Neal Barnard
Neal Barnard
Neal D. Barnardis an American doctor, author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an international network of doctors, scientists, and laypeople. An advocate of a low-fat, whole foods, plant-based diet, he has also conducted research into alternatives to animal experimentation and has been active in the animal protection movement. As of 2015, he is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He founded the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
The Stone Age gave us arrow heads and eventually knives, and that allowed us to kill animals in ways you couldn't before, and once you had them you were able to remove the skin and bones.
A vegan diet takes care of most of what we need to do. But you'll also want to minimize the use of oils generally, because while olive oil and other vegetable oils are better for your heart than chicken fat, they are as fattening as animal fats.
I don't approve of the use of animals for any purpose that involves touching them - caging them.
I was aware of what animals go through because I had driven animals to slaughter and I'd killed animals. And I was aware that there were certain ethical issues, but they weren't preying on my mind very heavily.
To give a child animal products is a form of child abuse.
If we studied human beings which can include human genes, human blood samples, and human behavior, then you can leave the animals out of the labs and you can leave them off your plate.
Chimpanzees will eat a little bit of meat. But, they never eat dairy products, and no other animal would do that.
While it's certainly true that many people think that dairy doesn't have a cost to the animal, it's because they never went to a dairy farm.
Dogs have a sense of smell much greater than ours and they're much faster than we are. We have fairly dull senses, fairly slow locomotion. In our Olympic trials, we celebrate speeds that would be an embarrassment to a bird or a dog or another animal.
If a dog happens to catch a rabbit or another animal, it can very easily remove the hide. If a cat catches a squirrel, they have no trouble with that. But if a person does that, they will work all day and all night to get the skin off of an animal, because they don't have long canine teeth anymore.
I am always struck by how difficult it is for people to see how much cruelty they are bringing not only upon animals but upon themselves and their loved ones and other people, how much we are screwing up the planet, how much we are hurting our own health, how hard it is to change all that, how eager people are to make a buck at everybody else's expense - all those things are discouraging.
The dangers of eating animal products occur after the age of reproduction. If people developed cardiovascular disease that was fatal by the age of twelve or thirteen, eating animals would have died out long ago. You get it after you've already reproduced.
If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.
The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined.