The unfortunate reality is that I actually was paying a lot of attention to the passion and voices of folks who were making cogent statements about their views on veganism and animal compassion — until a few folks started going off the rails. What I will say is that one of the folks from a local compassionate care group did start a dialogue with me. I have asked her and some vegans from her organization to meet with me for lunch next week at a vegan restaurant. I hope to hear their side of this story and, if the discussion goes well, write about their group and their feelings as part of this ongoing story.

At this point, I am closing comments, I hope temporarily until the heat subsides a bit and people can begin to talk rather than scream. As ever, I applaud passion when tempered with reason. Many cultures thrived without any animal flesh, including documented cases of indigenous people who were known for good health and bone structure without consuming animal flesh. Or do you think other species are less than and you as a human being are more entitled? Let me remind you, according to life on earth, when a tsunami hits, your life has as much worth as an ant or cow, or did you think you were going to some special place when you die?

You just want to quench your appetite for animal flesh and justify it with the notion that your being humane. Its true, the pig would run if he could, that means death is against his will. Every living thing wants to live, even if they are not intellegent, they still want to LIVE. Heather, I would like to contact your mother and offer my — and others — assistance in getting Reggie to sanctuary. Mom always knows best! It can be with Reggie or another pig. Frankly, I think it would be awesome if someone wanted to sponsor him at a happy home!

We will start looking for a sanctuary now, Brighthaven is right here in Santa Rosa and is excellent they mostly do rescue and education on holistic health for senior and disabled animals but also have a pig. It is worth seeing. You are also welcome to come to our monthly vegan life support dinner in October as my guest, i promise i will treat you with respect as i do not judge people for their food choices and it may be an interesting addition to your article.

At the vegan life support gathering volunteers cook a delicious meal, we have a short cooking demo, eat dinner, have another short cooking talk, enjoy dessert, and then have a check-in time where everyone that wants to can talk a bit about where they are with making more conscious food choices. Non-vegans are particularly welcome. We want to offer support for each person in creating a more healthy compassionate diets. Good to hear from you, Heather! As to your determination to continue, I can understand your position.

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Please contact me privately so we can set up communications to get Reggie to sanctuary. Hey Dian and Nan: If you need help with a donation to get Reggie transported or with anything else pertaining to saving him let me know! Why do you feel the need to be on this power trip of taking away a pigs life on your behalf. Were you abused our something? Are you out for revenge on another being because you feel weak yourself? I hope you have a heart and start thinking about that other being..

Fill your body with glut and gore and death and suffering and pain and bloat and artery-clogging cholesterol for all anyone cares, save your dear mother. Stuff your kiddos with it too. Some seem to be experiencing difficulty wrapping their minds around the food chain. Where is the same outrage over a mountain lion taking a deer? Over a tuna taking a herring?

Over a robin taking a worm? It is NOT natural for humans to eat meat and all the up to the minute scientific data supports that. Not one shred of evidence supports that humans are natural carnivores. If you put and apple and a bunny in a crib with a small child, the child would eat the apple and pet the bunny. The child would not eat the bunny, the way a kitten would eat a mouse if given the opportunity.

If it were natural for humans to eat meat there would be no need to cook meat and it would be very appealing to us to sink our teeth into a live animals body. For medical support on this issue, watch Forks over Knives. Plush Cat, Man has been eating meat since the beginning of time…whenever he could get his hands on it, he ate it…raw and bloody. Humans were only able to hunt after they developed weapons. You eat meat because you put your pleasure before others misery. I too used to like the taste of animal flesh, many vegans will tell you that, but I awakened and realized how ethically wrong that is.

And the milk issue is a real no-brainer since no species other than the human being drinks milk past infancy. The idea of raping a cow, stealing and killing her baby, and then stealing the milk which was intended for her baby is INSANE. Plush — please give me some scientific resources that indicate that early modern humans, or homo erectus or homo habilis, did not eat meat. Oh, and vegetarian websites.


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Or me, at least. This species, of course, no longer exists and died out. It is an animals instinct to eat other animals.. That is being quit weak. What humans are doing to animals is not natural at all.. Sheesh… you folks are really creeping me out, did not know so many wacko vegans were this intolerant of other peoples choices. Scary to think what you might be capable of when it comes to pushing your agenda. Live life the way you want, but keep your small minded ideas out of others.

