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Why does Leeds Animal Protection encourage a vegan lifestyle?
Around 1000 million animals are slaughtered for food in the UK every year. Every one of these animals is an individual, capable of feeling pain and stress. Factory farming has one aim – profit. Farmed animals are fattened fast, killed young, and kept in crowded, filthy conditions and force fed drugs to reduce diseases. They are treated as commodities and deprived of everything that makes life worthwhile. Over 80% of cattle killed for meat are the calves of dairy cows, stolen away from their mothers at a day or two old, causing huge grief. Other animals including pigs, sheep, chickens, fish and many others suffer horrific abuse and slaughter as a result of meat and dairy consumption. Meat and dairy products contain saturated fat, which pile on the pounds, and increase the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and some cancers. Nearly 1/5 of greenhouse gases are caused by the animal industry, far higher than any other cause. The consumption of animal products is therefore putting our environment in danger. Rearing and feeding animals for food also has an impact on poverty – this inefficient use of the world’s scarce land and food resources means that there is less food for feeding starving people.
What can you do?
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