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(solemn flute music)

- How can we expect ourselves to have

lives of joy and freedom and spiritual clarity

when we are sowing the seeds

of the opposite of that?

- It's almost like some mad scientist

like Satan himself designed these systems

that are being used now to raise animals.

It is absolute insanity.

- I don't get how you can love everything Jesus says

and then participate in

a mechanized system of mass slaughter

that involves pain beyond your wildest imagination.

- Even keeping quiet and silent

about the violence, you are part of that violence.

- There's another passage in the Quran that says that

because of the wrongs of humanity,

there has been much corruption

seen in the oceans and on land.

- So for a few moments in which we're

enjoying what is really just a palette preference

we're taking what is most essential to animals,

their very lives and that's the opposite

of compassion, it seems to me.

- We are ashamed of our ancestors who owned slaves.

We are ashamed of our ancestors

who believed in segregation

so too, our grandchildren will be ashamed

of what we allowed to happen on our watch.

Each of us has to ask ourselves a spiritual question,

what side do I want to tell my grandchildren I was on?

Was I on the side of mercy and compassion,

or was I on the blind side that helped

to perpetuate suffering?

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine. ♪

- This one is for you.

♪ Let it shine let it shine let it shine ♪

- [Thomas] This is my daughter Melody.

She's the reason I'm making this documentary.

It's for her and it's for all the children

who will inherit whatever world we choose to leave them.

(OM-ing)

- We've got a potato.

- Thank you for this food

and let it nourish our bodies and our spirits.

Let it keep us healthy and happy

and full of life and love and compassion

for all of creation.

- And be vegan.

- Be vegan and be a champion for the people

and be a champion for the planet

and be a champion for the animals

and be a champion for ourselves.

- And for all of these things we say

thank you and so it is.

- And be champion for the animals, so it is.

- [Thomas] I haven't always been a vegan.

I was born in a small town in South Georgia

during the late 60s

and I was raised a southern Baptist

and I grew up eating the a southern version

of the standard American diet.

Comprised mainly of meat, dairy, and eggs,

mixed in with huge helpings of fast

and processed foods.

And like so many other kids eating the SAD diet,

I suffered the sad consequences

which ranged from mild asthma to

severe allergies to tons of ear infections,

sties, viruses and zits and too many more ailments

that were considered normal to list.

(ragtime music)

Okay...um...I'm making this video

for, you know, my family back home and uh...

Um...I'm making this...okay,

I'm making this video...I'm looking at the mic...okay.

It wasn't until my mid 30s living in New York City

and attending a Unity Church that I became a vegan.

It was studying the teachings of Jesus

about kindness and compassion

and starting a daily meditation practice

that really led me to a non violent diet

even though no one at Unity or anywhere else

had ever even suggested I be vegetarian

and I had never even heard the word 'vegan'

much less knew any. Though it wasn't long

before I started noticing that during Sunday brunch,

the same ministers and chaplains who were teaching me about

kindness and compassion for all were for some reason

not including the innocent animals on their plates.

But who was I to judge the choices of another?

So I decided to live and let live

and try to be a good example.

(baby gurgling)

And that worked for almost a decade

until after my daughter was born and suddenly

I found myself with skin in the game

and a reason to care about what happens in the future.

(baby cooing)

Really, is that so?

And then I saw the documentary Cowspiracy

where I learned that not only does animal agriculture create

over half the greenhouse gases on the planet

but it's also the number one user and polluter of water

and the major cause of deforestation.

Not to mention that the grains we use

to feed billions of animals that we breed

just for slaughter could much more effectively

be fed to humans and could help

save the nearly nine million people

who die from hunger each year.

I felt I had to do something

but I didn't know what, so I did what I often

do when I don't know what to do.

I prayed and I meditated about it

and during that meditation this question

popped into my mind.

How is it possible that a compassionate,

spiritual or religious person

could support an industry that is responsible

for the unnecessary suffering of billions of people

trillions of land and sea animals

and the devastation of the very planet we live on?

That question would end up taking me on a journey

throughout the United States and around the globe

to explore the teachings of kindness

and compassion that form the basis of all the world's

main religions and the not so main ones as well

and try to understand how so many people of faith

are doing unto others that which

they would never wish done unto themselves.

(ragtime music)

The journey started when I traveled back to New York City

to speak to Victoria Moran who I'd met

once years earlier when she spoke

at the Unity church I attended

while living in that beautiful city

that never sleeps.

- I personally don't understand

why some of the people that I admire the most,

people whose words and whose writings

I completely revere, are eating our fellow creatures.

- [Thomas] Victoria Moran is a much sought after speaker,

best selling author,

and host of the Main Street Vegan Podcast.

She's been an animal rights activist and vegan

for over 30 years.

- A great deal of spirituality is about belief.

That's why we call it faith.

I'm a person of faith. I'm a Christian,

a yogic Christian and yet I understand

that there are people who have other

spiritual beliefs and other spiritual views.

So what can bring all spiritual people

together as a whole believing community?

To me that is compassion.

Because compassion is at the center

of the message of Jesus,

it's compassion that got the Jews

out of bondage and to the promised land.

We have all the eastern religions that are

Ahimsa based, non violence based.

So can we all agree that however

we see God, however we see the road

to salvation, being compassionate to one another

and expanding that compassion out to all that has life

is the true essence of spirituality?

What else could it possibly be?

- I think all of the world's religions,

if you distill them, the wisdom down to one sentence

it'd be something like this:

whatever you most want for yourself,

give that to others. That's a basic understanding

to give to others what you would like.

Another way of saying it is whatever you sow, you will reap.

It's also the same thing,

whatever we put out, it'll come back.

- [Thomas] Victoria put me in contact with Dr. Will Tuttle

who's a musician, an international speaker

and the best selling author

of the World Peace Diet.

I sat down with Dr. Tuttle in Ocala

where he and his spouse Madeline

were currently living in the solar powered

RV that they use while traveling around the country,

speaking about animal rights and performing music.

- From the time we were born,

we were forced to participate in mealtime rituals

by our parents and teachers and

everyone in our community

that essentially numb us and disconnect us

so that when we get older,

we take out our wallets and we vote for it

and we don't just vote for it, we then eat it.

So we actually bring it into our body,

we give it to our children.

This is not only toxic from the point of view

of the level of physical heath but

it's toxic from the point of view of our spiritual health,

from the point of view of our cultural health,

from the point of view of our ethical health.

We don't actually hold the knife ourselves,

we don't actually hold the electroshock prod

ourselves, we don't actually hold the

raping sperm gun ourselves and fire it,

but we pay someone else to do that

and so we pay other people to do things

that bring out the worst in them

and yet all we see is something

wrapped in plastic and styrofoam,

very often served with a smile

and so there's this deep disconnection

in our society and I think it's that

deep disconnection that is the greatest

obstacle to authentic spiritual awakening.

The authentic inner spiritual teaching

of all the great religious wisdom traditions

are pointing in the same direction.

Kindness and compassion for all living beings

is the path of awakening for all of us.

(light rock music)

- [Thomas] My next stop was Encinitas, California,

where I would sit down and visit

with Bob Isaacson, Buddhist, dharma teacher

and co-founder and president of Dharma Voices for Animals.

- The teachings of the Buddha regarding compassion

and non harming towards animals,

is not being followed by many many Buddhist practitioners,

teachers, and Buddhist centers.

