These photos were taken at the sublime Retreat Animal Rescue Farm Sanctuary, home to well over a thousand survivors of factory farms and slaughterhouses, nearly victims of the seemingly bottomless human capacity for cruelty, exploitation, and violence - but saved in the end by its opposite and antidote: human kindness, compassion, and love....   (read more)

Since you're all sick of hearing from me, here's a short essay (cri de cœur) from an artificial intelligence....   (read more)

Fo three decades, I was committed to being the most unassuming, unannoying, unpreachy, easygoing vegan, well, going. But then I realised that 200 million baby animals being tortured to death, every single day, was a pretty high price to pay for me not wanting to annoy people. So I've become an animal rights activist....   (read more)

"It's what our patients are eating. It's the food, it's the food, it's the food."...   (read more)

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So were all sitting around ogling another absurdly sublime plant-based meal at another glorious vegan restaurant, when it occurred to me to ask aloud: "Wait, why are we having to CONVINCE people to go vegan?" It just seemed crazy. Thus, herewith, some of the culinary sublimity that's waiting here for you when you, too, finally decide to stop torturing baby animals to death and embrace plant-based cuisine....   (read more)

I just want (and need) to lovingly suggest to vegetarians, whose hearts are absolutely in the right place, that they spend nine minutes just to educate themselves about the horrendous (indeed, worse) animal suffering and death they are still unfortunately directly paying for....   (read more)

"I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD." - William Lloyd Garrison...   (read more)

I can always smell the first trace of autumn. It doesn't mean autumn is here, not for good. But it does mean it's on its way. And I smelled it last night, this morning, and again this evening. Autumn is my spring - the season of awakening and rebirth, when I come back to life....   (read more)

If you'd like not to be one of the 26.6 million people who die of cancer or heart disease every year - or one of 800,000 who require coronary bypass surgery - this outstanding documentary, free now but soon going off Netflix, is pretty indispensable....   (read more)

Raising and killing animals for food is the leading cause of emerging diseases and pandemics, and we need to stop doing it. Also, you do not need to take my word for it......   (read more)

3 in 4 emerging diseases are zoonotic - meaning they transferred over from animal species to humans. And virtually all of those are in the context of animal agriculture - raising and killing animals for food....   (read more)

I don't think I was alone in finding Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar acceptance speech brilliant and inspiring. And the way he tied the fight for animal rights into the fight against all other forms of injustice and exploitation was inspired....   (read more)

So I've been vegan for 19 years. (And vegetarian for 10 before that.) Initially, I thought I was never going to be one of those preachy vegans who tells other people what to do. But a couple of things have happened on the way to the forum....   (read more)

So I leave people alone all year about killing and eating animals. But one month a year I let fly. I hope you’ll drop in, and take this opportunity to reconsider how closely your choices are aligned with your values. (Presuming you’re not pro-animal-cruelty, pro-environmental-destruction, or pro-heart-disease, which I find pretty much no one is.)...   (read more)

Super excited about this. Awesome trailer. The beautiful truth will out! 8^)...   (read more)

Here it is, in four bullet points and four minutes. 1) We Torture the Animals We Eat Before We Kill Them; 2) The Animals We Eat End Up Killing Us; 3) Eating Animals Is *Definitely* Killing the Planet; 4) A Plant-Based Diet Is Awesome...   (read more)

*Nobody Doesn't Get Enough Protein * There's Protein in Everything That Grows Out of the Ground * The Myth Gets Everyone (Even Me) * Where Does the Protein Myth Come From?...   (read more)

An absolutely magnificent, cruelty-free Thanksgiving feast....   (read more)

Herewith excerpts from Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. I really love this book because the author undertakes to begin from a neutral, unbiased, truth-seeking position, and then reaches the conclusion it seems to me anyone even modestly rational and compassionate, and who thinks about it for five seconds, inevitably ought to....   (read more)

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"Where were you during the holocaust of the animals?” - Helmut Kaplan ... This book was pretty enlightening....   (read more)

Weight management seems to be one of the biggest challenges in modern life. Here's what I've learned about what works....   (read more)

Fabulous cruelty-free Thanksgiving spreads from master chefs (along with no cancer and heart disease, or environmental destruction); versus 50 million horror-movie deaths. The choice is yours! :)...   (read more)

Stepped out of Westminster Station and came nose-to-nose with this gloriously pretty magpie. ...   (read more)

Schneier's newsletter, Crypto-gram, recently-ish had a special on the absurdity of security questions that one sets and is asked on the phone to authenticate one's identity. The resulting piss-takes were classic....   (read more)

Well, since I realised yesterday's post was nothing more than • 34.5% blatant vegetarian agit-prop; and • 65.5% unbridled and horrifying vanity... it's occurred to me to try and atone by posting a couple of personal favourite health and fitness tidbits (which might actually be of use to some of you out there)....   (read more)

The Photoshop Rap from CollegeHumor.com is nothing short of sublime. It's so good you can actually pick up useful Photoshop tips from it....   (read more)

Cancer is on the verge of overtaking heart disease as our number one killer. Cancer is also primarily an environmental disease - with 80-95% of cases due to environmental factors which can be controlled....   (read more)

So what better cutesty animal video to kick off Good Friday with than Christian the Lion! (No, he didn't get the name from eating Christians.)...   (read more)

Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us....   (read more)

Morning, tea in our room, and Tim happily moblogging from his bed. Me: This feels like redemption. I can't tell you how much time on how many trips I've kept people hanging about while I typed, or edited images, or battled net-cafes....   (read more)

So once again I wasn't doing all that much and also good old Master Tim Corrigan was once again both free and keen - so off we went for a third long-distance walk along one of Britain's National Trails....   (read more)

Sir, Martin Samuel adduces a variety of compelling reasons why it would be impossible to free-range breed the 1.6 billion chickens consumed in the UK every year (comment, Feb 29). Here's an idea: how about just refraining from tormenting, killing and eating the 1.6 billion sensitive birds altogether?...   (read more)

"We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease...   (read more)

Morning now, and I am standing on the stairs to the slide of the camp site playground, soaking up the first sunlight. I am not sitting here, nor anywhere, due to the dew, which is just a monster. The surface of the world couldn't be any more drenched if a thunderstorm had stopped five seconds ago....   (read more)

And so I had this other idea. (Yeah, I know.) But the Coast to Coast walk had been, everyone involved had to admit, except maybe you, pretty completely spectacular. And the UK has got something like a dozen national trails. And the first one hadn't killed anyone. Quite....   (read more)

The World Cancer Research Fund has just published their list of the 20 best foods to prevent cancer....   (read more)

I'm sitting in the shade of a bungalow just above the banks of the Orange River, in Namibia. I've just survived being swept down a fair portion of said river, in the process of which misadventure I nearly lost both a fiberglass canoe, and a very nice German gal named Astrid. ...   (read more)