ODB, I did not vote for Obama. But I do care about health, I do care about our planet, and i do care about animals. You are using assumptions that only people on the "left" can hold these attributes. I bed to differ. You want to make this political, but it's not. Stop using things like left, right, or tell it to the president. Just look at it for what it is. It has nothing to do with politics, nor party. We must be educated as new science and studies show us things. We can't just live in the dark ages just because we always have.
I really don't understand why people want to make veganism political. It's everyone's world, we (left, right, middle) all should be concerned. If you think the name vegan is synonymous democrat, think again. Vegans come in all walks of life, religions, party affiliations with many different views. They are living a selfless life trying to better the world for the animals and people. They are thinking of 11,000 children dying of hunger every single day, 1.5 acres of rain forest being cut down every second, and the killing of land animals at the rate of 50 Billion a year. Science has linked to eating animal products to many cancers, heart disease and many other illnesses. We don't NEED to eat animals in a modern society, it is just a want. It is reprehensible the way we treat farm animals. They are treated as things, not living creatures..Yet they have the same feelings as your dog has and they feel sadness, joy, loneliness, and fear. The problem is that many people are not aware of these things nor educated on the effects of animal agriculture on our planet. For example, it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. It takes 18 times more energy to produce animal calories versus plant calories and you can feed 50 times more people per acre of land. Animal agriculture pollutes the air more than all forms of transportation combined. If we took the grains we give our farm animals , we could wipe out world hunger. So we have a group of people that really care and are actually living their lives ethically and people want to bash them for it. It's a messed up world, indeed.