The Buddha said to his followers

if there is no eater of meat,

there will be no destroyer of life.

Whatever the karmic effect is to the person

eating the animal, the person who has to slaughter

the animal, the person who has

to raise that animal for slaughter

is incurring extremely unwholesome karma.

Oftentimes people who cannot

find other jobs, people who are exploited

terribly in slaughterhouses and factory farming

why should these people incur negative karma,

killing animals and raising animals for slaughter

when all we have to do is eat a plant based diet?

- Compassion is such an important

key part of all traditions, but really

looking at what that meant and how

it extends to all living beings is a really

important piece. {laughs} So I have to say

these two lovely guys they don't get along very well.

- They need a little more compassion.

- Yes, yes.

- [Thomas] I'd left Bob and I traveled north

to the hills of Topanga where I met Lisa Levinson,

the sustainable activism campaign director

for In Defense of Animals

and the founder of Vegan Spirituality.

- I can recall being in a spiritual circle

and raising the energy and doing

some wonderful rituals

and then directly after that we went

to have lunch and the lunch was a barbecue

and I just felt that energy drop

all the way down to the ground and below

because it was just stunning

to me that no one there thought

wow these animals that they're eating

have anything to do with spirituality.

I had had similar experiences

in other spiritual groups

and my friend Sandy had the same experience

and we were both so surprised

that people who consider themselves spiritual

and loving animals would eat animals.

- [Thomas] From Lisa's I headed down to L.A.

to attend my first ever Animal Rights conference.

It was much bigger than I expected

and suddenly I felt a little less lonely as a vegan.

- So the Good Food Institute is focused

on making alternatives to animal products

as delicious, as convenient, and as inexpensive as possible.

(applause)

So if we had been having this conversation

150 years ago, people of faith

would be saying slavery is in the Bible,

women are not chosen by Jesus

to be his disciples and we need to apply

that sort of central organizing principle

to politics. There certainly are many

times in the Bible, slaves obey your masters,

wives obey your husbands, so these concepts

up until 150 years ago

were used to justify things that

pretty much no Christians are going

to continue to attempt to reconcile with their faith.

- What is the core of Christianity?

It's love.

Is what we are doing to other creatures love?

And for what purpose?

Humans have no need to exploit other animals.

Certainly don't need to eat them.

There's simply no way to be part

of any world religion and not

care about the suffering and the premature

deaths of other animals.

As a moral philosopher I can say that

ethics teaches that any time there

is suffering, it is morally considerable

and religions agree with that.

So there's simply no way to be indifferent.

- I have asked hundreds of people this simple question.

The question I ask is

would you ever deliberately hurt

an innocent animal unnecessarily?

And so far 100% of the people I've asked

have said, absolutely not!

We would never do that,

so which means that compassion is at the core of our being.

You know that's who we really are.

This is the reason why collectively,

compassion is going to win.

- [Thomas] Sailesh Rao is the founder

and executive director of Climate Healers,

a nonprofit organization whose goal

is to reforest over one sixth

of the ice free land area of the earth.

He is the author of Carbon Dharma and

Carbon Yoga and a co producer for the documentaries

Cowspiracy, What the Health,

and the Human Experiment as well

as the one you're watching now.

- In the Laudato Si that came out last year

Pope Francis said, it is contrary

to human dignity to cause animals

to suffer or die needlessly and then

he visited the U.S. and in New York City

he had a veal and lobster dinner.

So that's when I realized how much

suffering that these religious leaders

are going through,

because when what we say and what we do

are not in alignment, we suffer.

We suffer tremendously.

- Well concern for animals has long been a part

of Unitarianism and Universalism,

Jeremy Bentham was a Unitarian legal scholar

who in the 1860s said that

the morally relevant question about

animals was not whether they could

reason or whether they could talk

but whether they could suffer?

And it's so clear now with

today's science as it was clear

then to anyone with common sense

that animals do suffer greatly,

especially those in our food system

as it's been practiced in the last 50 years.

- I was raised vegetarian and went vegan

after I learned about what happens to

dairy cows and egg laying hens

in factory farming and farming at large

so I'm really grateful that I made that decision

now it's also consistent with my Zoroastrian

teachings in that Zoroastrianism teaches

good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,

telling the truth, taking care of the environment,

showing kindness to animals, who are at our mercy

and of course taking care of our body temples as well.

- The concern, a concern is with a capital C,

this is an issue that the spirit has laid upon

the heart of a particular friend

or party of friends. That it...

They feel they're called to speak up about it,

to do something.

To speak truth to power and

this is one of the reasons why friends have offered

leadership in regard to human slavery,

equality of women, prison reform

and things of this sort, so we who

are Quakers who are concerned about

the animals, consider this as a concern

that God has laid upon us.

And if people feel uncomfortable with it

to just relax and try to consider perhaps

this is a legitimate concern,

perhaps the spirit may be speaking

to you through our words.

Just be open to it if you can.

- I have looked at a lot of different religions

over the years and my book, Peace to All Beings

goes into that quite a bit

about looking for the core truth

in each religion and it turns out

as everybody pretty much knows that

love is the core truth of every religion

and then people come along

and try to organize it

and try to put rules on it and twist it around

so it fits a certain mindset

and in many cases the patriarchal

mindset of domination which started

with animal agriculture has affected, infected

a lot of religions.

(laughter)

Sign me up.

- [Thomas] It was during the AR conference

that we had our first meeting

of the Interfaith Vegan Coalition.

Judy Carman, Lisa Levinson, and myself

had started the coalition to provide

faith specific resources and tools

for spiritual and religious individuals

and institutions to help them

widen their circle of compassion

to include all of creation.

(Native American flute music)

- You know I think a lot of people

are under the impression that

all Native American people

ate all meat all the time

and the fact is they actually ate very little meat

depending on the region that they were in.

- [Thomas] After the conference I drove

up the coast to Petaluma, a small city

north of San Francisco.

There I spoke to Linda G. Fisher,

an artist, inter-species communicator

and Native American tribal member

of the Ojibwe nation.

- I had someone say to me

oh gee you know you're vegan, you've

been vegan for so many years,

it must be quite a sacrifice.

And I kind of smiled and said,

it's no sacrifice at all

once you know that animals

feel, think, and love, and hurt

and cry and embrace their babies,

you know that it's not a sacrifice at all.

And so I explained that to her.

I said what would be a sacrifice was

if someone forced me to eat meat

to save somebody else - that would be quite a sacrifice.

I think if some of our great chiefs

were alive today they would be horrified

and they would be incredibly heartbroken

because they themselves would never do

what we're doing today.

If they didn't have to hunt,

if they didn't have to kill, I don't believe

there's any way they would've ever done that.

(flute music)

- [Thomas] I wasn't back from California

very long before Melody and I

loaded up our trusty hybrid, Sophia

and left on a road trip down into Florida.

Our first stop was Ocala, where Melody's grandpa Mike

joined us for a potluck at Kindred Spirits

Farm Animal Sanctuary.

- Mike actually was bought as a gag gift

for somebody's wedding

and then after the wedding they just

tied him up outside the church and left.

- [Thomas] The next day, our friend Logan

the director of Kindred Spirits gave

us a private tour of the sanctuary

and introduced us to several of her furry friends.

- Do you want to say hi to her?

You can, she's very nice.

She has a big nose and it's soft.

You can pet her if you want, she's very nice.

