I’m here to challenge you to ask
yourself how your existence impacts the
world how do your everyday little
actions affect your body your home and
your neighbors think past your work or
your hobbies instead try to focus on all
of the small little choices in between
like what kind of foods do you eat what
kinds of clothes do you wear or do you
toss your trash and the recycling or the
waste bin what do these little actions
do to the world this is meant to be a
challenge I know no one likes to wonder
if they’re doing something wrong or
they’re not doing enough but I’m not
here to make you feel comfortable and
tell you to do exactly what you’re doing
because we don’t really have an
opportunity to grow and have significant
change come from that my father always
told me Monica you’ll never learn by
doing what’s easy if you seek the ideas
that make you uncomfortable you can only
grow so I hope I can challenge you to do
the same the ultimate purpose of this
question is to inspire you to live a
more compassionate life full of
conscientious choices that reduces much
harm to the world it’s possible more
specifically I’ll focus on how a
plant-based diet is the perfect place to
start your body what does your trip to
the grocery store look like and how
often do you wonder what the foods that
you’re eating do to your body it turns
out that many diseases aren’t influenced
by diet the number one killer in America
is heart disease it’s caused by high
cholesterol levels found in processed
foods and animal derived foods these can
cause fatty deposits that clog your
arteries known as atherosclerosis a
study published in the Journal of the
American medicine Association showed
that atherosclerosis begins in early
childhood and later studies found traces
of it in children as young as ten years
old but symptoms might not show until
decades later when it’s too late luckily
this disease has shown to be reversible
studies have shown that
now animal derived and processed foods
from your diet helps to reverse a
thorough sclerosis lung diseases like
asthma and brain diseases like
Alzheimer’s have also claimed many
American lives but studies have shown
that a diet rich in Whole Foods and
plant-based foods reduce the risk of
developing these diseases altogether
there has been a staggering amount of
research and literature published with
claims that animal protein promotes the
growth of cancer cells of all types in
line with these findings researchers
have also explore the possibility of
turning cancer cell growth on and off by
raising and lowering doses of casein
which is a protein only found in animal
products high consumption of dairy
products such as milk have also been
linked to osteoporosis bone disease this
happens because animal protein creates
an acid-like condition called metabolic
acidosis and to combat it the body uses
the calcium from our bones and that in
turn weakens our bones nature Journal
has published data showing that the
countries with the highest consumption
of dairy and animal protein also happen
to be the countries with the highest hip
fracture incidences so knowing the risks
you are to our health I urge you to give
your next meal a second thought your
home humanity has high demands on nature
but to what extent do you contribute to
that what impact do you have on the
earth we all know that water is not an
expendable resource since we are
fortunate enough to not be among the
eight hundred million people who do not
have access to clean water we should be
seriously considering how we might be
wasting this valuable resource the US
Department of Agriculture for instance
has reported that the total water
required for nationwide animal
agriculture can range from 34 to 76
trillion gallons of water
per year when we consider our water
footprint it includes the water we drink
the water needed to produce the food
that we eat everything from showers any
anything that might require us to
consume water and each food item that we
buy has a water footprint as well B for
example doesn’t just require the water
that cows drink but also the water it
takes to grow their feed crops growing
feed crops for livestock alone is
responsible for 56 percent of national
water consumption a quarter pound of
beef which is about one burger requires
660 gallons of water to produce which is
about one month’s worth of the average
American shower which is about eight
minutes long and then a pound of cheese
which is two servings of mac and cheese
is about two months a little bit less
than two months of showers
environmentalists and government
organizations you urge us to reduce
water waste that were each responsible
for with a focus on household water
usage so some of these calls to action
are switching to efficient appliances
fixing leaky faucets and cutting back on
shower time but these three and the
minor changes that are recommended to us
they are advertised as extremely
influential but together if we if we
take all of these recommendations
it would only save up to forty seven
gallons a day compared with six hundred
and sixty gallons of water use from just
one burger so all of these efforts fall
into the domestic water conservation but
domestic use only accounts for 5% of
water consumption in the u.s. fifty-one
percent of all worldwide human-caused
grass greenhouse gas emissions can be
attributed to livestock and their
byproducts animal agriculture produces
150 billion gallons of methane which has
86 times greater potential of affecting
global climate than carbon dioxide
