Gary Yourofsky - The Excuses Speech, 2014

So the new number one excuse to eat animals is no longer "God said it's okay", that's number two now, it's now the circle of life. So we're going to look at the circle of life from the victim's point of view, which nobody ever does. But you're about to see, this zebra does not want to be a victim to a lion, any more than a cow or a chicken wants to be your victim. Zebras have the chance to fight back though, and escape. We don't even give cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys that chance. You're about to see an alligator trying to take down a baby impala, and there's an angry vegan looking on, I empathize. He's going to get involved and stop him. He's about to give mouth to mouth and he never took the Saturday morning CPR class in community college to figure out how to do that. They're much brighter than we give them credit for. But for the record, not all animals are brilliant. Some are stupid, just like human beings. Some are bright, some are stupid, just like us. If a bunch of violent thugs kidnapped your baby, threatened to kill him, and you were outmuscled and outmanned, you might go get some backup too. By the way, the only bright lion in this whole pride... (laugh) Ain't no fun when the rabbit has got a gun. And they saved their baby, how about that, he was still alive. Looks like the buffaloes, the zebra and the hippo didn't get that memo about the way meat eaters want the world to be. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Gary Yourofsky. I am a vegan animal liberation activist. Been vegan more than 18 years, which means I do not eat or wear anything that once had a face, a mother, or a bowel movement. No meat, cheese, milk, eggs and honey. No fur, leather, wool, silk or down, and no animal byproducts whatsoever. Instead, I have decided to eat normal food, real food that wasn't tortured and killed and covered in blood, in guts and pus. Like fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, grains and lentils. I wear clothing made of hemp, bamboo, cotton, and a host of other materials that were not whipped off somebody else's body. Now, I chose this lifestyle back in 1996, when I finally understood that speciesism, believing that the human species can do whatever it wants to any animal species, was the essence of bigotry and hatred. More victims are left in this path than all other forms of discrimination combined. Worldwide, we are torturing and killing 150 billion animals every year to satisfy our meat, dairy and egg addictions, and billions more for clothing and entertainment. So when you're not vegan, you end paying someone to kill thousands of animals, just for you, throughout your lifetime. That's not only violent commodification and selfishness, it's pure hypocrisy. Because what if you were the victim? Remember you have to examine all issues of injustice from the victim's point of view. And what if somebody commodified your body, labeled you stupid and dirty, mocked your entire existence, and said that your life didn't matter at all? I suppose you would want the world to change its evil ways immediately and hope that somebody like me would stand up, speak out and defend your right to be free. Don't you think the animals we torture and kill feel the same exact way? And speaking of stupid and dirty, have you been to an airport lately, seen a public restroom, the Hudson River, following the rise of STDs? Ever noticed that the majority of people have never once started out on the right side of justice? And we have the audacity to say that animals are stupid and dirty? So how come small groups of people always have to convince the masses why it's wrong to enslave, discriminate or kill innocent beings? The answer is quite simple. Technologically, we are brilliant. Ethically, we're on a par with parasites. We are a sick, twisted mistake of a species. So the way we treat the animals and each other doesn't even shock me anymore. What's shocking is that the masses are always shocked when they're accused of acting inappropriately. It took 400 years to convince white people in America not to own black people, and another hundred years on top of that to end segregation. And if somebody wants to hang out after class and explain to me why those abolitions didn't take 2 seconds, I'd love to hear about it. Any injustice on that scale can only happen if the general population supports it or turns a blind eye to it. So the key players in the exploitation, Government, religion, media, corporations, they become experts at lying and using propaganda and deceit to trick people into accepting the abuse. The dairy industry for example, loves to tell you about happy cows. But what they don't tell you is that all these happy cows get raped every year, artificially impregnated with a bare hand or a long steel device to inject them with bull sperm. Female mammals have to be pregnant to produce and give milk. Mother cows then have their babies stolen from them after birth. Because once we eliminate the babies from the equation we get to