 "Photo: Assistant Art Director, Cyrene Mary")
Ninety-nine percent of the abuse and killings of animals around the world can be attributed to the dairy and meat industries
This is what animal rights advocate Gary Yourofsky said last Friday in Aztec Center during his lecture about the ethical treatment of animals and humankind's moral obligation to become vegan.
"In my early life I had the blinders on," Yourofsky said. "Nobody ate more meat than me.
"And in high school, embarrassingly and shamefully, I used to own a fur coat."
Yourofsky tried to have the audience tap into past childhood innocence, a time before "mistakes" such as buying fur coats were made.
He said reconnecting the audience with their youthful innocence would mean that people would never intentionally harm another living being on this planet.
"When we were kids, we used to smile and giggle at animals," Yourofsky said. "We were taught to ignore animals' feelings; hatred is a learned behavior."
Yourofsky's lecture promoted the end of all forms of discrimination including speciesism, the unfounded, unethical and unprecedented belief in the right to slaughter animals because humans are so much more important than every other species on earth.
He spoke about how carnivores have to lie to themselves in order to justify their inexcusable actions.
"(Animals) don't look like us," Yourofsky said. "(Animals) don't act like us. (Animals) are not as smart as us, and (animals) don't talk like us."
He then compared this way of thinking about animals to the excuses and logic people used to use to justify 400 years of enslaving black people, calling it a "vile excuse."
The presentation included a graphic four-minute video of animals being killed in slaughterhouses.
"If you have to turn away you should ask yourself: If it's not good enough for my eyes, why does it belong in my stomach?" Yourofsky said of the video.
The video portrayed many live animals on hooks being either cut open or shot in the head while Jo Dee Messina's "Even God Must Get the Blues" played in the background.
Images, such as these, of animals being slaughtered are what prompted Yourofsky to perform "numerous acts of compassion," which he has been arrested 13 times for. In total, Yourofsky has spent six months in jail because of his civil disobedience.
Yourofsky detailed his experience when he freed 540 minks from a farm in Ontario, Canada, which was aiming to slaughter the animals for coats. Setting the minks free eliminated more than $2 million in profits for the mink farm before he was caught by authorities and sentenced to 77 days in a maximum-security prison. He was labeled an international terrorist by the media.
Setting animals free, though, is Yourofsky's way of avoiding their slaughter, as, he said, the average American eats more than 3,000 land and marine animals.
"You can stop a slaughter when you leave today," Yourofsky said.
He expressed feelings of disgust for people who attempt to be compassionate but take no action.
"Since when does opposing an atrocity make the world a better place?" he said. "Everyone says that they're against the genocide in Darfur. Well, who isn't?"
Yourofsky lectured about the health benefits of becoming a vegan although he said that health is a selfish reason for going vegan.
Yourofsky said that humans are biologically designed to be herbivores and a vegan diet can eliminate osteoporosis and all "bad cholesterol."
"Even as a vegetarian person, I feel like I'm more informed," English senior Alfredo Soria said.
English senior Danielle Katz organized the event. Katz has been a vegan for four years after having an epiphany while cutting chicken meat.
"I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm cutting this chicken that was alive,'" Katz said.
Katz is part of the San Diego Animal Advocates group who is campaigning for more vegan meal choices on campus.
"Food services has been very receptive to us," Katz said. "(Animal rights) is all about supply and demand. If people stop demanding animal products, corporations will stop slaughtering animals."
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