A Vegetarian Lifestyle- A Way of Life Which Causes No Creature of Land Sea or Air, Terror, Torture or Death (An Old and Rare Book)

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It is said that information precedes action, but can only be useful if translated into action.

A Vegetarian Lifestyle by Beauty Without Cruelty provides useful information to those who would like to try and live a little more in harmony with Nature. We hope that many humans animals will benefit from this publication.

This voluminous task has without doubt been completed in the shortest possible time and hence any discrepancies whatsoever are regretted. We request all readers to point these out so that after re- verification of the research done, if found necessary, rectification will be made. We congratulate Diana and Ranjit for the tremendous effort put in by them in helping the lay-person to understand better the true meaning of a vegetarian existence. We also thank all those who have extended their co-operation towards the research involved.

Today, the market offers a range of products, some conforming and some not conforming to the vegetarian ethic.

Vegetarians need to carefully choose what to buy, basing their choice on reliable information. In the beginning the objective of this book was limited to giving dedicated vegetarians names of products that would be acceptable to them and relevant information on which they could base their choices. However, during the course of the research that was necessary to be carried out for such a publication, it was felt that the scope of the book should be expanded from being just a shopping guide to a comprehensive guide covering various facets of one's life.

Therefore the focus was shifted from simply providing a list of ethically acceptable products in the market to making readers aware of the implications (for the good of the animal kingdom) of the choices they make in various aspects of their daily life, discussing philosophical issues behind the genesis of such choices, pointing out alternatives, both immediate and long- term, that would help them avoid choosing the more harmful options, and, more importantly, raise questions about the validity of a lifestyle that so frequently poses such choices. This book thus contains useful information to make one's vegetarian lifestyle more meaningful.

The purpose of this book is not to point out the obvious, e.g., not to eat non-vegetarian food or not to wear fur. These principles are quite clear to the lay person concerned about animals. Rather, the objective is to make readers aware of the unseen and unknown ways in which many items we use daily are produced. We may not even associate them with an animal source, but producing such items actually places a heavy and painful burden upon our brethren in the animal kingdom. These are the 'hidden' cruelties that take place in our superficially peace-loving society.

Practising vegetarianism is becoming more and more difficult each day due to the increasing use of animal ingredients in products which are commonly assumed to be animal-free. Further, a product which is animal-free in composition may not be cruelty-free since its means of production may have involved infliction of pain or death. This situation is true of food products, cosmetics, and many other items. A true vegetarian is concerned about inedible products also when the processes of manufacture of these violate his principles of harmlessness to and reverence for all life.

It is common for people to think that vegetarianism is limited to abstaining from animal foods, and that the use of 'by-products' like gelatine (derived from boiled down bones and connective tissues of slaughtered animals) does not come in its purview. The argument given is that a cow is not slaughtered for its bones but only for its beef. Or it is said that the presence of bone in our toothpaste does not matter because toothpaste is not eaten. The first argument that meat is the sole reason for slaughter, may have been valid in the pre-industrial, pre-consumer era when there was no demand for manufactured goods. However, this century's developments in industrial processing machinery and the accompanying rise in demand for consumer goods has witnessed a demand for various parts of the animal's body sometimes matching the demand for flesh. No part of the animal's body goes unused buyers exist for every gland, every organ, every pound of fat, every square inch of skin, every strand of hair that can be extracted from the carcass. Although this practice is defended by industry as 'efficient' and 'non-wasteful' use of the animal's body, they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the slaughter, and as seriously, they cannot be excused for introducing animal parts into products knowing that vegetarians form a large part of their clientele. Manufacturers thus trespass upon vegetarian ideals and make a profit out of it too. If there is no demand, it is always created. Even if it was not the meat but some other body part of the animal that was in demand and was what the animal was killed for, it wouldn't matter the meat would be converted to and marketed as an attractive so-called 'by-product'. After all, in the olden days there were hardly any buyers for bones, blood etc., but now there are.

As for the second argument, that vegetarianism need not concern itself with non-edible items, it matters little to the animals which are killed what we do with their carcasses after they are dead. The fact remains that they are killed at our hands. The proponents of this argument should ask themselves why the question of what we do with the dead animals' carcasses should alter the morality of the act of killing.