drink all that milk instead. And when mother cows can't produce huge amounts of milk after 3 to 7 years, they get a happy day at the slaughterhouse, where if they're really lucky, they'll get turned into a happy meal. Other companies love to lie about happy animals too. What about that "wish I was an Oscar Mayer Wiener" jingle? That's pretty cute. Except for the fact that when they're born, male babies have their testicles ripped out without anesthetic. Standard practice. The meat industry always controls procreation. All the female pigs get raped every year to impregnate them just like the cows, baby pigs then have most of their teeth cut off right down to the gum line and their tails cut off too, all without anesthetic to try and reduce flesh damage from fighting and biting each other in their overcrowded conditions. And when pigs reach 300 pounds in 6 months thanks to genetic modification, they get a happy day at the slaughterhouse too, where they get chopped up into a thousand pieces. The egg industry though, man, they might possess the greatest marketing propaganda of all time because they have actually convinced you to eat something that came out of a hen's all inclusive, all-in-one ass vagina. The back side of a bird is called a cloaca, it is one hole where the poop, the pee, the vaginal fluid and scrambled eggs and omelets come from. Hate to be the bearer of more bad news but mommy and daddy lied to us too. We're not that special and we're not perfect just the way we are. But at least when you become vegan you are trying, trying to reduce and eliminate gratuitous amounts of cruelty and violence which is all I'm asking of you today. So how come when one human dies it's a tragedy. But when billions of animals are killed with premeditation it's a celebration? And what's really odd about this tragedy-celebration dichotomy is that besides some kind of a self-defense situation everyone knows that killing is evil and wrong, because every time a bear kills a hiker, what do we do? Start singing Hakuna matata? Praise the hiker for being part of the circle of life? Tell his family "well, he just wasn't fit enough to survive"? Bullshit. We scream bloody murder, label that bear a homicidal maniac and get a bunch of people with guns and go kill that bear for killing the hiker. Funny how the circle of life never comes into play when we are getting killed. And that's because the circle of life ain't nothing but an aggrandized, arbitrary bullshit excuse to torment and kill somebody else with impunity. And it's a cute story, it really is. Written, directed and produced by us, the killers, the dictators, the victimizers. The victims in this psychotic scenario are not willing participants as you clearly saw on that opening video. But here's something even more interesting than that. Sometimes, even the killers question their own behavior. Kindness is a choice, so is violence. Spare me the "animals can't think or rationalize because they operate on instinct only" nonsense because if you go to my website adaptt.org check out the animal intelligence essay and click the link that says "a leopard saves a baby baboon" and watch a big carnivorous cat have second thoughts about the circle of life. She kills a baboon but doesn't realize the baboon is a mother with a newborn baby. So she intentionally lets a skulking hyena have the dead mother's corpse to chomp on while she gently picks up the baby, puts the baby in a tree and stays in the tree to protect the baby from the hyena. If the circle of life was genuine and animals couldn't think, that leopard would have instinctively, instantly killed that baby. Instead, she chose to comfort him, to protect him. Just like moms to you would do because once again anyone can choose to be peaceful or violent either way, it is a choice. And I have many other videos in that section also showing carnivores refusing to kill their supposed prey. And for the people out there right now who might be thinking, yeah Gary but, if animals want to be treated equally to us and treated fairly, then the animals who eat other animals need to be arrested and charged with murder, you are missing my point completely. But, I support that. Honestly I do. As long as all the humans who eat animals turn themselves in to face the same consequences. Be careful about throwing stones in your glass house. Because if we really want to arrest animals and charge them with crimes, they actually need equal rights. They currently have no standing in court meaning we can't even bring them to trial. But as soon as animals receive the same rights of life and liberty as us meaning they can no longer be the victims of slavery and murder, I'll call the cops on the next cat I see for killing a squirrel. Until then, I am placing the moral mirror in front of your faces. It's time for you to walk the compassionate talk that you're always talking about. You can't just pray for peace, sing songs about love and happiness and togetherness turn on the 5 o'clock news, hear about a tragedy and go "oh, that's so sad" and then go out and