- There you go.

Her nose is almost as big as your hand.

That's how she says hi, when she opens

her mouth and she says (pants)

that's how a pig says hi, it's nice to meet you.

So Felicia and Gomer are from a factory farm

in Iowa that flooded back in 2008 and so

the farmers, they evacuated but they

left all their pigs locked up in buildings

so a couple of the pigs were able to

escape and swim to freedom and Felicia and Gomer

and their friend Calypso who's since passed

were part of a group that was rescued by Farm Sanctuary

and then they were placed here

with us a couple years ago.

They both kind of retired to Florida.

They both have pretty severe arthritis

which is pretty common in factory farm pigs

because we bred them to only live about

six months before they're used for food

so they're really not bred to live a long time

and they're bred to get as big as they can

as quick as they can which means that

it puts a lot of pressure on their leg joints.

So these two are both about nine now,

so arthritis is fairly common at that age.

Their friendships are just

really deep with each other,

like these guys came out of the factory

together and they've been together ever since.

It's just I think really important

to them to have that kind of connection with each other.

Especially the guys from factories

'cause they kind of start life without

it like they can't touch their moms which is really

important and the only real physical

contact they have with anybody

is a negative. So I think

when they come in a sanctuary it's really

nice for them just to be able to have

time with each other and quality relationships

with each other.

And they grow to like us too, like these two

really like everybody, they love to meet new friends

all the time 'cause now they know it's safe

and nobody's gonna hurt them.

- [Thomas] From Ocala we traveled down to Tampa

where we visited with our friends and I had a

chance to meet and speak with Bawa Jain,

Secretary General of the World Council of Religious Leaders.

A body that brings together the world's preeminent

religious leaders and see if these people can

work together on the issues that impact us most.

Whether that be the environmental challenges,

the issues of poverty, health,

conflict, they’re just harnessing

the power of religion of the global good

of all, not just some.

I come from a tradition, a way of life

called the Jains, it's one of the oldest

way of life in the world.

Live and let live that's what we try and follow.

Why are Jains vegetarian? Let's just understand that.

When you talk about non violence,

in thought action and deed,

how can you be a practitioner of Ahimsa non violence

if you're going to consume any living beings?

My guru came from the tradition where

the Jain monks wear face masks.

They also carry a little broom made out of cloth

that before they sit anywhere they can

brush off any form of life so they

do not commit any form of violence and kill them.

Similarly the mask on the face is also

that even the micro organisms in the atmosphere

should not be killed.

Now it is proven beyond doubt

that if you want to get rid of the greenhouse gases,

get rid of the slaughterhouses.

It's a ticking bomb.

It's a ticking bomb! Do we want

that for our children and our children's children?

How will they judge us at that time?

What karma are we sowing that knowingly

we are not taking any action?

When we know something and we don't

do anything, that also is creating karma

which is negative for us.

- Hey Melody you know where we're going?

- To the Cookie Contest.

- That's right, to the vegan cookie contest.

There's gonna be like what,

1,200 cookies to be eaten tonight

in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Susan Hargreaves, of Animal Hero Kids

invited several local Fort Lauderdale bakeries

to offer up their best vegan cookies

and then everyone there got to eat one of each cookie

and vote for their favorite.

Melody and I thought all the ones we tasted

were yummy but didn't have enough room

in our bellies to try them all.

- In the early 80s, 1980,

I learned how most animals are treated

by visiting stock yards and slaughter houses

and for 34 years now, I have been

teaching kids about being kind to all animals.

AnimalHeroKids.org is my baby

because I know from visiting the schools

that the children are naturally compassionate.

They want to help animals. They want

to make sure no one gets harmed.

They're genuine and sincere

and their clear voices hearten me.

- Can you tell me any reason why

you don't want a pet monkey?

Yes I can tell you lots of reasons, they smear their poop,

they urine wash, they masturbate in public,

they will bite your children

and they have big teeth.

I had said that to one woman

she said, "Oh, that sounds like my husband!”

- [Thomas] Our next adventure would take us

to Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Gainesville, Florida

where Kari and her dedicated team

of compassionate caregivers

provide a healthy, happy life to

over 300 primates who are ex pets,

or retired from lab experiments

and others who have suffered exploitation,

abuse, and neglect.

- I talked to a researcher actually

where I said whatever happened with your project?

Did you figure out, and I won't

go into exactly what they were trying

to figure out? And he said, they're never

going to figure it out because

even if they did and they could,

they won't have their jobs and their grant money will end.

So it's just going to always be something

that they're going to be trying to figure out.

They're meant to be in the wild

I mean there's no way you can make it right

with them living like this.

I mean this is wrong I wish none of these guys

had to live like this.

- In cages, you want all of them to be free of course.

- I want them to be free, I don't want them

in your living room, I don't want them at the lab,

I don't want them at the zoo and I don't

even want them here but there's no where for them to go

- [Thomas] It was at Jungle Friends

that I reconnected with Maya Barak

a holistic veterinarian from Tel Aviv, Israel

who I had met at the Animal Rights Conference in L.A.

Maya joined Melody and me

for a two week road trip that would take us

through 13 states on our quest of compassion.

Our journey started with a visit to

Rooterville Animal Sanctuary where Maya would

introduce us to her friend, Elaine West, the founder

of Rooterville and a devout Christian.

- You change your diet and you change your life

that's what I love to tell people

because it's true and it's not just your health,

it's physically, emotionally, spiritually,

in every way this will change your life

and it's gonna open you and soften your heart

and we're not supposed to have hard hearts.

Adam was a gardener. God put us in a garden,

that's our first clue.

You know our body is a temple of the Lord,

the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Bible tells us,

and we treat our bodies like dumpsters, right.

You don't put trash in a temple.

I know a lot of people my age in their 50s

are facing this where they go to the doctor

and all they get are more pills

and told this is the way that you're

gonna live for the rest of your life

and you're gonna just have to manage these diseases.

Well when we choose God's way our body can heal itself

and to me this was amazing.

My arthritis, after three months,

I woke up one morning and I had no more pain

and that was a miracle for me.

And I had lived with an inhaler

and on all kinds of medication

because my allergies were so bad.

I had pneumonia twice. They told me

if I had pneumonia again, I could possibly die.

They told me that I would have

to live with that inhaler and my condition

would only get worse and worse.

You know the doctors are quick

to give you more medication.

They're not very quick to give you any hope.

When you share this information

with Christians, it's almost

like - I don't know - like a wall goes up.

That they would rather believe

the world’s system that is pills

and procedures and...you know...medications

and problems your whole life,

they would rather choose that than God's way.

Plants heal our body.

We're digging our graves with our forks

and it's really sad when you see people

that have things like diabetes and heart disease

and cancer even and they're praying for a miracle

while continuing to eat

the western diet, the world's diet. They continue

to put that in their body which is causing the problem.

They don't see that they're killing themselves.

- Genesis 1:29 is part of the first conversation

between God and human beings

recorded in the Bible

and God tells Adam and Eve

you are to eat the plants and the seed bearing fruit, period.

And immediately after that, God says

and it was very good, and it's the first time

in the creation story that God

describes creation as very good.

[speaks Hebrew]

Up until that point God just says

it's good, it's good, it's good

but when we get the instructions

to eat a plant based diet,

now creation is very good.

