AFC - 12/23/10 Compassion at the Holiday Table

12/23/10 Compassion at the Holiday Table

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By choosing foods that no living being had to suffer and die for, everyone can show

- Animal Friends is inviting you to a tasting of vegan stuffed cabbage rolls, roast, Russian salad, steaks, and desserts with no ingredients of animal origin: let us remember the true message of seasonal holidays

During the month of December and especially before Christmas, the world resounds with messages of compassion and empathy while humans send each other wishes of peace, well-being, and happiness. Thereby they easily forget that the message of love is incompatible with the content of their holiday table, which mostly includes pieces of animal bodies, camouflaged into imaginatively decorated meals. But the spirit of holidays is contrary to the tradition of overeating during Christmas and New Year's season, which moreover leads to malicious, greedy, and entirely needless killing of animals.

In the name of religious holidays, people torture and kill other living beings, who also have children, powerful family and social relations with other members of their species, and the inborn need of freedom, play, love, and friendship. Behind the undefined pieces of meat on people's plates, there are violently terminated lives of piglets, lambs, chicken, calves, cows, turkeys, and other animals that wanted to live. Their tormented lives on farms have ended with a bloody death at the slaughterhouse, where they died fully aware of the approaching knife. Aren’t we aware of the fact that eating the bodies of other living beings shows none of the goodness, empathy, and love that we yearn for so much?

On Thursday December 23, 2010, at 12:00 noon, Animal Friends will have an action at the corner of Trg Petra Preradovica and Varsavska ulica, inviting people to celebrate the seasonal holidays with delicious meals for which no animal had to suffer and die. By tasting the traditional Croatian holiday meals such as stuffed cabbage rolls, roast, Russian salad, deep-fried soy steaks, and desserts made without eggs or animal milk, everyone will be able to see for themselves that some of our best known specialities are even more tasty without animal ingredients, since besides being healthy, they also contain love and compassion. Our activists will distribute recipes for holiday dishes at the info-stall, advising the visitors on how to enrich their holiday table with healthy meals made in the spirit of the Christmas message of peace and non-violence.

Animals are not walking steaks, but sensitive living beings, just like us, with the same capacity of feeling pain and the same right to live. Only because we humans have the power, we "produce" over 60 billion animals per year only to make them die a brutal death and serve them on our plates. Instead of this power to enslave and exploit the weaker beings, each person can show his or her power of love by celebrating the seasonal holidays with no violence and by showing respect for all living beings.

Let us send the holiday message of peace and love directly, by showing compassion for those that are weaker than us, animals whose lives deserve our respect. Make a decision to live without violence by choosing a healthy and ecologically acceptable, meatless nutrition – not only during the holiday season, but throughout the year!

For additional information on compassionate shopping, please visit www.prijatelji-zivotinja.hr.