do violent things, like those damn hippies did at Woodstock. A bunch of hippie-crits. Did you know that they consumed over 1 million hot dogs during that 4-day festival? From that I bet you thought that hippies were on my side. Peace and love and flower power, my ass. Peace begins at the dinner table with a vegan meal. But instead we always wanna get together and see how many dead animals and nasty animal products we can eat at once. Bacon and eggs and cheese and steak and chicken and cheese and lobster, six cheese pizzas with every pig product imaginable, triple cheese bacon burgers with a side of asparagus wrapped in bacon. We actually praise people in our society for killing animals. You've seen all the TV shows glorifying fish killers, duck killers, chefs who cook nothing but meat, guys who'll eat anything from testicles to brains, schmucks who win hot dog eating contests. Food eating contests. Were you aware that every 2 to 3 seconds some human on this planet dies from starvation while we are getting together with ESPN coverage to see who can eat 61 hot dogs in 10 minutes? 50% of the world's crops 50% is set aside every single year to feed the billions of animals in the meat, dairy and egg industries. 95% of soy in America 80% of all the corn in America, 70% of the oats in America, that's animal food. Cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys they never miss a meal, they always get fed. There's only 7.5 billion people on the planet. Do the math. You could become vegan and help end world hunger by eradicating the meat, dairy and egg industries, and support the humans you claim to care about so much or continue with the gluttony. And speaking of the gluttony, it's now time to watch a five and a half minute video about where breakfast, lunch and dinner come from. And before I press play, I need to be clear about something. There is no such thing as humane slaughter or humane slavery. Meaning that humane meat, cheese, milk, eggs and honey do not exist. If I told you that there was a nice outfit in Thailand where they humanely rape kids for the child porn industry, you know they use condoms and lubricants. They let them play in a big backyard every day for 6 glorious hours in between the rapes, would you support it? I didn't think so. Is that because rape is always evil no matter how it's being done? So stop focusing on how animals are being harmed and violated and start opposing all the different ways of enslaving, abusing and killing innocent beings. This means that buying local, organic, cage-free, free range, grass fed, kosher, halal, antibiotic-free, hormone-free is just as evil, ain't no different than buying conventional from afar or from a factory farm. And if you need to turn away or close your eyes during this video you might want to ask yourself a question: if it's not good enough for my eyes, why is it good enough for my stomach? If there was nothing wrong with killing animals and eating eat was okay how come McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's never show those images in their TV ads? Always showing you a happy singing smiling cartoon caricature instead. People are up in arms right now about all the beheadings taking place in the Middle-East. Meanwhile 30 million innocent animals every day in America are beheaded. And no one says a damn thing about it. So I'm a little confused, is beheading evil or does is matter who's getting their heads cut off? I will forever be embarrassed to be a human being, to stand upright like there's something to be proud of. You've got to be kidding me. A retired marine in North Carolina once heard me lecture at East Carolina University and he said "Gary, I believe everything you said, got no arguments for you at all. But we're a bunch of violent monkeys, what makes you thinks we care?" To this day, that statement still breaks my heart. But I refuse to believe that no one cares because the only problem is you've been programmed not to care, brainwashed to be a good little life-long consumer of animal body parts. Same thing happened to me for the first part of my life for 25 years but if you just put you defenses down I can unbrainwash and deprogram you for free. No gimmicks, no books to buy, no email list to join. I just want to put you back in touch with your conscience again, the conscience that you had when you were young, innocent, and uncorrupted by society's lies. It can't be that difficult to understand that each animal values his or her life as much as you value yours. You might not care about cows and pigs and chickens and fish but when your thoughts are prejudicial, who the hell cares what you think? Believe whatever you want to believe but you have no right to act out your violent desires and listen, if you want to sit around all day smoking weed, eating Oreo cookies sipping on a 2 liter of mountain dew, be my guest, because there's nothing wrong with smoking some kush and Oreos and soda happen to be vegan. They're sugar and chemicals, pure garbage, but if you want to harm yourself you have every right to do so, I am