it’s also responsible for 65 percent of
the emissions of nitrous oxide which has
290
six times greater global warming
potential than carbon dioxide but were
mostly warned about carbon dioxide
emissions that the transportation sector
are responsible for when in reality a
report published by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the UN
asserts that raising cattle it was
responsible for more emissions than the
exhaust of the entire transportation
sector some people believe that
livestock’s tremendous contribution to
greenhouse gas emissions can be
completely eradicated by switching to
grass-fed cattle but the reality is that
physically there isn’t enough land on
earth to sustain people’s growing
demands of meat and animal products
feeding someone on a plant-based diet
for just one year for example requires
one sixth of an acre of land a
vegetarian diet requires one acre and a
carnivorous diet requires six acres of
land there isn’t even close to enough
arable land in the United States to
provide six acres of land for each
carnivorous individual and the entire
American population all to produce
natural grass-fed beef the meat and
dairy industries also have adore have
been directly correlated to an enormous
amount of land and rainforest
destruction millions of leyte of acres
of rainforest have been cleared for
animal production animal agriculture
purposes and this deforestation has
resulted in the extinction of 137 and
animal plant and insect species that are
go extinct every single day so the
reality is that the earth just can’t
sustain this kind of lifestyle your
neighbors your impact on the world goes
beyond a personal health and ecological
footprint your impact is also largely
measured by the way that you touch the
lives of others so how do you affect the
lives of the animals that we share the
earth with unfortunately as much as we
might want to believe that the meat
by is cage-free and ethically raised the
demand for me and animal products is
just too high to raise only grass-fed
cattle in these factory farming
conditions animals have almost no space
they’re injected with hormones they live
in their own feces they live next to
animals that are sick or maybe even dead
so of course they will eventually
develop diseases
a report by the Food and Drug
Administration attributes 80% of the use
of antibiotics in the United States to
raising livestock and poultry and when
we hear this it’s important to consider
that whatever these animals go through
and are injected with ends up in our
bodies as well studies have shown that
pigs are smarter than and just as social
as dogs but the pigs in these factory
farms live their lives and creates
barely large enough to fit their own
bodies they suffer from open wounds that
never get treated and the distress
caused by these conditions lead to
anxious and bored pigs
banging their heads in frustration
farmed fish also endure the pain and
stress of hyper confinement and that
this hyper confinement also relates to
diseases these conditions negatively
impact the delicate ecosystem that
they’re part of as well about 9 billion
chickens are raised for me every year
they’re drugged to grow and become so
large that their legs can break and
organs can’t keep up which makes organ
failure and heart attacks very common
another five three three hundred and
five million are raised for hens they
are crammed in cages so tight that they
can’t spread their wings their beaks are
also cut off so that they won’t peck at
each other in frustration finally when
egg production drops they’re sent to the
slaughterhouse to be turned into chicken
soup or dog food and on the way to the
slaughterhouse millions of animals die
from the stress of the journey over 29
million cows are raised for food every
year on dairy farm farms calves are
taken away from their mothers when
they’re just one day old
so that the milk can be harvested for
human consumption male calves are sent
to veal production operations after just
the one day the lives of cows used for
dairy are a cycle of artificial
impregnation hormone injection and and
milking regimens and it’s just an
endless cycle which causes a life of
extreme emotional trauma the average
life expectancy of a cow is twenty years
but the ones in factory farming
conditions like the ones in this picture
usually collapse from exhaustion after
just four years and are then sold to the
meat industry ad Williams said that
mankind is not the only animal that
laughs cries thinks feels and loves the
sooner we acknowledge that animals are
emotional beings the sooner we will
cease destroying animals and embrace
them as our brothers and sisters
Humanity is definitely flawed
historically we’ve seen groups that have
regarded themselves as superior to
others and justify doing as as they
please to their perceived inferiors
unfortunately that’s the attitude that
humans have towards animals and it leads
to a lot of cruelty but we have the
power to break this pattern we’re not
really that different from animals at
all you know in the way that we
experience love and looked at our loved
ones and the way we enjoy music like
these cows do or you know but in my
experience after I learned about the
cruel treatment that these animals in
this industry go through it just became
impossible for me to ignore and as I
became more aware it forced me to think
outside of myself and start regarding
animal products as a wasteful luxury
that I just couldn’t morally justify
anymore
even though it was originally hard to