- [Thomas] After Rooterville we drove Sophia

up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

where we spoke with Jeffery Cohen,

the executive director of Jewish Veg,

whose mission it is to help Jews to embrace

plant based diets as an expression

of the Jewish values of compassion

for animals, concern for health,

and care for the environment.

- Considering what Genesis 1:29 said,

it got me thinking what does

the rest of the Bible say, why aren't

all rabbis and clergy and ministers

vegetarian or vegan if this is what it says

in Genesis 1:29, so I started

reading, researching and to my pleasant

surprise, it's actually a pretty

consistent theme in the Bible

that plant based diet is the ideal,

that meat eating, while permitted, is usually

framed in a fairly negative

and sometimes extraordinarily

negative light and that we're supposed

to be treating animals, not just

with compassion but with exquisite sensitivity.

You know there's a whole slew of

verses in the Bible that command

that we treat animals with such sensitivity.

Collectively these are known in Hebrew,

(speaks Hebrew) which translate to

the prevention of suffering to animals.

And it says in our Talmud

which is the main rabbinic commentary on the Bible

that not only are we to prevent

animal suffering, we are to relieve the suffering

of animals whenever we have occasion to do so.

And on that basis alone,

given how animals are treated today

in modern animal agriculture, there's no way

we should be consuming animal products.

Probably the most misunderstood,

the most distorted verse in all of the Bible

is not Genesis 1:29, it's what comes right before that.

Genesis 1:26, that is the famous

dominion verse. So yes it does

say in Genesis 1:26 that human beings

were granted dominion over the animals

but two important things

to consider about that.

Number one is that's part of the exact

same conversation in which

we're instructed to eat plants exclusively.

So clearly dominion, did not give human beings

the right to kill animals for food.

Secondly, that dominion verse is part

of the exact same verse, not just

the same conversation but the same verse,

where we're told that human beings

are created (speaks Hebrew) in the image of God.

Therefore we are to exercise dominion

the way that God exercises dominion

over human beings.

And any rabbi will tell you the primary attributes

of God's dominion are mercy and compassion.

- [Thomas] From Pennsylvania

we headed northeast to Athens, New York

and visited with Frank Hoffman

who serves on the advisory board

of the Christian Vegetarian Association,

and is co founder with his wife Mary

of the Frank and Mary Hoffman

Family Foundation which is dedicated

to cruelty free living through

a vegan lifestyle.

- We became vegan for reasons of compassion.

But the side effect was that

our health improved dramatically.

We had all kinds of problems,

aches and pains and arthritis starting

and coughing and sneezing things,

the head colds, irritable bowel syndrome,

all kinds of things like that

and we found that within about three weeks

of becoming vegan our health improved.

We didn't have these same symptoms.

Both Mary and I are in our late 70s

and we haven't taken medication - I don't know -

it's gotta be at least 25 years now,

But we don't get the chronic diseases that people get.

The Bible tells us that if we're a child

of God we're to be a peace maker

and as peace makers and Paul picks up on this

and he says as peace making children of God,

we're to help free creation from its present corruption.

Well part of that corruption is the way

we live. We've heard people say

when I buy an animal product in the supermarket

I didn't hurt the animal, I'm just

buying the product that's sitting there.

And I'm saying no, you're actually contributing to it.

The first thing you can do

and the most important thing to do

in saving this world

and to living in the heavenly world

of God starts on your dinner plate.

(upbeat mariachi music)

- [Thomas] When we left Frank and Mary’s,

we drove down to New York City

where we parked Sophia and traveled by transit.

Our first stop was on the upper east side

where I had the honor and pleasure

of meeting Pramoda Chitrabhanu,

who is the director of the Jain Meditation International

Center in New York City as well

as on the board of PETA India.

She is the author of several books including

the Book of Compassion and Rainbow Food for the Vegan Palate.

- Only because of the taste buds,

only because of our own greed,

only because of our own satisfaction

of the senses! When are we going

to become sensitive?

When are we going to understand?

Because each and every living being

is given a different instrument

and it's a symphony

and we are creating music out of that instrument

and we forget that each and everyone's

life is intertwined with each other.

How can we disturb one living being?

But when we take the dairy,

the meat industry, the cows, you are

snatching away the five senses of those living beings

who can hear, who can see, who can feel,

who can taste, who can smell.

We have no right to take the life of any living being

even though they are not human beings

but they have already got five senses

and with one shot we destroy that.

Our hearts should really tremble

to do all these things and we don't

have any qualms. But the violence

is not because of the bad people,

it is because of the silence of the good people.

So be a whisper, or be a scream,

just be the voice for the voiceless being.

- [Thomas] After we left Pramoda’s,

we traveled down to Union Square

where we were approached by Mike,

a compassionate wildlife activist

who was out raising awareness about the plight

of the elephants.

- Yeah, just go for it, explain me on it right.

- So a keystone species basically is a species

of animal that has such a disproportionate

effect on the ecosystem that were

they to disappear, things would change very rapidly.

So, elephants are a keystone species,

bees are a keystone species,

even humans are, but in a bad way.

So, like if we all suddenly disappeared

everything would just start getting better.

- Everything would change for sure.

- Yeah it would change exactly.

So, elephants are a keystone species,

chickens are not, you know what I mean.

And that's not to say that they're less important

because they're still very important

and I do think that our meat industry

is really, really messed up, really, really bad

and I would love to see that change.

- [Thomas] Can I ask you this question?

- Yeah yeah.

- [Thomas] Did you know that in order

for a cow to produce milk she had to be

impregnated every year and her baby taken away

after the first day of her life

and if it's a male it usually goes to the veal industry,

if it's a female she ends up in there...

within four years of their life

they are slaughtered for meat

and usually they would live 25 years of their life.

Did you know they were taken away?

- No no, I didn't know that.

I mean again I'd have to -

it's very difficult to take the word of somebody,

not to say that I don't think you're informed but--

- But first of all do you think the cows just make milk?

- I don't know, I don't know enough about them.

That's really what I can--

- [Thomas] That's the best answer.

- Yeah I don't know.

- [Thomas] While we were in Manhattan we stopped by

to see Victoria who told us about a cow

she met many years ago

during her visit to a slaughterhouse in southern Missouri.

- I meet a lot of people who say

well I only eat humane meat, I only

eat meat from small family farms.

Well these cows came from a small family farm,

the farmer drove them in himself.

You could tell that these cows knew people

and trusted them so the first couple

just walked up the chute and onto death

but the third one was not having any of it.

She saw her friends go first,

she heard the screams and she smelled the smells

that I'd been smelling all day.

She was not about to walk up that ramp,

so she just planted herself and stood there.

And the man up at the top of the ramp,

about time to go home, he was ready to

go see his kids, he whistled to her.

He whistled to her the way he'd whistle to his dog

when he went home in 20 minutes.

And this cow seemed to trust him,

she kind of turned her head and looked at him

and it was as if she was deciding whether

or not to override all her instincts,

what she was hearing, what she was smelling

and instead do something that

we pride ourselves as humans

in being able to do, trust another person.

So with this trust, misplaced as it turned out,

she walked to the man who had whistled to her.

He got her with the captive bolt pistol,

she was hoisted up her throat was slit,

her beautiful skin was sliced off her

and into a pile to go for shoes and boots

and belts and handbags and all of a sudden

she was no longer a being,

she was in the process of becoming beef.

Now I knew that in a few days

her parts and pieces would wind up

at a supermarket in St. Louis.

