Meat Eating as Cause of War
Meat-eating played a role in many of the wars during the ages of European colonial
expansion. The spice trade with India and other countries of the East was an object of
great contention. Europeans subsisted on a diet of meat preserved with salt. In order to
disguise and vary the monotonous and unpleasant taste of their food, they eagerly
purchased vast quantities of spices. So huge were the fortunes to be made in the spice
trade governments and merchants did not hesitate to use arms to secure sources. This
understanding that meat-eating leads to war has been influencing many of today's most
thoughtful people to become vegetarians, as have great thinkers in the past.
"Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does
to the web, he does to himself. To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its
creator." - Red Indian Chief/1854.
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of
compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
- St Francis of Assisi.
"As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows
the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras.
"...Killing is denial of love. To kill or to eat what another has killed is to
rejoice in cruelty. And cruelty hardens our hearts and blinds our vision, and we are
unable to see that they whom we kill are our fellow brothers and sisters in the One family
of Creation." - G. L. Rudd, author of Why Kill For Food?
"I am fully in agreement with those who hold that Universal Peace will never be
attained until ALL barbarities are left behind. Only when there are many hearts that feel
the oppressions which now go unnoticed - will this world become a happy place to live in.
And how many centuries will have to pass before mankind has attained to that?" -
Henry S. Salt, (from Seventy Years Among Savages.)
"Vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic
survival, physical well-being and spiritual integrity." - Thomas Berry, Fordham
University, New York.
"To be nonviolent to human beings and to be a killer or enemy of the poor animals
is Satan's philosophy. In this age there is enmity toward poor animals, and therefore the
poor creatures are always anxious. The reaction of the poor animals is being forced on
human society, and therefore there is always the strain of cold or hot war between men,
individually, collectively or nationally..." (Srimad Bhagavatam 1.10.6c) ...In this
age the propensity for mercy is almost nil. Consequently there is always fighting and wars
between men and nations. Men do not understand that because they unrestrictedly kill so
many animals, they also must be slaughtered like animals in big wars (Karma). This is very
much evident in the Western countries. In the West, slaughterhouses are maintained without
restriction, and therefore every fifth or tenth year there is a big war in which countless
people are slaughtered even more cruelly than the animals. Sometimes during war, soldiers
keep their enemies in concentration camps and kill them in very cruel ways. These are
reactions brought about by unrestricted animal-killing in the slaughterhouse and by
hunters in the forest..." (Srimad Bhagavatam 4.26.5c) - His Divine Grace A.
C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of ISKCON, the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Despite impressive progress in science and technology, the world is faced with a crisis
of unremitting violence in the shape of wars, terrorism, murder, vandalism, child abuse,
and abortion. More than 140 wars have been fought since the United Nations was formed in
1945, and in America alone, 20,000 people are murdered each year. With social and
political solutions conspicuously failing, perhaps it's time to analyze the problem from a
different perspective - the law of karma. The callous and brutal slaughter of countless
helpless animals must be considered as a powerful causative factor in this wave of
uncheckable violence.
"The exploitation of animals and any religion which professes compassion is simply
incompatible." - Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, Australia,
Author of Animal Liberation.
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