best. And when I say some of our products suck, don't act like there aren't shitty Chinese restaurants, nasty pizza places and disgusting hamburger joints, ok? It works both ways - if it's made great, no matter what it is, it tastes great. If not, it's gonna stink.

Lightlife also has soy chicken strips and steak strips as well. They also have a full line of deli meats. Turkey, baloney, and ham: you cannot tell the difference by sight, taste or texture. A small company named Melissa's has Soyrizo - vegan chorizo. Energy bars, like Clif bars, Luna bars, and a new bar just came out, Pro bar, you might not have seen that one yet. They're all vegan. Many other companies have a vegan energy bar as well.

Now remember, when you go veg, you don't give up anything. You got the vegan version of stuff, or eat things that are truly natural, like fruits and vegetables, or beans and lentils.

You like turkey? We got you covered. My favourite product: Tofurkey. Tofu turkey. Stuffing on the inside. Looks, smells and tastes like turkey. You got to slice it with a knife, but guess what? No turkey had to suffer and die for this. Tofurkey also has Tofurkey slices, 6 different flavours of Tofurkey slices. Tofurkey also has Tempeh strips. Remember I talked about the Fakin' Bacon with Lightlife Tempeh? They have some Tempeh products too. Tofurkey also has Italian sausage, beer brats, and... there seems to be an addiction in our society for beef jerky. I don't know what the hell's going on with everybody's tastebuds, everybody's lost their minds, but we got you covered... Tofurkey jerky. Anything you're looking for, we got that stuff veganised. And many other companies have the vegan jerky as well.

The absolute best company on the market right now is It's All Good Gardein Protein. That is one of their chicken dishes. That is two of their chicken dishes. Three chicken dishes. They have more chicken dishes. They have steak dishes. And they just came out a few months ago with buffalo wings as well. Trader Joe's, that grocery chain, they wanted to keep down the soy meat industry. They made their own brand of soy chicken and soy steak strips. There's a company called Vegetarian Plus. They have vegan citrus spare ribs. And Garden Burgers have riblets, mock ribs for over ten years; I can't tell you how many meat-eating family members and friends I've flat out fooled with this stuff. And this company also has shrimp, kung pao chicken, orange chicken and tuna rolls as well.

Now I mentioned wheat meat earlier. I don't think people actually know what it is. There's actually a name for it, it's called seitan - not Satan, seitan - you wanna give this stuff a try too. And they now have flavoured seitan down the market too, by Upton's; brown beef style; chorizo style; and they also have an italian sausage flavour as well.

Another favourite company: Nate's Meatless Meatballs.

Now, I know you guys have seen veggie burgers before, probably Boca. But, if you don't like Boca, good news: There's Amy's, Morningstar Farms, Dr. Praeger's, Sunshine burgers and Gardenburger, all the different tastes and textures.

If you're looking for no soy, a different kind of mock meat in your diet, a new company called Bahama: Rice burgers, burgers from rice. They also have sausage and meat balls made out of rice, as well.

Another company with a no soy, different kind of mock meat taste is a small company from Cincinnati, called Five Star Foodies, has artichoke burgers, my new favourite veggie burger by far. Burgers from artichokes. They also have a harvest roast. It says 'vegetarian' but it is vegan. It's a fake turkey with fake skin around it too.

Now, Amy's is on the market, and I know you seen her stuff. She's got a ton of stuff, but keep in mind, most of her stuff is only vegetarian. It still has eggs and cheese, and other animal by-products in there. But, one of her vegan stuff, tofu scramblers, fake egg. A hot pocket, that actually tastes good and is good for you too.

Amy's also has rice macaroni with Daiya cheese, a brand new vegan cheese on the market, Daiya cheese, which you can find at Whole Foods, right now. Comes in two different flavours. People are going crazy for the Daiya cheese. I still like Follow Your Heart, which has four different flavours of vegan cheese, comes in a big block and it melts.

Now, sometimes you've got to be creative with this stuff. Lightlife also has vegan pepperoni which is ready to eat directly out of the bag. If you get some of this vegan pepperoni, buy yourself a Tofutti Pan Pizza with Tofutti soy cheese on it. Tofutti also has cream cheese, sour cream and ice cream as well - before it goes in the oven or after it comes out of the oven, slaps some pepperoni on there and you got yourself a pizza.