accept the unethical Treatment of
Animals that was going on it was the
biggest motivator for me personally to
adopt a plant-based diet and lifestyle
it’s a more gentle approach to life with
higher respect for others no matter the
species but why aren’t we talking about
the severe consequences of this industry
I believe that there are two main
reasons the first is that we’re taught
early on to be extremely emotionally
invested in food it’s a significant
aspect of our cultures and as we teach
our cultures to newer generations it
becomes traditional while a lot of
people might say that eating meat is
traditional just because something is
traditional doesn’t make it morally
acceptable and we’ve seen examples of
this scattered in American history world
history really and I’m sure we can come
up with some examples but in reality our
natural instinct is to show compassion
for animals if we were to put a
two-year-old in a room with a baby pig
and a puppy that child would not pet
only one of them would not only cut the
puppy they would pet both and interact
with both because they can’t distinguish
between one is food and one is a friend
so societal pressures to conform are
actually what teach us to suppress our
natural instinct and inclination for
compassion the second reason why I think
we don’t hear about this very often is
that a lot of health and environmental
organizations that have a powerful voice
do not address these issues enough and
they don’t do it because they’re
financially reliant on companies that
sell animal products which are the very
cause of the problems that they’re meant
to address if they made this deprecating
information known they would lose a very
reliable so they’re very reliable source
of funding for example the American
Heart Association is backed by Tyson
Perdue Nestle and Texas Beef Council
there are all national distributors of
animal products the lack of attention
placed on this topic coupled with
people’s choice to ignore it and accept
embrace its stigma causes its widespread
disregard it’s definitely easy to
embrace stigmas because once we agree
with a label that others give an
unpopular topic it makes us feel that we
understand it so it’s a lot easier to
reject it but like my dad always told me
you’ll never learn by doing what’s easy
see the idea
that make you feel uncomfortable and be
open to positive changes I hope I’ve
inspired you to challenge yourself to
live a more compassionate life and make
more conscientious choices for your body
your home your neighbors individually we
each have tremendous power to reduce the
harm we inflict on the world what will
you do with this power I’ll leave you
with this quote by Robert F Canton
Kennedy thank you so much [Applause]
yourself how your existence impacts the
world how do your everyday little
actions affect your body your home and
your neighbors think past your work or
your hobbies instead try to focus on all
of the small little choices in between
like what kind of foods do you eat what
kinds of clothes do you wear or do you
toss your trash and the recycling or the
waste bin what do these little actions
do to the world this is meant to be a
challenge I know no one likes to wonder
if they’re doing something wrong or
they’re not doing enough but I’m not
here to make you feel comfortable and
tell you to do exactly what you’re doing
because we don’t really have an
opportunity to grow and have significant
change come from that my father always
told me Monica you’ll never learn by
doing what’s easy if you seek the ideas
that make you uncomfortable you can only
grow so I hope I can challenge you to do
the same the ultimate purpose of this
question is to inspire you to live a
more compassionate life full of
conscientious choices that reduces much
harm to the world it’s possible more
specifically I’ll focus on how a
plant-based diet is the perfect place to
start your body what does your trip to
the grocery store look like and how
often do you wonder what the foods that
you’re eating do to your body it turns
out that many diseases aren’t influenced
by diet the number one killer in America
is heart disease it’s caused by high
cholesterol levels found in processed
foods and animal derived foods these can
cause fatty deposits that clog your
arteries known as atherosclerosis a
study published in the Journal of the
American medicine Association showed
that atherosclerosis begins in early
childhood and later studies found traces
of it in children as young as ten years
old but symptoms might not show until
decades later when it’s too late luckily
this disease has shown to be reversible
studies have shown that
now animal derived and processed foods
from your diet helps to reverse a
thorough sclerosis lung diseases like
asthma and brain diseases like
Alzheimer’s have also claimed many
American lives but studies have shown
that a diet rich in Whole Foods and
plant-based foods reduce the risk of
developing these diseases altogether
there has been a staggering amount of
research and literature published with
claims that animal protein promotes the
growth of cancer cells of all types in
line with these findings researchers
have also explore the possibility of
turning cancer cell growth on and off by
raising and lowering doses of casein
which is a protein only found in animal
products high consumption of dairy
products such as milk have also been
linked to osteoporosis bone disease this
happens because animal protein creates
an acid-like condition called metabolic