not the health police. But you have no right to harm somebody else in the process of harming yourself so I am the ethics police. And vegans will defend animals from you until this massacre stops. You don't really think the entire animal kingdom worships us, thinks we're special, believes that we are the image of God? We're like a Colombian drug cartel, we're a bunch of bullies, criminals and killers. A symbiotic relationship between humans and animals is not happening when all we do is take and take and take a little more. We steal their milk, their eggs, their honey their skin, their flesh, their lives. Symbiotic relationships are supposed to benefit each party. When there's only one beneficiary, it's called slavery. It's time to become the rational beings that we always claim to be. And speaking of becoming rational, got to say something to my religious friends out there today. Because the oldest excuse in the Book, "God says it's okay" is the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my life to harm somebody else. Because if you believe that God gave us the architectural plans to construct that house of slaughter so we can cut the heads off of his terrified animals, that he doesn't mind when we steal newborn babies from their mothers or cut their horns and beaks and tails and teeth off while they're fully conscious then what does the devil do? What could a cow, a pig, a chicken or a turkey ever do to deserve the wrath of God himself for eternal damnation? And for the atheists and the agnostics in the crowd, you ain't off the hook either. Where's that logic lifestyle you're always preaching about? Because if you discriminate against animals and eat meat, cheese, milk, eggs and honey then you are no different from all the religious people that you condemn. And for the record, I do not condemn God. I condemn violent rituals and bloodthirsty habits and traditions in God's name. Because I've noticed something quite disturbing about all religious people all over this planet, they never, ever worship anything that God actually created. They only worship things that we created in God's name. Bibles, crosses, churches, synagogues, Korans, stars of David, the Wailing Wall. I can assure you that God is completely unimpressed with our creations and with us as long as we act like barbarians. Living in peace though, I think he would be pretty impressed with that. You can't possibly believe there are slaughterhouses in heaven or that violence against animals was allowed in the Garden of Eden? And those are God's two most perfect places. Now I want to destroy some other lies you've heard way to much about. First, people often ask me why we can't eat eggs from some hens living on our backyard or from a free range farm. Their bodies do not belong to us. Commodification is the crime as much as cruelty is. And I've noticed that nobody ever wants to adopt old hens to live in their backyard, the ones who have stopped laying eggs. They only want the young ones who are still freshly modified genetically to lay 300 eggs every year instead of their normal 17 eggs every year. Hens, just like sheep in the wool industry, always get killed when they stop producing things that we want them to produce. I want to show you the owner of a huge free range egg farm in California actually telling the truth on a history channel. It was a 43-minute episode, 42 and a half minutes of lies, 30 seconds of the truth and these 30 seconds are priceless. After a productive life of one to two years, Nigel's chickens also endure what he calls their "unhappy day". When these chickens have finished two years of laying here, the third year they really don't lay enough eggs to pay for their fee so they have to go, you know? We all have to pay our way. What happens to them, we have a good demand for spent chickens and they go to a slaughterhouse in Sacramento where they're processed for stewing chickens. Let's talk about some health issues real quickly because many people wonder whether vegans get enough vitamins and nutrients, even though all vitamins and all nutrients come from plants, not from animals. Those who eat meat, cheese, milk and eggs and honey don't get proper nutrition. When you filter food through an animal's body they process everything first. You're getting a secondary depleted dose of vitamins and nutrients when you eat animal products. Plus you get things you don't need at all, like cholesterol, huge amounts of fat, naturally occurring trans fatty acids and animal-based protein, which happens to be the main cause of all cancers on this planet. Where's the logic in that? You don't really think the worldwide trillion dollar vitamins/pharmaceutical industry got rich off of a few vegans and not billions of meat, dairy and egg eaters? And there is no shortage of vitamin B12 in the vegan lifestyle either because B12 actually comes from bacteria that naturally exist in our mouth and intestines. I've been vegan since 96, never took one pill I refuse. Check out my B12 results and other blood work in the vitamin section of my website. And