They would be on a styrofoam tray

and cellophane wrapping

and they would be purchased by good people.

They'd be purchased by people who love their children

and give to charity and go to church.

Well they didn't know her.

I did, for just a few minutes

at the very end of her life,

but because I knew her, it's my obligation

to share her story.

- In the Muslim faith we have this really beautiful

saying from the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings

be upon him, in which he says

that none of you truly have attained to faith

until you love for one another

what you love for your own self.

Which is very similar to the golden rule

that was preached by all of the great prophets and sages.

You know I think as time has gone on

the spiritual and ethical tradition

has been able to widen that to not only

humanity but to a lot of the creation of God

both in terms of the environment as well

as the animals and just every living being.

- [Thomas] From Manhattan, we drove

to Princeton, New Jersey to speak with Imam Sohaib Sultan

Princeton University's first Muslim chaplain

and author of the Koran for Dummies,

and the Qur'an and the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

- We are living in a time in which

there is a great exploitation of the environment

and of animals and the way that we

see the farming practices evolve

to fit the consumer societies and the materialistic

societies has formed has greatly

harmed the environment and has

greatly affected animals

at a level unprecedented in our history as human beings.

One should really consider the mass production

of food and the unethical means by which

that food is produced in our modern age

and we should really consider whether

we want to be part of that evil practice or whether

we want to be part of the solution,

to restore the balance to the environment

to restore the balance to the ecosystem

and to restore the balance to the human beings,

because when the human begins are exploiting

the environment, the environment is going

to turn its wrath against the human beings.

And we're constantly seeing that

from the lack of access to water

to air pollution to scarcity of food,

all of this is being caused by

our mistreatment of God's earth.

You know there's a really important passage

in the Koran that says that oh humanity

your actions are certainly bound

to rebound against your own selves.

So there's this idea that whatever we do

we're going to see its consequences

both the good and the beautiful,

and the ugly and the wrong.

And it's also important as Muslims

to understand that this idea

of karma or this idea of our actions

rebound against our own selves is not only

limited to this life but there's also an

afterlife reality to it.

The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him,

he said that on the day of resurrection

when people have to answer for their deeds

before God, one will even have to answer

for the innocent sparrow that they killed.

- What is the difference between pity and compassion?

So pity is, you know, I see the cow,

they just ran it through a factory farm,

it lived this awful life, they slaughtered

it in this awful way and I'm like, “Poor cow, that's bad

they're torturing all these cows.

This is terrible. Wow, I'm hungry.

Where's the closest McDonald’s, you know?

No link whatsoever, versus compassion

which is you know they're suffering in this industry,

they're suffering in the way that

we treat animals, they're suffering

in eating suffering from the way

that this animal was killed.

I don't want to contribute to the suffering. I quit.

I'm not gonna contribute to your suffering.

- [Thomas] It was in Tacoma Park, Maryland where we met

Nazirahk Amen, a naturopathic doctor,

a practitioner of Chinese medicine

and an organic farmer who's been vegan

for over 25 years.

- In the beginning I worked actually

as an EMT. I was an intermediate level medic

and you know working in the medical system

while studying to become a doctor at that time

and just seeing the contradictions.

It's not focused on prevention,

it's really focused on these sort of

quick fix pharmaceutical interventions

and you know as a provider, you know,

when someone's having an asthma attack

and you go in and you give them drugs

and you know you see that asthma attack break

and those people can breathe again,

that's beautiful you know but

in another four weeks, six weeks, three months

and you get the same call,

you know, it sort of takes some of the glamor out

and you walk into these people's homes

and you see they're having this asthma attack

or this sickle cell crisis or whatever other

disease and here, you know, right

next to the bed, they just got through

eating a three pack for a dollar

glow in the dark set of cookies

with a big glass of cow’s milk

and you're asking yourself the question, you know,

do you think that any of what you just ate

has anything to do with

how you're feeling right now?

We don't really get to ask that question.

You know, I mean, I felt better immediately

from going vegan, but in a couple years

after I went vegan I was probably the strongest

I've ever been in my life and

you know I maintain that on a day to day basis.

So, you know, anyway, I'm 95 years old and (laughter).

- I had this one case I remember this woman very well.

I said to her, I said your problem

is not that you have spastic colon.

I said you're eating foods that are gonna

make you sick because they contain lactose

and to my surprise, she said

“Oh I know that,” and I said, “Well,

if you know that these foods are gonna

make you sick, why are you continuing to eat them?

She said, “Because the government says I have to.

The U.S. dietary guidelines say that I have

to include dairy foods in my diet

in order to be healthy.” And I, of course,

explained to her that, no, you don’t,

that you don't need dairy foods for any reason,

that they're, as I said to her,

“Cows don't drink milk but there's

plenty of calcium in their milk

and it's because they get it from

the green plants that they eat

and that if you eat green leafy vegetables,

you'll get plenty of calcium in your diet.”

But it really upset me that people were being

made ill by listening to recommendations

from the government that were

not based on science but rather

were based on marketing.

- [Thomas] We left Nazirahk's farm

and crossed over into Virginia

where we had a conversation with Dr. Milton Mills, who

practices urgent care medicine in the Washington D.C. area

and is on the National Advisory Board

of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

He is a practicing Seventh Day Adventist

which is one of the very rare Protestant

denominations that recommends

a vegetarian diet to its members.

- God designed us and he gave us an owners manual

and it's called the Bible and in the Bible

he tells us what we should be eating.

He tells us what he designed us to eat

and if we care about ourselves and

if we care about what God wants then

we will follow his instructions for a healthy life.

And when I see people who call themselves Christians

eating fried chicken and pork chops

and all this stuff that they know

are unhealthy and that's

going to destroy their health

simply because it tastes good

then I have to ask, “Do you love

the pleasure of eating this unhealthy food

more than you love God? Because

if you really love God, then you

would do what he asked us to do

and that is eat a plant based diet.”

And when you realize the type

of misery and pain and suffering that's

inflicted on other animals

in order to raise them by the billions

just so they can be killed and dismembered

so people can eat them, it's impossible

for I think a feeling person

to justify that, particularly someone

who says that they believe in a loving God.

It's one thing if it's a matter

of life, death and necessity but

in modern life, it's not.

- [Thomas] The next day we had to say a sad goodbye to Maya

who was off to a holistic veterinarian conference

before she headed back to Israel.

And then Melody and I and Sophia

made our way back to the sacred woods of North Florida.

- Abra cadabra.

- The environmental crisis is not a crisis

of the bees and the birds

or the trees and the toads, it's a crisis of

how we live as spiritual beings in a physical reality.

Therefore in order to address this crisis we're

going to need to address the spiritual roots.

- [Thomas] Just a few days after Melody's

fourth birthday, I found myself

on an airplane headed to Marrakesh, Morocco

to join our producer Sailesh who'd invited

me to attend the 22nd United Nations

Climate Change Conference - COP22,

where people from all over the world

come together to work on finding solutions

to the climate crisis that is

threatening the future of life on our planet.

- What are some of those spiritual roots?

This includes the desire for instant

self gratification, consumerism.

We are facing a climate crisis, a planetary emergency

which is really messaging to us

that the human way of living is out of balance.

By the end of this 21st century, human beings

are likely to extinct five million

of the ten million species on this planet.

And so, according to the Jewish tradition,

it is forbidden to extinct a species.

