Famous Vegans - Howard Lyman

Howard Lyman, 2003.

Howard Lyman

Born on September 17, 1938. He is known as the "Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat". He is the president and founder of Voice for a Viable future. He is well known for his court battle together with Oprah Winfrey against the cattle industry. You can read more about this on his website at this link. He is the author of the books Mad Cowboy and No More Bull. His website is Mad Cowboy.

He is a 4th generation family farmer from Montana, who spend 45 years in the cattle business. He was educated in modern agriculture and turned a small organic dairy farm into a large corporate chemical farm with over a thousand range cows and calves, five thousand head of cattle in a factory feedlot and thousands of acres of crops. He also raised chickens, pigs and turkeys. He had around 30 employees and was buying a million dollars worth of chemicals a year.

In 1979, a tumor on his spinal cord caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down. The surgery was successful, but in 19990 he faced health concerns again and decided to become vegetarian. He became vegan about a year after that. He lost over 100 pounds, his blood pressure went to normal and his cholesterol dropped from 300 to 135. Since 1991, he has been traveling the globe year-round, speaking on health, environment and animal issues.

Quotes by Howard Lyman:

"I have been to hundreds of slaughterhouses, probably as many as 50 processing plants. The animals are terrified at the slaughter plant, and the cruelty inflicted on the animal in their last moments on earth are indescribable. I believe if viewing of slaughter was required to eat meat, most folks would become vegetarians."

"I’ve seen a lot of animals die. And I will tell you that once you go into a slaughter plant, once you see what is happening there, it’s branded on your soul. You are never gonna walk away from that again. I can tell you vividly the memories that I have of the looks of the animals at the time when they were killed."

"Very few producers actually follow their animals to the slaughterhouse. ... I would say the number of times they’ve been in a slaughterhouse—never on the kill floor—in their entire lifetime, you could count on one hand. Just the smell of them is something you will never erase for the rest of your life. We have a system set up so the producer never has to be involved in that last step, it’s all done with middlemen. We’re very ingenious how we can remove people from culpability in the death of animals."

When asked how cattle ranching works, he answered:

"What basically happens is that you have a cow, you breed the cow for a calf, the calf is raised with the cow on the grass for somewhere up to seven or nine months, comes off of the grass, goes into the feedlot and he starts chuffing concentrates, antibiotics, hormones down the throat, vaccinations. That animal is raised until it gets to be about twelve hundred pounds, usually from eighteen to twenty four months of age. It's taken and slaughtered and turned into meat."

"I know feedlots from the ground up and there is no greater opponent of them in the world than me. There is nothing involved in a feedlot that is good for animals or for homo sapiens. In fact, what we’re doing to about 95 percent of the animals in the U.S. today should absolutely never be done."

"I spent 45 years in the cattle business always professing that I loved my animals. But it was years before I was willing to admit I was more interested in profit than the animals’ health. The fact of it is, we simply raised them to a point where they became economically beneficial to us to sell. I finally woke up. Looking in those big old brown eyes, I realized those animals loved life in their way just as much as I loved life in mine; there was no way in the world I could ever put them to death again."

"In the spring, you’re out there feeding a herd of cows and their new calves. Well, some cows stay and baby-sit the calves while others go and eat. The fact is, a cow always knows which calf is hers. In spending time with them, you learn they have a hierarchy, a pecking order, a much more complex society than you’d ever give them credit for. Most of all, there is no doubt animals enjoy life."

"The thing that gives me the greatest joy in the world is to be able to say to you that no animal has to die for me to live. I feel very, very strongly about that, that no animal out there is going to experience the terror and the devastation and the death of slaughter because it is called for for my lifestyle. I think about all of those animals that I was part of sending to death and I think that my gift to them today in retribution is the fact that never is another one going to have to die for my lifestyle."

"There’s nobody in the world that loves a farmer more than I do, because I understand how hard they work, I know how difficult their lives are."

