What’s the Difference Between Vegetarian and Vegan?

Compassionate vegetarians recognize that animals are someones, not somethings. They know that every pig, chicken, turkey, cow, and fish is a unique and remarkable individual with impressive intellect, abilities that often far exceed our own, and the desire to live without suffering. Vegetarians choose not to support cruel animal agriculture and fishing practices by leaving animals off their plates. Vegans have typically learned that cows used for milk and cheese, chickens farmed for their eggs, bees whose vital honey is stolen from them, and other animals whose lives are controlled and exploited suffer serious harm and are often killed. In addition to not consuming any animal’s flesh, vegans also choose not to take their milk, eggs, or anything else that belongs to them.

Why Choose Dairy-Free?

The dairy industry is closely tied to the meat industry. Like all female mammals, cows only produce milk when they’re pregnant or nursing. Newborn calves are commonly taken from their mothers shortly after birth so that humans can steal their milk, a traumatic experience for both. Mother cows have tried to fight off the workers dragging their babies away, chased the trucks hauling them, and called for their lost infants for days. Males are often crammed into veal crates, and females are sentenced to the same sad fate as their mothers: being repeatedly impregnated and giving birth to infants they will never raise. When their bodies wear out after just a few years, they are slaughtered. Everyone who chooses rich, creamy vegan milk and cheese spares these gentle animals from unimaginable suffering. Check out these 18 images Big Dairy doesn’t want you to see to learn more.

What’s Wrong With Eggs?

Hens used for their eggs fare no better. Workers typically slice off a portion of their sensitive beaks without painkillers within hours or days of birth. The birds are shoved into tiny wire battery cages or packed so tightly into reeking, windowless sheds that these fastidiously clean animals must urinate and defecate on one another. Male chicks are worthless to the egg industry, so every year, millions of them are suffocated or thrown into high-speed grinders, called “macerators,” while they are still alive. Forced to lay far more eggs than their bodies can bear, the hens’ health deteriorates rapidly. Within just two years, most have broken bones and are too “spent” to continue. They are sent to slaughter, where their throats are slashed. Here are 21 things the egg industry doesn’t want you to see.

Save the Environment …

A Loma Linda University study found that vegans’ greenhouse-gas footprints are 41.7 percent smaller than meat-eaters’ footprints and 13.9 percent smaller than vegetarians’.

… and Animals

One single vegan person saves the lives of nearly 200 animals every year.

A Cornucopia of Vegan Food and Ways to Go Vegan

You can make going vegan as easy as one, two, three.

Here are our top six tips for new vegans to help you out as well.

If this article is making you question what you eat, we have just the thing for you: our free vegan starter kit, with recipes, tips, and information about going vegan. For animals, the environment, and your health, order one today.

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