John Oberg (vegan) – A Voice for the Voiceless, Part 1 of 2

Let’s start by hearing how changing to a vegan diet altered John’s perspective on animal cruelty. “The decision to stop eating animals and to become vegan was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. I did it because I didn’t want to contribute to animal cruelty anymore. I’ve definitely felt like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and it’s been a beautiful thing. I feel like I can now live in confidence knowing that my actions from day to day aren’t causing unnecessary animal suffering, because if I’m not willing to cause harm to an animal, why should I pay someone else to cause harm to an animal?”

“Most people consider themselves animal lovers, and most people go through their day, day to day, eating animals. And they go through their day, day to day, not thinking about the impact that that has. But what you, and me, and many of the viewers here today understand, is that through our food choices alone, we impact dozens, dozens of animals every single year. Hundreds, or probably thousands, potentially even tens of thousands over the course of our lifetime.”

Next, John shares with us his approach to using social media as a successful tool to create awareness for the plight of our animal friends. “I look at the treatment that farm animals face in today’s world as something that is legal, or that is just absolutely cruel and unbelievable, but it’s legal and standard practice. There’s a lot of reasons for that, most of them surround money, and so what farm animals experience in 2020 in today’s world, is absolutely awful. The plus side is, the vast majority of people don’t know, so that gives us an opportunity to raise awareness and to talk about what farm animals are experiencing.”

“Social media really provides us this incredible opportunity, whether it’s us as animal advocates, or other people fighting for other causes, social media allows us this great opportunity to spread the word, to raise awareness, to advocate in a way that humans had never been able to advocate before. In the history of humankind, we’ve never been able to send messages in an instant, to any corner of the globe in an absolute instant, in massive numbers day in and day out.”