Remember there's soy milk and rice milk, almond milk, hemp milk, coconut milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk. Seven vegan milks on the market. There's soy ice cream, rice ice cream, almond ice cream and coconut milk ice cream, and ice cream bars by So Delicious. And let me just say this, you have never in your life had ice cream till you've had the coconut milk ice cream by So Delicious.

If you go to my website, click on 'Veg Shopping Guide'. I have taste-tested everything for you in advance. Check out the brand names I recommend. I can assure you I eat nothing nasty.

And what about Ethnic food, Indian food, Middle-eastern food, Mexican food? Plenty of veggie options there. Italian food, pasta and spaghetti. And a real pasta, a real spaghetti, just like bread, never requires animal products. Now unfortunately, we defiled these products - so you always have to ask or check out the ingredient list. But every Italian joint has at least one, if not two or three of the genuine noodles, which are always vegan.

And when it comes to best bread around - Whole Foods or Panera Bread, Breugger's Bagels, Einstein Bagels - 90% of those breads and bagels are always vegan.

Asian food, Japanese food, Chinese food, Thai food, Korean food, Vietnamese food, all you have to do is substitute tofu for the meat in any of their dishes, tell them to make it without fish sauce and you have a vegan meal. And soul food can be veganised as well. In fact, you guys are pretty lucky to be in Atlanta. You have two soul food restaurants owned by the same company - Soul Vegetarian - 10 minutes from campus. Vegan Mac 'n Cheese, collard greens, yams. They have something called a "Kale Bone" sandwich, which is a fake roast beef sandwich with cheese dripping off of it, too. You gotta check out Soul Vegetarian.

And don't think ... I don't want your faces when I'm up here. How come, what I talk about "mock meat?" I always catch a handful of people in every crowd - and we have a big crowd today so I stopped counting at around 8 or 9. How come there's always a handful of people that wrinkle up their noses, make big wide eyes, and start glancing at the next people next to them across the aisle like: "Soy chicken, is this guy crazy? Soy bacon? He must be out of his mind!"

How come this stuff that is made of soy, wheat, vegetables, grains, and spices, no chemicals! Contrary to the lies being spread about these products by the meat and dairy industries - how come this stuff is considered gross to most people, but meat? Meat's got 5 components. Let me break it down for you. Blood, flesh, veins, muscles, and tendons. The cut-up corpse of a dismembered body. How does meat not qualify as gross and disgusting, everybody?

How in the world is a beverage, a liquid the oozes out of the udders of cows, a secretion that drips from the mammary glands of another being, that's loaded with pus, by the way! Oh yeah, let me tell you about the pus in your cow milk, it'd be my pleasure.

When you hook machines up to the udders of cows 3 times a day to suck them dry, those machines cause massive amounts of infections on the inside and outside of the udder. Now let's add all the bovine growth hormone they put in cows and make sure they produce huge quantities of milk, which always leads to another infection. The machine doesn't know what not to suck out!

Pus, mucous, and infections right in with your milk. And yeah, milk is pasteurized. But when did pasteurization become a removal process? It's a sanitation process. You're only sanitizing pus.

And you'll want to look this up online... Well you don't think the dairy industry would ever use the word pus when they write about this problem in their own trade journals, and they're going to deceive you again, with this? Look up the scientific term for pus. Somatic cell count. And by the way, our government, the USDA, they allow the dairy industry to have a maximum amount of one eyedropper full of pus, in every glass of milk. Drink up.

Oh and by the way, while you're looking up that lie from the dairy industry, and all the other ones... you might want to look up casomorphins, I got it up on both sides of the board.

Remember that part of the speech earlier when I talked about people being hooked on cheese, like it's was laced with weed, crack, and morphine?

Mother cows before birth, produce a substance in their milk, to make sure that the calf stays close. And actually human women do this to, it's not morphine - but in cows, it is, a version of morphine. Casomorphins. That's why people are so hooked on cheese. Gotta have their daily fix of morphine!

Does anybody know what an egg actually is from a hen? And don't say embryo, or aborted fetus, not even close. It's unfertilized so it can't be either; hen is a female, though. Unfertilized egg through a female system - it's part of her menstruation cycle; it's a hen's period! People scramble up hen periods in the morning, and all of the sudden I'm weird because I don't make omelettes anymore?