acidosis and to combat it the body uses
the calcium from our bones and that in
turn weakens our bones nature Journal
has published data showing that the
countries with the highest consumption
of dairy and animal protein also happen
to be the countries with the highest hip
fracture incidences so knowing the risks
you are to our health I urge you to give
your next meal a second thought your
home humanity has high demands on nature
but to what extent do you contribute to
that what impact do you have on the
earth we all know that water is not an
expendable resource since we are
fortunate enough to not be among the
eight hundred million people who do not
have access to clean water we should be
seriously considering how we might be
wasting this valuable resource the US
Department of Agriculture for instance
has reported that the total water
required for nationwide animal
agriculture can range from 34 to 76
trillion gallons of water
per year when we consider our water
footprint it includes the water we drink
the water needed to produce the food
that we eat everything from showers any
anything that might require us to
consume water and each food item that we
buy has a water footprint as well B for
example doesn’t just require the water
that cows drink but also the water it
takes to grow their feed crops growing
feed crops for livestock alone is
responsible for 56 percent of national
water consumption a quarter pound of
beef which is about one burger requires
660 gallons of water to produce which is
about one month’s worth of the average
American shower which is about eight
minutes long and then a pound of cheese
which is two servings of mac and cheese
is about two months a little bit less
than two months of showers
environmentalists and government
organizations you urge us to reduce
water waste that were each responsible
for with a focus on household water
usage so some of these calls to action
are switching to efficient appliances
fixing leaky faucets and cutting back on
shower time but these three and the
minor changes that are recommended to us
they are advertised as extremely
influential but together if we if we
take all of these recommendations
it would only save up to forty seven
gallons a day compared with six hundred
and sixty gallons of water use from just
one burger so all of these efforts fall
into the domestic water conservation but
domestic use only accounts for 5% of
water consumption in the u.s. fifty-one
percent of all worldwide human-caused
grass greenhouse gas emissions can be
attributed to livestock and their
byproducts animal agriculture produces
150 billion gallons of methane which has
86 times greater potential of affecting
global climate than carbon dioxide
it’s also responsible for 65 percent of
the emissions of nitrous oxide which has
290
six times greater global warming
potential than carbon dioxide but were
mostly warned about carbon dioxide
emissions that the transportation sector
are responsible for when in reality a
report published by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the UN
asserts that raising cattle it was
responsible for more emissions than the
exhaust of the entire transportation
sector some people believe that
livestock’s tremendous contribution to
greenhouse gas emissions can be
completely eradicated by switching to
grass-fed cattle but the reality is that
physically there isn’t enough land on
earth to sustain people’s growing
demands of meat and animal products
feeding someone on a plant-based diet
for just one year for example requires
one sixth of an acre of land a
vegetarian diet requires one acre and a
carnivorous diet requires six acres of
land there isn’t even close to enough
arable land in the United States to
provide six acres of land for each
carnivorous individual and the entire
American population all to produce
natural grass-fed beef the meat and
dairy industries also have adore have
been directly correlated to an enormous
amount of land and rainforest
destruction millions of leyte of acres
of rainforest have been cleared for
animal production animal agriculture
purposes and this deforestation has
resulted in the extinction of 137 and
animal plant and insect species that are
go extinct every single day so the
reality is that the earth just can’t
sustain this kind of lifestyle your
neighbors your impact on the world goes
beyond a personal health and ecological
footprint your impact is also largely
measured by the way that you touch the
lives of others so how do you affect the
lives of the animals that we share the
earth with unfortunately as much as we
might want to believe that the meat
by is cage-free and ethically raised the
demand for me and animal products is
just too high to raise only grass-fed
cattle in these factory farming
conditions animals have almost no space
they’re injected with hormones they live
in their own feces they live next to
animals that are sick or maybe even dead
so of course they will eventually
develop diseases
a report by the Food and Drug
Administration attributes 80% of the use
of antibiotics in the United States to
raising livestock and poultry and when
we hear this it’s important to consider
that whatever these animals go through
and are injected with ends up in our
bodies as well studies have shown that
pigs are smarter than and just as social
as dogs but the pigs in these factory
farms live their lives and creates
barely large enough to fit their own
bodies they suffer from open wounds that
never get treated and the distress