before that perfunctory protein comment comes up unless you plan on starving yourself to death, it's impossible not to get protein. You couldn't even do it if you tried. Because all the plants have protein, even fruit is around 5% protein. Nuts and seeds and beans and lentils, vegetables and grains, plenty of protein. Beans and lentils by the way are 25% protein. And there's a myth out there that we can't do anything about our health because it's already programmed into our genes. "Hey Gary, that was a great speech man, but heart disease runs in my family. Breast cancer keeps running in my family." The only things running in your family are meat, cheese, milk, eggs and honey. It doesn't count as being hereditary when our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents ate the same disgusting unhealthy things that we still eat today. When we get the same exact diseases that they got, it's called the same lifestyle syndrome. Baldness is hereditary, thank you mom and dad for that. Eye color is in the genes, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, Prader-Willi disease, that's in the genes. Heart disease and cancers are not. And how come when vegans try to tell people how to prevent or treat a disease everybody hates us? But if you have a disease, survive a disease or die from a disease you're a freaking hero. Well, to be fair about that, it kind of depends on which disease it is doesn't it? Heart disease, breast cancer, autism, hero! Leprosy, schizophrenia, gonorrhea, AIDS, tourette's, depression, not so much. Where's the race for a cure for gonorrhea? The stand up to schizophrenia council? And can we please stop exalting sick people to Jesus life status? Getting a disease doesn't make you heroic nor courageous in any way. It makes you unlucky if you want to get technical about it. And I'm really confused when people say that vegan food is more expensive. Exactly when did bananas and apples and carrots and cucumbers and potatoes and broccoli and tofu and barley become more expensive than meat, cheese, milk, eggs and honey? And listen, there are some pricey vegan things out there, hell yeah. Blueberries are 5 bucks a package, but you get 5 bananas for a dollar. Clif bars which are vegan cost around a buck. That's the real dollar menu. You've got to cut the expensive shit. Fish, ribs, filet mignon, outback steakhouse Carraba's, Applebee's, that ain't cheap. And if vegan food is really more expensive how come that Ruby Tuesday's, that restaurant chain, they give you a free all-you-can-eat salad bar when you purchase most of their main entrées which are all comprised of meat and cheese? So I tell you what, next time you go to Ruby Tuesday's order the salad bar to see if they'll give you free all-you-can-eat plates of meat on the side. And the more I think about it the more I realize no one even likes the taste of meat. You absolutely despise it. You only like the way it's prepared. If I killed a chicken, put it on your desk right now and say go ahead eat it, you'd say you must be crazy! You better cook it, fry it, bake it bread it, grill it, barbecue it put some oil on it, sauce it up spice it up, salt, pepper, sugar do something to it 2 slices of bread, mustard, ketchup pickles, onions, tomatoes. You absolutely hate the way meat actually tastes. You like everything else that goes with it so I have some great news. When you decide to become vegan, you don't have to give up the taste that you love because we use the same spices same sauces, same cooking techniques. Beyond the fruits and the veggies and the nuts and the seeds, the grains and the lentils, we got vegan burgers, vegan ribs, vegan fish, vegan chicken vegan turkey, vegan bacon, vegan ham vegan sausage, vegan ice-cream, vegan cheese vegan milk, vegan whatever you want and it's all made without chemicals. It's a combination of vegetables and grains and nuts and seeds and other things that weren't covered in blood and pus. Check out the making the transition to veganism and what to eat essays on my website plus the shopping guide, restaurant and recipe sections too. And keep this in mind, not every vegan burger tastes great but you don't like every hamburger you eat it either. Don't even try to pull a fast one on me I ate that shit for 25 years. There are nasty pizza places disgusting Chinese restaurants and bad chicken joints too but that has never stopped you from eating a hamburger, pizza, Chinese food and chicken, because you find the place to make it all properly just the way you like it. Don't you think we do the same thing? So stop taking it out on veganism when you find something that doesn't taste right, just find something that does. And spend around 20 minutes on my website reading the humans are herbivores essay. Because contrary to popular opinion and I stress the word "opinion", all actual scientific evidence shows that physiologically humans are 100% herbivore not carnivore, not omnivore. From the side to side grinding and chewing motion of our lower jaw like this to the fact that we sweat through our pores to