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The Most Powerful Speech You Will Ever Hear

by Jennie Richards · Published June 5, 2023 · Updated June 22, 2023

Gary Yourofsky is an animal activist. He’s an international lecturer on veganism and animal rights and gives hundreds of talks every year about what a diet of eating meat, dairy, eggs and cheese does to our bodies, our health, the animals, our environment, our planet, and to our spirits–using facts, data, humor, questions and eye-opening honesty and truth.

Gary breaks down our Western societal programming of eating animals, questions the indoctrination that we grew up with that desensitizes us to animals so we can eat them, challenges our belief systems, exposes the lies of the meat and dairy industry, exposes the profit motives of the pharmaceutical-hospital-medical-agricultural complex that relies on keeping humans sick, fat and diseased, lifts the curtain of truth about the torture of farm animals for food—and asks each one of us to consider a healthy, ethical vegan diet from plants and the Earth, instead of an unethical, unhealthy, cruel diet from animals.

Gary asks, “You have a choice today, you can choose to be radically kind – you can choose to never intentionally harm another animal for breakfast, lunch and dinner ever again—these creatures who have never harmed you, violated you, or taken advantage of you ever; or you can stay radically cruel – and make sure that every animal suffers, make sure animals have no freedom, make sure their babies are stolen from them, make sure their beaks are cut off, their horns are cut off, their teeth ripped out and their testicles are cut off all without anesthesia – and then make sure they have a knife at their throat every day to eternity.”

Gary has a straightforward, honest, factual approach, with no other agenda than to deliver the truth about what it means to eat meat, eggs, dairy and cheese today, and why we need to change.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Is slavery, property owner, victim, profit, and domination exclusive to the human race?
Are Blacks, Jews, women and children the only victims of the atrocity of slavery?
Have not cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, goats, sheep been enslaved too?
What about a slaughterhouse? Do you really think there’s such a thing as humane slaughter? Then exactly what’s your definition of humane? Besides extreme psychological and physical abuse, torture, dismemberment and murder, what else do you think happens in slaughterhouses?
Is there such a thing as humane slavery? Humane rape? Humane child molestation? A humane holocaust? Isn’t this animal holocaust a massacre of innocent beings?
The most ignored words in all religious teachings are, “Thou shalt not kill and Do unto others as you would want done unto yourself.” But what about the animals, these words apply to all beings, so how can you justify their suffering and dying? You wouldn’t want this done to yourself?

If you have to turn away from looking at a slaughterhouse video or visit—and what happens every day to individual animals going through a slaughter line, then you need to ask yourself why is it that you ignore their agony, their brutal suffering and their murder – to eat your burger, your chicken filet, your eggs, your cheese, your steak?

Quotes From the Video

Every year, without mercy, we slaughter 10 billion animals.

We need to have genuine compassion and genuine peace for our planetary companions.

Animals do no belong to us. They are not property. They are not commodities. They are not inanimate stupid objects that cannot think or feel. That is an outdated Cartesian way of thinking of animals like they are machines. That is 100% insane and completely wrong.

Those meat and dairy industry lies are thick. The propaganda from animal abusers is enormous. What advertising do you see on TV? Not shitake mushrooms, sprouts, raspberries, tofu, nuts, or beets – no, instead you see meat, eggs, and cheese – all animal products. Then what do you see even more? Pharmaceuticals to relieve the cancer and heart disease, diet pills for obesity, Tums for indigestion, Kaopectate for constipation—all caused by animals foods.

You’ve been duped! The meat and dairy industry are killing you, the animals, and the planet. They have put blinders on each of us, nice and tight, so we don’t see or hear or know the truth.

Each of us used to be an animal lover when we were children, a true friend to animals, an animal advocate and activist – when we were young. This was natural. Children want to protect animals from cruelty, and at least acknowledge any cruelty to animals. Until someone told us and taught us differently – to make fun of and mock their very existence. What in the Hell happened along the way?

Who taught us to be so mean, nasty, indifferent, vicious and hateful – toward animals who used to be our friends as children? These are innocent beings that have done nothing to us. This hatred in its purest form is learned behavior. Racism, sexism, misogyny—these are all learned behaviors. Hatred in its purest form is learned. So Speciesism is no different.

Speciesism – is the unethical, unprincipled point of view that the human species has every right to exploit, enslave and murder another species, and all because we believe our species is so special, so superior to another species. We feel entitled to subjugate, dominate, enslave and murder. This is the basis of all forms of discrimination. It is never ok to be picking and choosing which forms of discrimination to be opposed to. And which ones are ok. All forms of discrimination are wrong.