caused by these conditions lead to
anxious and bored pigs
banging their heads in frustration
farmed fish also endure the pain and
stress of hyper confinement and that
this hyper confinement also relates to
diseases these conditions negatively
impact the delicate ecosystem that
they’re part of as well about 9 billion
chickens are raised for me every year
they’re drugged to grow and become so
large that their legs can break and
organs can’t keep up which makes organ
failure and heart attacks very common
another five three three hundred and
five million are raised for hens they
are crammed in cages so tight that they
can’t spread their wings their beaks are
also cut off so that they won’t peck at
each other in frustration finally when
egg production drops they’re sent to the
slaughterhouse to be turned into chicken
soup or dog food and on the way to the
slaughterhouse millions of animals die
from the stress of the journey over 29
million cows are raised for food every
year on dairy farm farms calves are
taken away from their mothers when
they’re just one day old
so that the milk can be harvested for
human consumption male calves are sent
to veal production operations after just
the one day the lives of cows used for
dairy are a cycle of artificial
impregnation hormone injection and and
milking regimens and it’s just an
endless cycle which causes a life of
extreme emotional trauma the average
life expectancy of a cow is twenty years
but the ones in factory farming
conditions like the ones in this picture
usually collapse from exhaustion after
just four years and are then sold to the
meat industry ad Williams said that
mankind is not the only animal that
laughs cries thinks feels and loves the
sooner we acknowledge that animals are
emotional beings the sooner we will
cease destroying animals and embrace
them as our brothers and sisters
Humanity is definitely flawed
historically we’ve seen groups that have
regarded themselves as superior to
others and justify doing as as they
please to their perceived inferiors
unfortunately that’s the attitude that
humans have towards animals and it leads
to a lot of cruelty but we have the
power to break this pattern we’re not
really that different from animals at
all you know in the way that we
experience love and looked at our loved
ones and the way we enjoy music like
these cows do or you know but in my
experience after I learned about the
cruel treatment that these animals in
this industry go through it just became
impossible for me to ignore and as I
became more aware it forced me to think
outside of myself and start regarding
animal products as a wasteful luxury
that I just couldn’t morally justify
anymore
even though it was originally hard to
accept the unethical Treatment of
Animals that was going on it was the
biggest motivator for me personally to
adopt a plant-based diet and lifestyle
it’s a more gentle approach to life with
higher respect for others no matter the
species but why aren’t we talking about
the severe consequences of this industry
I believe that there are two main
reasons the first is that we’re taught
early on to be extremely emotionally
invested in food it’s a significant
aspect of our cultures and as we teach
our cultures to newer generations it
becomes traditional while a lot of
people might say that eating meat is
traditional just because something is
traditional doesn’t make it morally
acceptable and we’ve seen examples of
this scattered in American history world
history really and I’m sure we can come
up with some examples but in reality our
natural instinct is to show compassion
for animals if we were to put a
two-year-old in a room with a baby pig
and a puppy that child would not pet
only one of them would not only cut the
puppy they would pet both and interact
with both because they can’t distinguish
between one is food and one is a friend
so societal pressures to conform are
actually what teach us to suppress our
natural instinct and inclination for
compassion the second reason why I think
we don’t hear about this very often is
that a lot of health and environmental
organizations that have a powerful voice
do not address these issues enough and
they don’t do it because they’re
financially reliant on companies that
sell animal products which are the very
cause of the problems that they’re meant
to address if they made this deprecating
information known they would lose a very
reliable so they’re very reliable source
of funding for example the American
Heart Association is backed by Tyson
Perdue Nestle and Texas Beef Council
there are all national distributors of
animal products the lack of attention
placed on this topic coupled with
people’s choice to ignore it and accept
embrace its stigma causes its widespread
disregard it’s definitely easy to
embrace stigmas because once we agree
with a label that others give an
unpopular topic it makes us feel that we
understand it so it’s a lot easier to
reject it but like my dad always told me
you’ll never learn by doing what’s easy
see the idea
that make you feel uncomfortable and be
open to positive changes I hope I’ve
inspired you to challenge yourself to
live a more compassionate life and make
more conscientious choices for your body
your home your neighbors individually we
each have tremendous power to reduce the
harm we inflict on the world what will
you do with this power I’ll leave you
with this quote by Robert F Canton
Kennedy thank you so much [Applause]
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