We have a mandate to be stewards, to care

for the creation that God

has entrusted to us, to be righteous,

to be mindful and that comes

down to the smallest level of human consumption.

Everything that we consume, we need to think,

“Am I elevating this object in the highest way?

Am I using it in holiness? Am I reusing it?

Do I actually need this?

If we do that, then we're living at a higher

vibrational frequency. We're living in resonance

with the divine. We're living in resonance

with the planet that God has given us.

- We know that of all the energy

that human beings are putting into the climate

system via the greenhouse gases,

93% of that is ending up in the ocean.

This has led to an increased acidification

of the ocean. The acidity

makes it very difficult for shelled

animals to continue to fabricate

their shells and so we're beginning

to see threats to coral reefs.

We're beginning to see threats to

shelled animals, in general.

And the most important ones are the little

coccolithophores, part of the plankton

population and if their shells

are compromised, they can't live

and the danger will be that...these are the guys,

the plankton are the ones that are actually

manufacturing the oxygen in the atmosphere

that we breathe a few weeks after it leaves the ocean.

So ocean acidification is a

global issue that affects absolutely everybody

and all of the living things in the ocean.

It's my belief that societies in which

people care for each other

are societies that will also take

care of the environment and so there's

a relationship between our human compassion

and our compassion for nature

and now both are needed to assure

the survival of our civilization.

- I would say that compassion is central

to our religious tradition within Islam

and as a Muslim trying to be faithful

to its teachings, I have to strive to become

more compassionate in my life.

As an example, every chapter of the holy Koran's

114 chapters begins with (speaks Arabic)

which means in the name of God,

most compassionate, most merciful.

A small chick fell out of its nest

in the tree onto the ground

and one of the Prophet's companions

was playing with it in quite a ruthless manner, a ruthless way.

When the Prophet came upon him,

he became very stern and angry

and he said, “What are you doing?”

He said, “Amusing myself.” He said,

“How can you amuse yourself

with the child of someone else that's

not your child? Return the child to its mother.”

And what's very interesting is

in the Arabic language they have

two words, the word normally used

for baby chick is one word.

The word that is used for child

which is exclusively used in the human sense

which means (speaks Arabic)

is the term that he used for this chick.

So, in other words, its relation to its mother

is the same as the relationship

of a human mother to her own child.

- Last year in the run up to the Paris

climate talks, a number of religious

organizations issued statements on climate change

and so our organization issued

the Hindu Declaration on Climate Change for 2016

and that was signed by over 60 Hindu leaders

and organizations from across the world.

And within that, we put forward

the case for why Hindus should be concerned

about climate change and what Hindus

should and could be doing to address climate change.

And within that, one of the key things

we spoke about was diet

and to live a lifestyle which minimizes harm

on the environment, on animals, and on other people.

And so within that, the advocation

of a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle

was something that we strongly said

that Hindus, actually not just Hindus,

all concerned people of the world

should take very seriously.

If we want to create a world which is full of compassion

which is full of love, which is full of peace,

then we have to imbibe that and live that

within our own hearts and minds.

- Because we have a system, a socioeconomic system

that's growth oriented and that's based

on consumption as an organizing value,

and competition as an organizing principle.

And because it's growth oriented,

we have been growing our population

and our livestock, continuously.

See, if you look at what has happened

to the biomass distribution of the planet,

our weight is now double the weight

of all the wildlife from ten thousand years ago,

and our livestock is two and a half

times our weight and what is worse

is that our livestock eat

five times as much food as we do

because they are mostly young animals

and they're eating a lot in order to grow.

So, it's as if you have a bunch of weight lifters

who are lifting five times their weight

and they discover that they are on quicksand

and they're sinking.

So what is the first thing they should do

with the weight they're lifting?

Should we not drop those weights

or should we continue to hold on to them?

That's the situation we are in at the moment.

But we are in a society where we are taught

to look outside for happiness. We are taught, you know,

that's where it is, and the entire socioeconomic system

depends on us believing this.

That the happiness is outside us.

So we really are at a position where

we have to change our socioeconomic system.

We have to change it so that

we are looking for happiness inside,

all of us, so that we are reducing

our demands on the earth and therefore

allowing the earth to come back,

you know, to regenerate again.

Veganism is a way of living where

we seek to never deliberately hurt

an innocent animal unnecessarily.

No longer is it necessary to eat animal foods.

So knowing that, we can now get in alignment

with who we really are, because all of us

want to be compassionate to all life

because that's who we are.

So the most important step that an individual

can do today to address environmental destruction

is to adopt a plant based diet

which is as local as possible,

which is as organic as possible.

So it's Local Organic Vegan Eating - that’s L.O.V.E.

- [Thomas] The day before I left Morocco,

I joined thousands of environmental

activists from all over the world

as we took to the streets of Marrakesh

in a march for climate justice,

hoping one day that these marches

will include justice for animals as well.

- I am a ladybug from the forest.

Do you like to ask some questions?

- How does India have the largest export

of leather products in the world

and can still be a cow friendly country?

- [Thomas] On the second day of 2017

I once again found myself flying over the ocean.

Holger Eick, one of our producers who lives in Hong Kong,

had invited me to join him in India

where we would explore

the teachings of compassion in some of

the world's most ancient spiritual traditions.

We would start our journey in the city of Mumbai

where we spoke to Nithya Shanti who lived six years

as a Buddhist monk and now travels internationally,

sharing practical wisdom teachings

for happiness and enlightenment.

- I used to think for a long time

I need to be like the Buddha,

I'm not enough like the Buddha

I need to be more like the Buddha.

Then one day, it settled on me

that I'm not the Buddha. I'm not the Buddha.

Even if I tried my very best,

I'll be a second rate Buddha.

But my eyes shone when I realized

even if the Buddha tries his best

he'll be a second rate Nithya Shanti.

In the Buddhist tradition, the word

for compassion is Karuna. And Karuna

is known as one of the noblest states

we can experience as a human being.

One of the most noble qualities...

It's called actually a boundless state.

When your mind is in unbalanced

all you are concerned about is about me and my little world

and at most the people around me.

But as your mind gets more and more balanced

you realize - all beings we're in the same boat,

we all seek to be free from suffering.

And so the response of

a balanced mind to suffering

is compassion, is a desire

to alleviate that suffering in whatever

way they possibly can and that's compassion.

- Vedanta is Indian philosophy which

originated in the Vedas but

it is simply knowledge of yourself.

Vedanta says there are three distinct

types of thoughts in a human being.

The highest is sattva which is called pure thoughts

and unselfish thoughts, compassionate thoughts,

loving thoughts, thoughts that contemplate

on the higher, the transcendental.

A person who is in sattva, pure thought

will not do anything that harms others

and to eat the flesh of another creature

because you find it tasty or even

if you think it's nutritious

is abhorrent to a person with pure thoughts.

Vedanta says at all times in your life

you must have an attitude of not wanting

to injure, hurt, or be nasty

to anyone in thought, word, or deed.

- [Thomas] While in Mumbai,

we had the wonderful opportunity to visit a

beautiful, world renowned Jain temple,

where we had the pleasure of speaking

with Urvi Shah, a devout Jain

who gave us a tour of the temple.

- Often I ask my patient, do you take milk

and they say oh no no, I hardly take milk,

I don't take milk, and then

we sit down and start writing down

chai, yes, curd, yes, maybe ice cream yes,

maybe paneer yes, maybe ghee yes,

and it can be literally like half a liter

of milk every day, so you do consume milk.

