Animal Awareness / What Can I Do?

What Can I Do?

Every person can directly help many animals. Every time you make animal-free choices, animals are helped. You might not see the animal you've helped, but they are being helped EVERY time you consistently make compassionate choices.

Go Vegetarian or Vegan!

Everyday people ask how they can help animals. People wonder how they can actually make a difference when the problems are so enormous.

Often people overlook the #1 thing that they can do! GO VEGETARIAN and strive to one day become VEGAN. Vegetarians do not eat meat, whereas vegans strive to give up all animal products such as meat, milk, eggs, cheese, honey, leather, etc.

Becoming vegan isn't that hard anymore. There is soy milk, almond milk, Nayonaise, and a large variety of fake meats.... and so many more right there in your regular grocery store. Amy's brand makes vegan bean burritos and breakfast burritos as well as a really delicious no-cheese pizza. Also, look for San Francisco Soap Company products. They have a large line of bar soap and liquid soaps that contain no animal ingredients and are tested safe without the use of animals.

Start today ! Buy a Tofurky or Unturkey! For additional tips on how to incorporate compassion into your purchases, take a look at our becoming vegan section.

Choose to Get Involved with the Issues

One of the very best things that you can do is to keep in contact with your congressmen at the federal, state, and local level. Find out who they are and keep their contact information handy. When you hear about legislation that could have either a positive or negative impact on animals, write them a short 1-page neat handwritten letter clearly expressing what side of the issue you are on and what you would like to see them do. If you include your telephone number, you might even get a personal phone call. They love to see personally handwritten letters because it shows that you really care about the topic if you are willing to put effort into the letter. If you are short on time, then sending an email or typed postal-mail letter is perfectly fine too. But when you have the time, nothing beats the attention you'll get when it's handwritten (make sure it's very neat and legible).

Write a Letter To Your State Delegate

Upcoming 2003 legislation that will have an impact on animals in Maryland include a ban on leg-hold traps, outlawing gestation crates (intensive confinement for pigs), and more comprehensive animal fighting law.

Contact John Goodwin with The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) at jgoodwin@hsus.org or call 202-955-3665 to receive a packet with fact sheets and details about each of the bills. This packet with assist you in your letter writing.

Volunteer

Becoming a volunteer is a great way to help animals even if you don't work directly at a sanctuary or shelter. One of the reasons for this is the social interaction with other like-minded animal advocates. Through casual conversation with others you will learn so much more about animal-free products than you ever could on your own. Plus, talking with the staff members and other volunteers will help you to be aware of the many positive steps that are being made within the animal rights movement. Knowing that the work of animal rights groups is making progress will help to revitalize your commitment.

The more obvious benefit to volunteering is that you are helping to keep a worthy cause to stay up and running. Many non-profits have low budgets and are dependent upon volunteers to help with weekly administrative tasks such as stuffing envelopes and helping to maintain member databases.

Volunteering your time by showing up to public education demonstrations is another very good way to support the animal rights cause. It not only spreads the important message that the demo is focused on, but it also helps the organization itself to have a successful event. If demonstrators enjoy themselves at a successful demo, they are more likely to come back again.

Daily Living

When someone becomes aware of the numerous ways that animals are used in our lives, it is clear that almost every household item has potentially caused suffering to an animal. The suffering is completely needless because there is not one item that actually needs to involve the use of animals. Especially with today's technology, there is an alternative to everything.

So why are animals still used? Follow the money trail and see who has something financial to gain. Even if an animal-free product is cheaper to produce, the company already has years of experience, time, and machinery invested in maintaining the status quo of their current production methods. They will have their Public Relations (PR) department spin their decision as being one that benefits the consumer, but that is not the case. Animal-free products are equally beneficial if not more beneficial to the consumer depending on what the product is.

As a consumer, it's up to you to see through the PR and the advertising slogans and choose to be compassionate. The government does not do this for you and the company selling the product certainly will not do this for you.

Making compassionate choices also sends a great message to the children about becoming a caring person. Morality in one area will lead to a higher morality in all areas. Some people say that we should fix all of the "human suffering" first and then deal with animal suffering after that. The causes of all suffering are interrelated. Working to eliminate suffering and heighten morality towards any one group helps to spread the idea of compassion, which helps to alleviate all forms of suffering. Therefore it does not have to be a choice between one or the other.

Animal Awareness is currently working on a database of products that are used on a daily basis. It will be a resource so that you can type in a product name and find out if using it affects animals in any major or even obscure way. For example, if you were to type in SUGAR, information would come up about the potential use of charred animal bone during the filtration process while making some cane sugars. You will also be able to see a list of alternatives. In this example, you would see that Domino Sugar does use bone char, but that Jack Frost Sugar does not. They use other methods of processing, which do not involve animals at all.

For addition campaigns and strategies that Animal Awareness is planning, please visit our campaigns page.

Becoming Vegan: Take Steps to Become More Compassionate Each Month

Every time you make a choice to use an animal-free product you are helping animals in two important ways. First, you are sending a message to the manufacturer of animal products that you will not support their product. And secondly, when you purchase the animal-free product, you are helping to economically strengthen a worthy humane company.

Over the course of the upcoming week and month, find one food item that you currently have in your house that contains some sort of animal product. Whether it's the veggie burger that contains egg whites, the box of pop tarts with gelatin, or the chicken nuggets in your freezer... find one food item for which you will start substituting an animal-free alternative.

It may take an extra minute or two at the grocery store to locate that tasty alternative, but once you do, you will feel a great sense of accomplishment that you now have one less product in your house that has caused suffering for innocent animals. Becoming vegan is a process. For some it takes weeks, for others it may take years. Keep striving for it.