And yes, I will live just as long as you, and probably happier too. You are remarkably and dangerously ignorant, alas, ignorance is bliss. Keep it rational and sane and people will listen. Several writers, including Jewish Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, and animal rights groups have drawn a comparison between the treatment of animals and the Holocaust…..

You creeped me out, reading your comment here. How can you not care about another beings life. So cruel of you. That bacon will catch of you. You will have health problems from it… no doubt. And trust me you will never be as happy as me.. I need to apologize to you and explain how this is as much a process for me as for anyone else. I get asked all the time to provide people with an experience.

Next she gets to build pens, mend fences, cut back willows, and not leave until the evening chores are done. I mean, really- how many other occupations does the general public want to experience so they can get closer to the process?

Getting to know your dinner. Personally.

Without exaggeration, by opening ourselves up, we risk the same as the young soldiers who returned home from Vietnam. My own father was spat on as he walked the streets of his home town of Sebastopol. So this is a process for me too. Those who turn a blind eye, or those with no soul who befriend an animal, look them in the eye and murder them. Lection 33 5, Obey my voice and walk in the ways that I have commanded you, and ye shall be my people, and it shall be well with you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear. And what doth the Eternal command you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God?

Is it not written that in the beginning God ordained the fruits of the trees and the seeds and the herbs to be food for all flesh? But they have made the House of Prayer a den of thieves, and for the pure Oblation with Incense, they have polluted my altars with blood, and eaten of the flesh of the slain. But I say unto you: Shed no innocent blood nor eat ye flesh. Walk uprightly, love mercy, and do justly, and your days shall be long in the land. The corn that groweth from the earth with the other grain, is it not transmuted by the Spirit into my flesh?

The grapes of the vineyard, with the other fruits are they not transmuted by the Spirit into my blood? Let these, with your bodies and souls be your Memorial to the Eternal. In these is the presence of God manifest as the Substance and as the Life of the world.

Of these shall ye eat and drink for the remission of sins, and for eternal life, to all who obey my words. I wish you actually read the article, because I honestly think I addressed a lot of this. I respect the choice to be a vegetarian, but it is not my choice. I am a meat eater, and as such, I feel obligated to get to know where meat comes from rather than sheepishly continuing to buy neatly packaged slabs of protein that have nothing to do with the animal that it came from. Trying to catch Reggie this weekend, i realized how strong and intelligent they can be.

I highly recommend it. I consider your experiences and I enjoy different points of view. Maybe I will turn vegetarian, but wagging your finger is a damn poor way to convince anyone. Eating meat is a choice. If you take it seriously why, would you do that? I can assure you he would not think his fate is funny. Also, I do not only defend cute fluffy animals who qualify as pets. I spent a summer working on a dairy farm, I have horses and goats, I know farming and farming practices well. I am very well educated on this topic. Believe me, I can talk for days. You will never convince me that you have to eat meat.

You could always just go onto Peta. That is really commendable. I just find finger wagging unconvincing when it comes to a serious debate. I kind of doubt it.

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I have been inside a slaughterhouse. The meat industry is also the 1 contributing factor to global warming. People will hunt, club baby seals over the head, turn a blind eye and eat meat, ignore the over crowded shelters, buy puppies, buy leather sofas and the list goes on.


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  • I can only speak up when I can, but most of the time it falls on deaf ears. Good luck with your journey. I agree with you, too, Odessa and feel your pain and frustration. At the same time, you give me hope of a better day when humankind IS kind, IS compassionate, and learns to live in peace and harmony with others—ALL others. You are not alone and our numbers are growing. There are other, much more healthy, more sustainable, and compassionate kinds of protein than cancer protein, which is essentially what animal protein is. Biteclub to eat an animal is only done for the most selfish reason — to satiate taste.

    Well, now you know. My recent blood work, not to mention the my biceps and flat belly shows everybody that vegans miss nothing except for the cruelty on their plate. We reap what we sow. If we plant seeds of death and killing guess what we get back? We have wars, mass killings, people being depressed. The pharmaceuticals keep coming up with new drugs to help us, when all we have to do is just stop the killing. Is that the best you can do? The choice to abstain from killing animals IS a choice worth respecting.