If you have just consumed one slice of cheese

you have already consumed 16 ounces of milk.

The Indian subcontinent in Asia

is very obsessed with dairy products

because it's so deeply ingrained

that they think it's vegetarian.

Milk production is very high,

it's highest in the world. In fact,

India is one of the largest exporters of beef

in the world, thanks to the dairy industry,

because after repeated artificial insemination,

three or four times, about six or seven

year of age, now cow is spent.

She's of no use. Also, the young calf,

you know, the baby male cow is allowed

to just die and so the veal is produced

because there's no use of male cow

anywhere in any industry.

From the times of Lord Krishna,

we consume so much dairy, it's there

in our temples as prasad.

It's there at any good occasion,

marriage, everything's made from dairy.

Ghee, particularly, is used a lot

so it just doesn't go out of the psyche

of the Indian mind. So, I had to write a book

on dairy alternatives

and show them the way that you can make

butter milk, you can make yogurt

you can make ice creams, you can make

all the Indian sweets same way, exactly

same, tasting even much better and healthier.

- One of the first patients I remember

was a man who had diabetes but that's

not why he came to me. He had diabetes

and he was being given medicines

and the blood sugar wouldn't come under control

but he came to me because he had

the complications of diabetes,

he was losing his eyesight.

And when I suggested to him

to stop all the dairy, within two weeks

his blood sugar came down

and his eyesight came back.

It was just so amazing and then over

a period of time he went on a

whole plant based diet and improved even further.

So, this was one of my early cases which

brought to my mind how much changing

our diet really helps because our body

always works to heal.

I actually realized that medicines

come in the way of healing.

In fact medicines never cure, but the body heals.

I also run a 21 day residential program

where we have people coming in

with all kinds of diseases

and we do all the lab reports at the beginning

and as they get better, we take off

medications and they're given buffet meals.

We have cooking classes every day, we have yoga,

meditation, and within 21 days,

most of them get off at least 70% of the medication.

Many of them are off all their medications

and they have more energy than

they ever had before and we do

lab reports all over at the end

so that they can actually see the difference

between the two reports and even I'm amazed.

Not only they are amazed but I'm amazed

every time, how fast the body can actually

heal if we take away all the things that make it sick.

- [Thomas] Holger and I left Mumbai and flew

over to Udaipur where we met up with Sailesh

and I ran into Dharmada, a friend I had made

during the Animal Rights conference in L.A.

She introduced us to her friend, Ashutosh,

and together we all traveled out to Animal Aid Rescue

where we met the founder, Jim Meyers,

who along with his wife, daughter,

and 50 full time staff members and volunteers

from around the world, have rescued

over 65,000 injured and ill street animals

including dogs, cows, camels, and donkeys,

just to name a few, since they opened their gates in 2003.

- In the state of Rajasthan, it is not legal

to euthanize a cow.

Any of the other animals you see here,

the monkey, the blind dogs, the

handicapped dogs, all can be euthanized

but the cow is given this special protection.

A dairy in the city,

somebody, that cow, there, this one, that one

stopped giving milk and at night,

it was pushed out into the street.

And cruelly, the same one that you say,

is so holy, we aren't even going to euthanize them,

we're so enraptured with their

spirit to keep it alive, every single

cow represents an abandonment that it was

not profitable to feed that cow anymore, to do anymore

with it so you've removed it and you've broken a law.

This animal at night

would be eaten out by dogs and pigs

alive in the street,

with no medicine to alleviate pain, no one

to shelter its eyes in a 49 degree Celsius day,

to move the flies away and here it was

the only way I could get, not happy,

because it's nothing to be happy about,

but I could get satisfied

that some justice was being done

so that this cow which this dear lady

is helping us with, this cow

is going to die in a few days. It's not gonna be,

it's legs aren't gonna get stronger

and get better and return to the city,

find its long lost brothers and sisters.

The least favorite question a serious

politician in India wants to hear

is, “What happens to the male cows?”

And so that story has to be suppressed

if you're gonna keep up all the sensitivity.

So, no one shows the links.

- [Thomas] After visiting the royal palace

and two Hindu temples, the Jagdish and the

Karni Mata, I had to say goodbye to Holger

as he flew home to Hong Kong

and I journeyed forward to New Delhi

where I would have the unique opportunity

to speak to two Digambara Jain sadhus,

sky clad Jain saints who have freed

themselves of all attachments and worldly possessions,

including clothing, money and even dishes and silverware.

The Jain religion is said to be around 5,000 years old

and it has a rich history of non violence and vegetarianism.

It has libraries filled with their collective

knowledge and wisdom, yet there was really

only one question I wanted to ask

these holy saints of Ahimsa.

- (foreign language speaking)

- (foreign language speaking)

As much as I loved and felt at home in India,

two weeks was as long as I could keep

myself away from Melody and our sanctuary in the woods.

- When you were a kid did you get really dirty

and your mom get mad?

- I did get really dirty but you know

I had a pretty cool mom. I don't think

she got mad about it.

- How old are you now?

- I will be 50 in a few weeks.

- Aaahhh, I forgot.

- One of the great Hasidic rabbis, Rabbi Nachman, taught

that the day you were born

was the day that God decided the world

could not exist without you,

and that is true for every being,

that every being that has breath

God has said the world cannot

exist without them. And to honor

God is to honor the holy breath

of every being and to see

that the world needs each of us.

- [Thomas] I was very excited to have

the honor and delight of sitting down

with Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz

while he was attending a rabbinical conference

in Atlanta, Georgia.

Rabbi Yanklowitz is a social justice activist,

a sought after educational

and motivational speaker and the author

of seven books on Jewish spirituality and ethics.

He is the founder of the Shamayim V'Aretz Institute,

a graduate of both Harvard and Columbia

and the only person I've personally met

who's donated one of his kidneys to a stranger.

- The book of Psalms teaches

that the world is built through kindness.

We bring heaven down to earth by perpetuating kindness.

In every interaction, in every act

of food consumption, in every choice we make,

we have the opportunity to elevate

the sparks of holiness in whatever we encounter.

We have the opportunity to objectify

and abuse or we have the opportunity

to see the holiness in everything.

When my children were born

and I held them for the first time,

the level of love I felt was so infinite!

This is how God experiences all of God's creatures.

Each creature is held with infinite love

and to take the Godly perspective

of the universe is to treat every being with love,

to treat every being as an end in themselves.

All of our religions teach this,

in their purest form.

So the most central question we can

ask ourselves every day is

how can I increase compassion in the world today,

through my every choice?

- I long ago started just saying

I'm a follower of Jesus Christ

because even if you are not a Christian

coming into that conversation

you know enough about Jesus to think that you're gonna

generally agree with most stuff

Jesus says. I mean turning the other cheek

and forgiveness and goodness.

I mean most people agree that Jesus

was teaching the right values

even if they're not Christians. And it's because

I love Jesus so much that I'm a vegan.

I'm not a vegan who also coincidentally

is a Christian. I am, full on,

a vegan because I love Jesus Christ.

- [Thomas] Although I'd already shot several hundred hours

of footage and I was a quarter way

through the rough cut, I couldn't pass up

the amazing opportunity to travel back

to Manhattan and speak to Suzy Welch,

who is a business journalist, bestselling

author and a regular contributor on the Today Show.

