"For the sake of love of purity…refrain from eating flesh,
for fear of causing terror to living beings…refrain from eating
flesh."
-The Buddha-

Namaste!

Each year in the United States, 10 billion land animals are raised and
killed for meat, eggs, and milk. Statistically, farm animals comprise 98
percent of all animals in the country with whom we interact directly,and
that staggering percentage does not even include the estimated 10
billion aquatic animals killed for human consumption. Indeed, the
numbers of animals killed by trappers and hunters; in classrooms,
research laboratories, and animal shelters; and on fur farms; and those
animals raised as companions or used for entertainment by circuses and
zoos, collectively make up only 2 percent of the animals in some
established relationship with humans.
These farm animals—sentient, complex, and capable of feeling pain
and frustration, joy and excitement—are viewed by industrialized
agriculture as mere meat-, egg-, and milk-producing machines, and their
welfare suffers immensely as factory farm profit outweighs their
well-being. Yet, despite the routine abuses they endure, no federal law
protects animals from cruelty on the farm, and the majority of states
exempt customary agricultural practices—no matter how
abusive—from the scope of their animal cruelty statutes. The welfare
of farm animals often loses out to the economic interests of factory
farmers who can make larger profits by intensively confining animals and
breeding them for rapid growth with little regard for the amount of
suffering the animals endure.
Every year in the United States, more than 9 billion animals are killed
for food; millions more die of stress, suffocation, injuries, or disease
in the food industry.
In his or her lifetime, the average American meat-eater is responsible
for the abuse and deaths of some 2,400 animals, including approximately
2,287 chickens, 92 turkeys, 31 pigs, and 12 steers and calves.