    Just as a choice to abstain from killing humans would be. The choice to kill and eat animals when all the nutrition you need is available from plant based sources is NOT a choice worthy of respect and only those that do it are deluded enough to think it is. Ask Your Doctor About Meat: It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, holding this baby goat in my arms and petting him until he died, trying to make him comfortable.

    Do I cry every time I harvest animals? There are so many points to take issue with. The author and other farm workers admit they are disturbed and need to not become attached so they will still be able to murder the innocent creatures that trust them. Why not celebrate life instead of death and go vegan? Spread compassion by teaching nonviolence and respect for all creatures. Heather, I am trying mightily to understand your logic, so I have to ask you: Are all species, including sentient species that have become members of our family, fair game to consume, except our own species?

    You are missing the forest for the trees. I completely agree, and am in fact trying to shed a light on the importance of treating animals humanely during their lives. I was a vegetarian for several years in my teens, and had equally intractable feelings — so i get where people are coming from. As an adult, however, I made the decision to include animal protein in my diet.

    I feel bad about that. I respect the opinions of those who feel meat-eating is not a choice they would want to make. I respect the animal as an animal that I choose to eat for meat. He is not a pet. We are rare in the world in that we have the luxury of making animals companions rather than seeing them purely as potential calories. I am not interested in eating cats or dogs, this is about animals that have been raised for human consumption for years.

    I am not conflicted about eating meat. That is the journey here. Please continue the dialogue. I am inspired by people who want to SaveReggie and applaud you. Just respect that this is a discussion where the goal is to learn from each other. Not to punch each other in the gut. Display cabinets with wedding photos. A wooden cabinet nearby with ancient Torah scrolls from Israel inside. Plastered on a wall nearby: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

    After all, what they experienced was traumatic, blindsided by the course of death, when Sara awoke at 7 a. Reggie died later that day—from a cardiac arrhythmia triggered by sarcoidosis, a disease where nodules form in the lungs, liver, lymph glands and salivary glands. The holidays, though the Whites do not celebrate Christmas, are still undoubtedly poignant. Overall, however, the mood in this room is joyful. They laugh a lot whenever they reminisce about Reggie. They laugh a lot, in general, whenever they are together. Sara is sitting in the middle of Jecolia, 27, and Jeremy, For once, Sara is the quiet one.

    And Sara is never the quiet one.

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    Her older brother cannot be tamed. Perhaps none of them can be tamed when they are together. Watching the Whites interact is like watching a sitcom unfold. The interview with the Whites was supposed to last only five or ten minutes, simply to gather some video footage for the story. It has already lasted over an hour and a half. Maybe they have forgotten they are being recorded. Jeremy and his wife live down the street.

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    Both Jecolia and Jeremy teach in the Charlotte area. It might be easy to think that this is the way it has always been with them. And for a time, it was. Sara knows that might sound crazy, but she and Reggie felt most whole, most fulfilled, when they were with their children.

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    Sara and Reggie always told one another that once they became empty nesters, when both Jeremy and Jecolia went off to college, they were going to purchase an RV. Then they would travel back and forth between their universities, embarrassing their children. When Reggie died, all of that changed. Jeremy was a freshman in college. Jecolia was a junior in high school. Sara did indeed become an empty nester two years later.

    But she never did purchase an RV. There was no one to ride beside her. The question is asked: If Reggie was here today, is there something you want to tell him? When you left, two years later, Batman Begins comes out. You would have flipped out! Green Lantern was terrible. Jeremy goes on a miniature rant about Green Lantern. Anyway, going back, you had to leave on the cusp of superhero movies. Was Ironman not the best superhero movie at the time besides Batman? But if he was here, I would go with him.

    Jecolia and Jeremy then talk about how impossible it is to watch superhero movies with their mother. So my dating life is not good. Sara was always the strong one. She had to be. She was married to Reggie White, the best defensive end of all time, and one of the most vocal Christian athletes of all time. I broke my leg last year so exercise is hard right now. I love swimming, weightlifting and I jump a lot of rope. I would do push-ups, 10 today, 20 tomorrow and then you start building like that.

    I would say to my younger self: Work takes up a little too much of my time right now. I was telling a friend of mine who was in the same class as me — she was talking about all the changes she was going to make. I said you were talking about making the same changes when you were 25! He walks the dogs, still makes breakfast. All these years I kiss him on the head whenever I come back to England after seeing him.