This Speech Turned My Family Vegan
... and friends into animal rights activists
Giving speeches can be an incredibly effective way to spread the vegan message. Today, I want to share with you the script for a powerful speech that you can hold anywhere. It is my most successful one so far.👇
The speech has received a lot of positive feedback and already turned a considerable number of people vegan. Therefore, I want to share it with you as an inspiration. Feel free to use the script for your own speech, wherever it seems effective and appropriate.
I have refined and shortened the speech dozens of times to distill it down to the most convincing arguments. Having gathered feedback from various settings, I know that it is effective.
I’ve held the speech on family gatherings, among friends, during a discussion on reforming our catering policy at work, in front of university courses, and at public events.
Before you read the script, some remarks:
The speech takes around 10 minutes. When you announce your speech, give your audience an indication of how long it will take. For maximum impact and memorability, take your time and don’t rush through it.
Make sure to choose an appropriate setting. Of course, not everyone present needs to agree with you views (otherwise, holding the speech would be quite pointless), but everyone should be aware what’s about to happen and be open for it. In some cases, this can be difficult to ensure. Once, I held the speech in front of 200 people. Of course, I didn’t ask every single person if they were ready to hear a speech on veganism — but in this case, my input was announced by the event organizers and everyone was free to leave the room anytime (fortunately, nobody did).
Encourage your audience to listen with an open heart. Before you start the speech, tell the audience that the topic is very close to your heart; that you can understand when the topic is emotional or associated with resistance — but that you would be incredibly grateful if they could try their best to listen with an open heart and open mind. You can also invite them to make themselves comfortable and close their eyes if they want.
Adjust the speech, if needed. Before you hold the speech, be sure to read it a few times — not only to be familiar with it, but also to check if it fits your specific setting and audience. If anything needs to be added or changed in order to make the speech more suitable and authentic, feel free to do so.
Why are some words in the script in bold print? To make the speech vivid and memorable, try to avoid a monotonous voice. Some words in the script are in bold print. These are suggestions for words you can emphasize.
Sources. Sometimes, people will ask you to send them sources for the claims that are made in the speech. Don’t worry: there are references to back up these claims. As I didn’t want to distract you while holding the speech, links or footnotes are not included in the script. However, I offer a PDF download below where all relevant sources are included.
Don’t try to answer questions if you don’t know the answer! If you receive questions from your audience that you cannot answer with full confidence, that is completely fine. Nobody can expect you to be all-knowing, only because you advocate for veganism. Tell the questioner that you don’t know the answer off the top of your head, but that you’re happy to do some research and follow up with more information. Important: never try to answer questions without knowing the answer! This will only harm your credibility and the vegan cause.
Any improvement suggestions? Share them with us! If you have any improvement suggestions for the speech, please leave a comment. Your feedback and ideas are more than welcome. I can’t guarantee that I will add all your ideas into this speech as I want to keep it concise. But if not in this speech, good ideas will definitely be included in future speeches.
The speech
People often ask me — and maybe you’re wondering too: “Why is there so much advocacy for veganism these days? Aren't there other issues that deserve our attention as well?”
It’s true: there are many important issues and problems in the world. And obviously, veganism isn’t the only cause we should care about.
However, what makes veganism so special is that it affects so many different areas of life simultaneously. I was not aware of that when I was younger, never really learnt about it in school or at home.
In case you’ve had a similar experience, I'd like to give you a glimpse into the astonishing things that I’ve learned over the last few years — and that have fundamentally changed my view of the world.
My first point begins with an excerpt from a United Nations report:
“The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”
Environmental harms caused and accelerated by the animal industry include soil degradation, species extinction, climate change, water pollution, air pollution, acid rain, overfishing, and the irreversible destruction of marine ecosystems.
The consumption of animal products is also responsible for over 70% of rainforest destruction in South America — and generally the leading cause of deforestation worldwide.
Additionally, animal farming generates more than five times the greenhouse gas emissions of all aircraft in the world taken together.
Recently, an article in The Guardian revealed that the emissions from just thirteen dairy farms match those of the entire United Kingdom.
