Vegan by Valerie

***I meant to publish this LAST SUMMER but just now realized that it was just a draft and never got posted!

Here are some celeb quotes about veganism (taken from a PETA info pamphlet that my sweet husband grabbed for me when they were passing them out in the city one day) for your reading pleasure:

Paul McCartney (one of my favorite people in all of the world): “I am a vegetarian because I realize that even little chickens suffer pain and fear, experience a range of feelings and emotions, and are as intelligent as mammals, including dogs, cats, and even some primates.”

James Cromwell: “So-called farms today treat animals like so many boxes in a warehouse, chopping off beaks and tails and genitals with no painkillers at al, inflicting 3rd degree burns repeatedly by branding cows, ripping out the teeth of pigs, and just a horrible catalog of abuses that, if done to dogs or cats, would be illegal on grounds of animal cruelty.”

Casey Affleck: “I don’t eat meat or any other animal products because they’re unhealthy and they’re the product of a violent and inhumane industry”.

Alicia Silverstone: “Since I’ve gone vegetarian” (she is now vegan) ” my body has never felt better and my taste buds have opened up to a whole new world.  It’s one of hte most rewarding choices I’ve ever made and I invite you to join me in living a healthy, cruelty-free lifestyle”.

Forest Whitaker: “Life is full of choices, and many years ago, I chose to become a vegetarian, and it was one of the best choices I’ve ever made”.

John Salley: “It’s good for your weight.  It’s good for your health… going vegetarian is the best damn way to eat.  Period.”

Kristen Bell: “I have always been an animal lover.  I had a hard time dissociating the animals I cuddle with – dogs and cats – for example – from the animals on my plate, and I never really cared for the taste of meat. I always loved my brussels sprouts!”

The Dalai Lama: “I have been particularly concerned with the sufferings of chickens for many years.  It was the death of a chicken that finally strengthened my resolve to become a vegetarian.  These days, when I see a row of plucked chickens hanging in a meat shop it hurts.  I find it unacceptable that violence is the basis of some of our food habits.”

Russell Simmons: “Chickens raised for food today are… covered in excrement, they’re diseased, and they’re drugged up with all sorts of toxins that you are ingesting if you eat chickens.  One recent study found that chicken flesh in this country has four times as much arsenic – yes, arsenic the poison (which is used in the drugs the chicken are given) – as any other meat… I have been a vegan for many years…”

Natalie Portman: “I am a very strict vegetarian…I just really, really love animals and I act on my values…I am really against cruelty to animals.”

Joaquin Phoenix: “Animal rights is a part of my everyday life.  When you live by example,  you creat a certain level of awareness.  Friends of mine, people I have never discussed animal rights or vegetarianism with, are adopting vegetarian habits because they see it”.