Will Tuttle

While there are thus many “former vegetarians,” it's unlikely that “former vegans” were ever actually vegans; it seems doubtful that compassion authentically attained is ever lost.

If we all, as a society, did go vegan, and we moved away from eating animal foods and toward a plant-based diet, what would happen? If we didn’t kill all these cows and eat them, then we wouldn’t have to breed all these cows because we’re breeding cows, and chickens, and pigs, and fish. We’re breeding them over and over again, relentlessly. So if we didn’t breed them, then we wouldn’t have to feed them. If we didn’t have to feed them, then we wouldn’t have to devote all this land to growing grains, and legumes, and so forth to feed to them. And so then the forests could come back. Wildlife could come back. The oceans would come back. The rivers would run clean again. The air would come back. Our health would return.

The word “vegan,” newer and more challenging than “vegetarian” because it includes every sentient being in its circle of concern and addresses all forms of unnecessary cruelty from an essentially ethical perspective, with a motivation of compassion rather than health or purity, points to an ancient idea that has been articulated for many centuries, especially in the world's spiritual traditions.

The good news is that our bodies thrive on a conscious plant-based diet, and that this diet is infinitely more compassionate to animals and people and more environmentally sustainable than eating animal foods.

In order to confine and kill animals for food, we must repress our natural compassion, warping us away from intuition and toward materialism, violence, and disconnectedness.

The contemporary vegan movement is founded on loving-kindness and mindfulness of our effects on others. It is revolutionary because it transcends and renounces the violent core of the herding culture in which we live.

There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture.

I believe that until we are willing and able to make the connections between what we are eating and what was required to get it on our plate, and how it affects us to buy, serve, and eat it, we will be unable to make the connections that will allow us to live wisely and harmoniously on this earth.

Our deep urge to evolve to a more spiritually mature level of understanding and living, and to create a social order that promotes more justice, peace, freedom, health, sanity, prosperity, sustainability, and happiness, absolutely requires us to stop viewing animals as food objects to be consumed and to shift to a plant-based way of eating.