And what about vomit? Oh we're going to take those blinders off today. Come on, you guys love vomit. You adore it all over your food. Gotta give this one a pretty name, though. No ones's gonna buy any vomit, unless we call it honey instead. Honey comes directly from a bee's stomach; it is regurgitated right through a bee's mouth. Look it up on any wildlife biologist. But nobody wants to eat Bee Vomit Nut Cheerios, we want Honey Nut Cheerios - so we lie to ourselves to play euphemism games.

The standard diet of a meat-eater is blood, flesh, veins, muscles, tendons, cow secretions and bee vomit!? Now, we're not done yet. I'm not gonna let you off that easy while I've got you here today.

You know how we top this all off in my opinion? Because every November during that certain holiday that people love so much... People take a dead turkey, open up the dead turkey's ass or carve out a really big hole in their ass, take some stuffing and shove it side their dead empty ass, and use the little dead ass as an oven to bake some bread. Somebody else's dead empty bacterial-laden ass to make bread?

Ass bread!? And people think vegans are weird because we eat tofu and rice and beans and lentils? I tell people one of my favorite meals nowadays - yams. Gonna dish me up a plate of yams for dinner and I'm happy guy. I know how most people are though, I tell'em this, they're like: "Well you just eat yams for dinner? I dunno man, that's kinda weird."

OK. But somebody else's ribcage sitting on your plate isn't weird - doesn't make you think twice? Severed legs, sliced up thights and mutilated breasts sitting on your plate, doesn't make you think twice? And do you want to know why?

Those blinders are on nice and tightly aren't they? And I bet most of you are perturbed at me when the speech began, and I accused everybody of having blinders on. I am not here to be your enemy. I am here to call you out, though. You might have had a pretty good excuse before I got here, of being uninformed and misinformed. OK. That's fair. Honestly though I was the same way for a long time.

I'm kind of curious though. What's the excuse now?

You got a choice today, when you leave this room, you can choose to be radically kind. Never to intentionally harm another animal for breakfast, lunch or dinner ever again. And these creatures have never harmed you, violated you, or taken of advantage of you in any way shape or form. The least you can do is return the favor.

Or you can stay radically cruel. Keep the status quo as is. Make sure animals have no freedom. Make sure they never experience one drop of human kindness. Make sure their babies are stolen from them; make sure their beaks are sliced off, their horns are cut off and their testicles ripped out. Make sure there's a knife in their throat every second of every day for eternity. I really hope you'll make the right choice.

I wanna wrap this speech up so we can do our Q&A session. Give me about six more minutes to say something on the dairy industry, as it pertains directly to cows. We talked about the pus in cow milk which is gross. We talked about the unhealthiness of consuming dairy products, but we have yet to focus on what the cows are going through.

Keep in mind that veganism isn't about your health; that would be selfish. I'm trying to get people to be unselfish for a change, to be altruistic, do something kind for somebody else. But when you do that don't expect something in return. But when it comes to cruelty, I think there's more cruelty in a glass of milk than a steak. I want to make my case visually, and verbally.

You're only the 11th class to see what I'm about to show. This just went down a few months ago, in Plains City, Ohio. At a "Ma and Pa" dairy farm.

Here we go yeah. Now you're fucked, huh. You're mine. Hook your shit up. You're mine mother fucker. Oh yeah. [Unintelligible] hurts. You're gonna get some pain. Why it hurts the worst when you're milked.

Get up.

Oh shit he's break a tail. Whatever.

Damn the fuck still, fucker.

When I get going it's just like oh this feels good, well keep fuckin it.

C'mon get yer head outta there.

We beak the fuck outta this cow, we stabbed her and broke her tail in 3 places, kept stabbing her ass and beating her. Next day Gary said we're gonna send her to beef, 'cuz she had mastitis. Couldn't get her in the parlor and we beat the fuck - I mean I drug that cow to the barn baby and beat that fucker until her face was like this big around.

[Unclear]

Turn your head. Turn your head, fucker.

Turn your ass. Turn your ass. C'mon.

Fuck I'm tired of this calf.

Oh I got a bad, now my blood pressure's up.

I don't think they're feeling any pain. I just keep going until the cow goes "Unnhh" and I'm like yeah, that's better.