cool ourselves down to our long intestinal tracts, we are plant eaters, just like our closest primate relative the bonobo, not the chimpanzee which is more propaganda from biased meat, dairy and egg-eating scientists who desperately and deceitfully want to trick you into accepting this abuse. It's important to know something about propaganda, it doesn't only work because it's forced down your throat day after day. Sometimes you want to believe those lies to justify your behavior so you don't have to change. And before somebody blurts out "yeah man, but about these canines?" Most herbivores have canines our teeth are nearly identical to cow teeth broad, short and flat but sometimes, herbivores actually have bigger canines than meat eaters to strike fear into their hearts for thinking about attacking cause guess who has the biggest canines on the planet? Hippos, and they're a 100% vegan. I want to show you a photograph of human teeth and lion teeth to further prove my point on this. What the hell was everybody talking about when they screamed at me "hey we've got canines what about these canines, man?" You've got to be kidding me. And if you really think that these flat teeth, not these pointy ones over here, that these flat teeth were made for animal flesh and not plants it's time for the dog bone challenge. I would give the crowd the chance to prove me wrong every semester if that's what they want to do I hope you guys don't want to do that. There's usually a couple people in every crowd who go "nah, Yourofsky's full of shit he knows damn well we're meat eaters." You want to prove me wrong on your way home from school today? Stop at a pet store buy a bone get that old school rawhide bone, not that new age nylon crap, take that bone home and chew on it just like a dog would. Go to town on. Now let me absolve myself right now from any future lawsuits in front of the crowd of witnesses: if you choose to do that your weak scrawny little herbivore teeth will break in half and shatter so don't come running to me to pay the $10 000 bill the dentist's going to charge you to fix your mouth. And finally, let's talk about the plants and whether they suffer. Because the latest idiocy and lunacy being tossed my way the last couple years has been "hey man, carrots suffer just like cows do so what's the difference?" Okay, in case you were unaware of this difference you have to have a functioning central nervous system connected to a brain in order to suffer and this is not up for debate. Which is why people in the hospital who are brain dead but still alive but can't feel anything are called vegetables. How about that? A little truth insights for a change. We don't call these people fish! We don't call them chickens and turkeys and cows and pigs we call them vegetables but even if someone somehow proved that insentient lifeforms like plants were capable of suffering we're causing more harm to the planet by harvesting all the plants and feeding all those plants to the animals and killing all the animals to get the nutrients they got from the plants which were all the nutrients that we needed to begin with. With all the crop laying in America alone America could be feeding 10 billion people. Again there's only 7 billion and a half on the planet which means less land would be used less plants would be harvested less violence committed if we ate plants directly. And if plants really can suffer how come firefighters never rescue them? And don't say it's discriminatory because animals are those most discriminated species on this planet but there's still a plan and place to save them during a fire. Humans get safe first but if it's safe to do so, even if it's unsafe to do so, they'll go back inside and save the animals. But even if it were safe to do so again no firefighter in the history of the world has even gone back in the third time to save the chrysanthemums. "Hey Bob! Quick, you save the basil plant from the kitchen, I'll get the rhododendron from the second floor!" Do you think that if I gave lectures about cruelty to vegetables, especially root vegetables like yams called my speech "The Silence of the Yams" cause everybody knows that yams scream for about 30 to 45 seconds after you gang them out of the ground before they die, then I would have been invited into 180 schools to give 2600 lectures to 60 000 students in 30 different states. And I was just thinking about this the other day but what do we say about fruits and vegetables when they get old? They're ripe, ready to eat or rot. And what do we say about animals when they get old? They're old. Because animals are alive in the exact same way that we are. And plants are food. So can we please stop making up idiotic excuses to torture and kill the animals and make up an excuse to care about them instead? To become vegan? Actually live by the golden rule instead of just paying lip service to it? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Think about it, how would you feel if the moment you were born somebody else had already planned the day of your execution?