"The people I knew involved in animal production were good people just trying to do the best they knew how for what they envisioned were the right reasons—feeding a hungry America. They believed they were providing an absolute necessity: first-class protein. It was ingrained in them from the time they were kids, 'eat your meat'."

"Farmers’ debt is increasing all the time. But this system is a treadmill; they don’t know how to get off. Even though they know organic would be better, they don’t know how to get from where they are today to where they need to be. It’s the same problem I had on my farm in 1983, how do I get where I should be without financial backing?"

"The overwhelming majority of profits made in agriculture today are being achieved by the sectors that are growing food for people – that are feeding people, not animals. ... Rather than having hundreds of thousands of acres losing money, some of the most profitable things I’ve ever seen in my life are five-acre vegetable gardens that are growing vegetables for people."

"I would say to farmers that are out there today: Figure out a way, with the tools that you have, of producing food for humans – controlling it – whether it is individually, or by cooperative, or whatever mechanism you can – controlling that product until you sell it to the consumer. Growing grain and stuffing it down the throat of an animal so that you can sell the animal to a multinational corporation below what it costs you to produce it, to me is suicidal."

"What we’re doing today is non-sustainable. We’re basically ruining the environment, destroying the water, and all of this with the unbelievable characterization that we’re trying to feed a hungry world. And that's just not true."

"There’s enough food produced in the world today to feed every living human on the planet – which is over six billion – if we quit feeding our food to livestock. For example, it takes 16 pounds of grain to put a pound of meat on your plate. Sixteen pounds of grain will feed 32 humans. We have about 1.25 billion people on the planet today that are going to bed hungry. We also have 1.25 billion people that are going to bed at night overweight and obese."

"For every pound of feed in the front end you end up with a pound of manure out the back end and most of it ends up in great piles. When it rains, it runs off into the aquifer. Agriculture ends up to be the number one cause of pollutant in the United States in the acquifer."

"I don't think that there's any doubt about it that the reason that most rainforest is cut down today is so that you can get the trees out of the way and plant grass. Grow the grass and produce beef. The problem is that rainforest soil is so poor that it will only support grass for about three years and then they have to cut down more rainforest to grow more grass and the issue is ongoing."

"Every time you reach into your pocket and you spend a dollar, you're voting on what kind of a future you want to live in. ... If you don’t like the way things are happening, go out and support the people that are trying to make a change. Go out and buy organically grown food, go out and buy a product that is energy efficient. If there are too many cars out there, then walk, ride a bicycle, or take a bus."

When asked his opinion about Whole Foods' Animal Compassion Standards, he answered:

"Whole Foods, has done a masterful job of roping people in, saying, we’re not perfect, but we’re sure better than those other guys. Sure, certain methods of production are more ‘humane’ than others, but never forget, there’s no such thing as humane slaughter. There is always fear in their eyes. They know exactly what’s going to happen. So for anyone to claim there is such a thing as humane slaughter, well that’s the greatest oxymoron in the world."

When asked his opinion about cage-free eggs, he answered:

"If I go out and buy cage-free eggs, is that better than buying the industry standard eggs? Absolutely. But is an egg necessary for a healthy lifestyle? Absolutely not. The end product is still killing the animal and the consumption of those animals is killing us. ... So let’s quit bullshitting ourselves about this, ‘I’m part of the solution by buying cage-free or free-range eggs,’ mentality and become part of the only real solution—buying no eggs."

"When we’re involved in confining the animals, when we’re involved in killing the animals, we’re part of the problem. We become part of the problem when we put our money into the industry by buying or support the buying of animal products produced better than some other ways. I try to never allow any of my limited dollars to end up in the till of those I consider to be the bad guys."

"I'm convinced that, with the shape the planet is in environmentally, we don't have time to fool around and just become a part time vegetarian. For me, the sooner folks become vegan, the happier I am."

Quotes are from his 1997 interview by One-Off Productions, his 2003 interview with The Aquarian, his 2006 interview with Satya and his 2011 Guest Chat on ARZone.