Try to feel what it’s like from an animal’s point of view, feel some empathy right now them, the victims’ point of view. When you’re the victim things look and feel much different.

Wonder why McDonald’s never shows you these horrific images shot at slaughterhouses in their TV ads – instead they are brainwashing you, programming you not to care about things you would normally care about, things that you used to care about.

Right now, there are no less than 5000 Concentration Camp trucks on American’s highways that are driving thousands of living, terrified, fearful, innocent animals to these houses of horror. When the trucks arrive the animals are so frightened, they won’t even get off the truck — they know what’s ahead. So they take electric prods to get these frightened animals out to walk down the chutes to their own death. Inside these innocent living beings are hanged upside down fully conscious. They go inside against their will and come out all chopped up into hundreds of pieces. What is more insane than this?

What’s more insane than this? Meat eaters. People walking around like their lifestyle isn’t causing any harm. Like it’s normal and natural to be consuming violence and death. How would you feel if the day you were born, someone else had planned the day of your execution? That’s how it feels to be a cow, turkey, sheep or pig.

The animals have not done one single thing to us to deserve the wrath, and the cruelty that we hurl on them.

I am here to talk about the worst form of cruelty and violence taking place on the planet everyday. Veganism is a chance to walk the compassionate talk that we talk about. This is your chance to show how peaceful you are, for a personal revolution, to leave your mark on the planet — by causing the least amount of harm and violence possible on the planet.

Or will you stay apathetic, indifferent, selfish, uncompassionate, and uncaring? Which one?

98% of animals who are abused and killed on this planet, are abused and killed by the meat, dairy and egg industries. This is where all the harm is taking place. From birth to death, each meat eater kills and eats around 3000 animals and 1000s or more marine animals (USDA).

We’ve all been told that we humans are carnivores, we’re omnivores, we’re meat-eaters and we’re supposed to be doing this. But the fact is, and the truth is just the opposite. We are physiologically designed to be 100% herbivorous plant-eaters. The length of our intestines are the same as the length of all herbivore animals on the planet. The length of the intestines of meat eating animals are much shorter, to push through decaying animal meat, cholesterol, and saturated fat. It’s impossible for real carnivore animals to clog their arteries because their system is made to consume animals with a very short intestine – but that’s not ours.

Heart disease is the #1 killer of humans due to eating meat, dairy, cheese and eggs. We’re not supposed to be eating animal products — we’re not designed to eat them.

People possess ZERO carnivorous instincts and zero omnivorous instincts, we are all born vegan, we just acquire a taste for meat, cheese and eggs because it is forced down our throats as a child. It’s normalized.

Stop filtering your nutrients through someone else’s body – soy, corn, grains are given to cows and other animals to eat – instead, eat them directly, unfiltered through animals.

e-Coli contamination is the fault of the meat and dairy industry. Animals defecate and produce trillions of tons of manure and it causes e-Coli bacteria in the soil, the waterways, the runoff onto crops, or it’s sprinkled onto crops by sprinkler systems—-all from animal manure.

Four main factors that cause our human diseases from eating animals (meat, cheese, milk and eggs) – Cholesterol, saturated fat, trans fatty acids, and animal protein.

Animal protein is way too acidic for the human body. When animal protein enters the human body our blood automatically becomes acidic (not alkaline), our body has to immediately neutralize the acidity. There’s only one way to reduce and neutralize that acidity, it’s with phosphate from our bones. Our body leeches calcium phosphate from our bones, to neutralize the acidity, then it’s peed out of our bodies. That’s why all the societies that eat the most animal products, Western societies, have the greatest number of cancers, bone fractures, osteoporosis, and heart disease.

Meat, cheese, milk and eggs are responsible for every major chronic disease, which kills the highest numbers of people in Western societies.

I’ll show you what’s killing you – and I’ll show you who’s lying to you, flat out lies. The Dairy Industry lies to you. We put cheese in every single food item, every nook and cranny, you can’t even find a salad without cheese. In this society, this industry has got everyone hooked on cheese, it’s everywhere.

What’s the greatest cause of world hunger? Meat eating societies. Feeding our grains, corn, and soy to land and marine animals that could go to starving and hungry people.

Pus – Somatic Cell Count – is in every drop of milk from a cow, cow’s milk is full of puss, bacteria, and infection from their mammary glands, being milked dry 3x a day by machines and given hormones to force them to produce more milk than is normal.

I stopped eating animals for ethics, morality, decency and compassion for animals that I share this planet with.

You can directly participate in ending a massacre, when you walk out that door.