For the Love of Animals: Australia’s Honorable Mark Pearson (vegetarian), Part 2 of 3

Mark believes that, ultimately, there is only one way to truly protect the lives of animals: the widespread adoption of a vegan lifestyle. In addition to improving animal welfare, this shift would have many other benefits for our planet. “If we move towards a plant-based diet, obviously that is going to bring enormous harmony and peace and compassion. It will just allow our society to become less violent. So, I think my view is that we are actually moving that way. I mean in some countries, intensive farming is proliferating, but I think it's doomed. It's going to fall over, because, like the Paris Summit said, the strain on the environment and our resources, putting aside animal welfare, it is illogical in terms of the survival of the planet, to keep going in that direction. So just scientifically, business thinking, we have to move away from it.” For decades, humans have conducted behavioral experiments on animals, hoping to discover more about the way they think and act. Mr. Pearson shares his views on such animal experimentation. “But I think us, the closer you come to the sense of awe and delight in seeing the mystery and beauty of an animal in its majesty, and not wanting to control it, then you become a much better person and the best in you is nourished by that relationship. So, I think that's very important.” Mark believes that if people truly understood the immense suffering that meat consumption causes for animals, they would immediately adopt a plant-based lifestyle. He wishes that all beings on Earth, even the animals, were vegan. “And the sinister thing is that in most countries, people sit down to their meat with their knife and fork, cutting into it with their knife and fork, unaware that far in the distance in a valley somewhere, animals are being slaughtered, and your action here is implicated. You are connected to that. You connect to that sorrow, to that fear. And it's in the food you're eating. So, what's happening to you when you consume the flesh of another who's suffered fear and distress?”