She's a devout, evangelical Christian

and an Animal Rights activist,

who currently sits on the advisory board

of the Good Food Institute.

- Jesus' earliest followers, many of them

were vegan because they got it.

They got that Jesus was about mercy, compassion

and love, and life.

Choose life, give life, stop killing,

show kindness to everything and so

Jesus' earliest fanatical followers were vegans.

And at one point, in Acts, Paul, frustrated with them,

says, “Stop talking about what you're eating.

You're sort of taking up all of our time

with your vegan diet

and let's pay attention to other things.

He had bigger sort of philosophical issues

that he wanted everybody paying attention to,

but we know historically

that Jesus' earliest followers,

the people sort of closest to his message,

were vegan because of him. So it's not like

I invented this, that I am just

following the tradition of Christians

all along who got that connection

but the connection's been buried. It's been buried

for a long time for cultural reasons, for cultural reasons.

But then people come back to this concept of dominion,

that's the big one for Christians.

Well God gave us dominion over all of His creation.

Well then, you have to think about

what dominion means. Well, God

has dominion over us. What does that mean,

God's dominion over us? He tells us exactly

what dominion means. People like

to debate what dominion means

but God tells us what dominion means.

It means loving, nurturing, life filled,

hope filled, compassionate, merciful,

tender, love! Okay and if that's

what dominion means and God's demonstrating

it towards us, which he is,

then it's our turn to use that

exact same exact bunch of words

in how we treat God's creation.

And, I don't know, slaughter houses

are not included in that.

And so for me, well yeah, bring up dominion,

bring it, because the Bible tells us what dominion is

and if you believe that dominion

is what God tells us it is,

then you have to stop eating animals.

- So Roman Catholics take scripture

very seriously, but we always

pair it with tradition saying that

we can't really even interpret scripture

without the tradition as well,

and the tradition on animals

all the way to the catechism of the Catholic church,

the official teaching of the Catholic Church

through the catechism, is so interesting

on animals, including an almost justice

like command saying that we owe animals kindness.

Often, in moral theology, we think

about justice as being what we owe

other people and the language of justice

is used in the catechism of the Catholic Church.

We owe animals kindness, that's unambiguous.

And so much of what we do today,

of course, is inconsistent with that

and Catholics have to ask those questions.

- [Thomas] While in New York City,

Victoria and I visited the beautiful

campus at Fordham University

which was founded by the Catholic

Diocese of New York in 1841.

There we spoke with Charles Camosy,

an Associate Professor of Theology

and Social Ethics and an author

whose books include, For Love of Animals,

and Peter Singer and Christian Ethics.

- I think so much of where injustice

comes from is our refusing to apply our principles

consistently. So we say we believe this

but then when it comes to his other thing

where it looks like we have to act

in a way contrary to the way we're currently acting

if we want to follow that principle seriously,

we kind of abandon the principle.

I use the analogy in my classes,

arguments and principles are like buses,

they're not like taxis. So if you

have a principle you have to follow it

wherever it goes or you gotta

get on a different bus. You can't

just tell your principle wherever

it's gonna end up, that's just being irrational.

So and so much injustice has come

from that kind of irrationality.

We believe in the divinity of the human person

except in slavery. We believe in non violence

except when we perpetuate war in the Crusades.

We believe in the most vulnerable,

except when it comes to how we eat.

And so in the book I'm trying to call out

all Christians to say,

if we really claim to believe these things,

we ought to change our whole lives

or let's not claim to believe these things.

Because if we just pick and choose

where we end up as a result of these principles,

we don't actually really believe the principles are true.

And to me that's just what it means

to be a Christian, it means following

Christ in every aspect of your life,

not just picking and choosing where you do that.

- Charles and Myrtle Fillmore the founders of Unity,

were staunch vegetarians all their lives,

talked about it a lot.

I think the Archives has 135 talks

from Charles Fillmore about being vegetarian.

They wrote about it in their publications,

and so having been to seminary

and knowing Unity's history,

I knew they were vegetarian.

I didn't know quite how ferociously

they were until I became vegan

and started reading more about it.

- [Thomas] So it turns out the founders of Unity,

the church I was attending

when I became vegan

were vegetarians in the late 1800s and

even included it in their statement of faith,

until it was removed in 1939.

So I joined Victoria at Unity village

in Missouri where she arranged an interview

with her friend, Reverend Ellen Debenport,

Unity's Vice President of content and media,

to ask why no one at Unity

had ever told me about this

and to discuss how Unity could be

more proactive in sharing Charles' teachings

about not eating animals.

- A lot of people find Unity

as refugees from rigid religions

and so they're hyper sensitive

to being told what to do,

or being told they're wrong or bad

and so Unity's leaders including me

are probably pretty hesitant

to talk about, there is this other

way to eat that you might find

would enhance your spiritual journey.

We may be moving in that direction.

We have more and more ministers who

are talking about it and who

think Unity really should insist on it

from World Headquarters, which

isn't going to happen any time soon,

because we don't want to tell people

what to do, but we can talk about it

and we can revive the idea that the Fillmores

preached vegetarianism and saw it as a spiritual practice.

- [PODCAST] Learn how to eat better,

get healthy and help animals. Welcome

to Main Street Vegan with your host, Victoria Moran.

- [Thomas] The Main Street Vegan podcast

on Unity radio is one of the ways

Unity has begun moving back

toward their vegetarian roots,

and after speaking with Ellen,

I look forward to seeing what other

ways they'll find to honor Charles and Myrtle's

original teachings about not eating

or wearing our fellow earthlings.

Over 74 billion farmed animals

are bred and slaughtered every year,

most of them while they're still just babies

and in the United States they eat

nearly 70% of the grain we grow

and raising them uses over 80% of our water

and almost half of our land

and it's also the number one cause

of water and air pollution as well

as deforestation, species extinction,

and ocean dead zones.

How long can we continue to try

and justify this?

All of the great spiritual traditions agree

that along with life's joys,

there will also be suffering

but so much of the suffering I see

in the world around me is unnecessary

and caused by the choices we make every day.

Those choices are having a devastating

effect on our individual

and collective karma and health

and they're threatening the future of our children.

(Native American flute music)

My prayer is that each of us

will challenge ourselves to be more kind

and compassionate with our thoughts, words and actions,

to vote wisely with our dollars

and to take better care

of all of creation including our body temples

and to take the time each day

to go within and ask some version of what

can I do to make the world better

for those yet to come

and then listen carefully for that

still quiet voice to answer.

♪ All around this great big world ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ All around this great big world ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ All around this great big world ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

- Eating fruit is help your brain like mine.

♪ This little light of mine, ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ ♪ This little light of mine, ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ This little light of mine, ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

(upbeat jazz music)

♪ Namaste ♪

♪ I ain't gonna hide it under no bushel, no ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ Ain't gonna hide it under no bushel, no ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ Ain't gonna hide it under no bushel, no ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

♪ Everywhere I go ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ To everyone I know ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Everywhere I go ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

(upbeat jazz music)

♪ Let it shine now ♪

♪ Everywhere you go now ♪

♪ To everyone you know ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine, lord ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Namaste now ♪

♪ Don't forget to pray now ♪

♪ And everywhere you go ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪

Ladies and gentlemen put your hands

together for the Village Brass Band.

Good night, drive safely and God bless.