This is not an isolated incident. Don't for one minute think, that this is an isolated incident.

This is how slaves are treated. You don't really think that slaves get treated nicely do ya? You really think white people were nice when they shipped black people here on ships? You don't think Nazis were nice when they walked Jews and Gypsies into the gas chambers do ya?

And this happens, because you wanna buy those products. Yeah that guy is a scumbag for doing that. But he's doing that because you wanna eat what comes out of her body.

And enough already. You're not a cave man, and you're not a cave woman anymore. Stop acting like Neanderthals. This is 2010. Give it up. It's not cute, and it's not funny. Because animals are being abused.

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It is not your right, it is not your freedom to do this to them.
You don't get to have freedom when somebody else doen't. That's a violation. And if you wonder why vegans get so upset sometimes, like I am right now, you just saw some of it.

Every time we show up at a farm someone is punching, kicking and stabbing somebody. And something else that I'm curious about, how come that when I show videos like this, of people punching and kicking animals, people are more upset at that than when they shove a knife in their throat.

So even if you find a farm where they're not punching and kicking, when they shove a knife in their throat or put a bullet between their eyes, how is that not cruelty? Did you know that ninety percent of hamburger meat in America comes from the dairy industry? When cows no longer give huge amounts of milk after three to seven years, slaughterhouse. No exceptions.

If ever given a chance cows can live to be 18 to 25, and cows are like all female mammals. I am not trying to talk down to you when I speak about animal issues, it's just that people don't think that animals go through the same things, the same emotions, that you go through, that we all go through.

In order for a female mammal to give milk she has to be pregnant. Every year, every cow on every dairy farm is raped. A long steel device, shoved in their vaginas to inject them with bull semen, sometimes they use a bare hand. This forces the milk flow. And after, she gives birth. Babies are stolen.

Let me tell you something. The worst scream I have ever heard, and I've heard them all first hand, when I first started finding out about this stuff, little over 15 years ago, I was like everybody else, I didn't believe it was that bad. I thought everybody was exaggerating.

But unlike everybody else who just blows it aside, brushes it off, I actually went to see what was going on. I spent six weeks at Thorn Apple Valley, a pig slaughterhouse in Detroit in 1993. I broke into animal research laboratories. I broke into fur farms. I went behind the scenes of every circus and every rodeo that ever came through Michigan. Worst scream I ever heard, a mother cow in a dairy farm, as she screams and bellows her lungs out day after day after day for her stolen baby to be given back to her.

And I can only imagine the same scream every woman in this room would make if somebody held you down after birth and stole your new born baby from you, and why do they take babies away from their mom? Well the dairy says you can't have a little baby sucking up all that milk that was meant for them, when they'd rather sell it to you instead.

Every time you have a glass of cow milk, some calf is not. And mother cows make milk for one reason anyways.
During the Q and A we're about to have you can ask me whatever you want. I'm no politician, bring up anything. If you went online before I got here, saw my radical essays that got me kicked out of countries, bring them up.

There is one question I will not entertain though. You cannot ask me why cows make milk. Because it's good for us. Shouldn't we be feeding it to our kids Gary, shouldn't we be having it? Nature took care of this one from the beginning of time. Cows make milk for their babies, and for their babies alone. Case is closed, forever, permanently, no debate, no discussion. They don't make milk for baby elephants, baby orangutans, baby hedgehogs, baby rabbits, baby rats , baby humans, adolescent humans or adult humans.

This body of ours has absolutely no need for cow milk, like it has absolutely no need for giraffe milk. And zebra milk, and rhinoceros milk, hippopotamus milk, camel milk, deer milk, antelope milk, horse milk, pig milk, dog milk or cat milk. The only milk that we ever need is our own mother's breast milk when we're born, that's it.

And when we're done weaning, we never need one drop of milk ever again. No species on this planet needs milk after they're done weaning, but if you want to include some kind of milk in your diet like I do, let me reiterate the good news. Soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, hemp milk, coconut milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk. I promise that you will like one of those vegan milks.

Remember when you go veg, you don't give up anything. You got the vegan version of stuff or eat things that are truly natural like fruits and vegetables, beans and lentils and seeds.

I want to thank everybody for listening with an open mind, I do appreciate that.