Nonviolence can begin with you, at home.

As we reel from the shock of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as we struggle to understand the violence that has been thrust upon us, we have an opportunity to seize control of some equally real violence and stop it. We are not powerless. We are thinking, feeling beings with choices that rule life and death for others. We have the power to cause unbearable pain and fear, and we must not exercise it. Now is a time to examine how we can reduce suffering in the world and be life-affirming: Have our hearts and minds been closed to the unspeakable violence toward other innocents that takes place in our slaughterhouses, and do we look violence in the eye three times a day—at breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Do not turn away. Please. Unlike the violence over which we have no control, there is something we can do about this. We can actually stop it. We can reach out to the victims of this slaughter through easy choices for our families and ourselves.

Whether or not one chooses to admit it, cooking and eating bits of an animal killed only for consumption is a form of violence. Meat is not just what you serve up on a platter at dinnertime. It is the flesh of living, thinking, suffering animals who feel pain every bit as much as we do, are horrified at the sights and smells of the slaughterhouse, and are afraid to die. On this very page you can see how PETA's own investigation of a typical U.S. pig farm showed that employees regularly beat young pigs with heavy metal rods, kicked them, and dashed their heads against the pavement to kill them.

Look beyond the neat packages wrapped in plastic in the tidy grocery store and you will find a bloody, ugly nightmare that millions of animals endure every day. It's every bit as terrifying to them as the news reports of the terrorists' work are to us. As a recent joint investigation by NBC's Dateline and The Washington Post revealed, many animals are conscious as they move down the slaughterhouse butchering lines. In violation of federal law, fully conscious pigs are screaming as they are dropped into tanks of boiling water and cows are looking workers in the eye as their hooves are cut off.