Second point:
Working conditions for employees in the animal industry are often cruel, leading to frustration, despair, severe accidents, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, and an increased risk of suicide.
Working conditions in the animal industry are regularly described as “modern slavery”.
After thorough research into the working conditions of the U.S. animal industry, Bloomberg published an article titled, “America’s Worst Graveyard Shift Is Grinding Up Workers”.
A Business Insider headline reads, “The meat industry is hiding a dark secret, as workers at ‘America's worst job’ wade through seas of blood, guts, and grease”.
The slaughterhouse employees put at risk to satisfy society’s taste for meat are overwhelmingly people of color and members of other disadvantaged minorities.
Third point:
In its official statement, the world's largest organization of nutrition experts, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, confirms that a balanced vegan diet is, quote, “appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.”
According to the physician and bestselling author Michael Greger, abstaining from animal products has a preventive effect against 14 of the 15 deadliest diseases of our time. Scientifically confirmed health benefits of a vegan diet include (among many others):
Reduced risk of various types of cancer,
Significantly fewer cardiovascular diseases,
Lower risk of diabetes,
Fewer cases of food poisoning,
Reduced need for medications in old age, and
Reduced risk of internal inflammations
Furthermore, the animal industry is the leading cause of antibiotic resistance.
In many countries, including the U.S., more than half of all antibiotics are used on farmed animals, making the industry an ideal breeding ground for resistant bacteria.
In the long run, this will render many types of surgeries impossible, and horrible diseases untreatable. According to predictions, by 2050, 10 million people will die each year from resistant bacteria — more than the current deaths from all types of cancer combined.
Fourth point:
While 24,000 people die from hunger and malnutrition every day, our society wastes massive amounts of grain, corn, soy, and fresh water to grow livestock — resources that could be directly consumed by humans.
Animals are an incredibly inefficient food source. It takes about 100 calories of grain to produce just 12 calories of chicken or 3 calories worth of beef.
The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people (which is more than the current world population!)
And while every third human suffers from water scarcity, the production of one pound of beef uses as much water as a 135 days’ worth of showers.
Fifth and final point:
The animal industry — even when you ignore its effects on public health, world hunger, and exploited workers — remains one of the largest, if not the largest, source of mental and physical suffering in the world.
Most of us wouldn’t tolerate animal abuse if it happened right in front of our eyes.
Yet, every 30 minutes, as many animals are killed for human consumption as people have died in the six years of the Second World War — the deadliest conflict in human history. Every 30 minutes! And this doesn't even count fish and other marine animals.
Contrary to common belief, even the production of eggs and dairy products are deeply cruel. In the egg industry, it is a standard practice to kill all male chicks by gassing them, suffocating them in waste bins, or by shredding them alive.
To make them lactate, dairy cows are forcibly impregnated over and over again. They are bred to produce ten times as much milk as they would naturally, and as a result often suffer from painful udder infections.
Newborn calves in the dairy industry are separated from their mother immediately after birth in a traumatizing procedure — many of them are dehorned and castrated without anesthesia.
While cows have a natural life expectancy of 20 years, it is common in the industry — even on organic farms — for cows to break down from exhaustion after 4 or 5 years of continuous pregnancies and milk production. Milk production declines around that time anyways, so if the dairy cows are still standing, they are killed for hamburgers and beef regardless.
Now, I have talked about:
impacts on climate change and environmental harms,
horrific working conditions,
public health,
world hunger, and
animal suffering.
Having heard all this, please answer this question for yourself:
Should we support this industry?
Should we pay with our money for this incredibly destructive and completely unnecessary industry to continue to exist?
The answer seems more than obvious to me today.
And I have consumed animals for most of my life. Clearly, I’m in no position to point fingers.
But I agree with Jonathan Foer when he says:
“Our response to this industry is ultimately a test of how we respond to the weak, the invisible, the silent — it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. (...) Those who live today belong to the generations that now know better. (...) We are the ones who will rightly be asked: What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?”
The vegan lifestyle may not be perfect. But it offers a huge contribution to reducing the many harms I have talked about.
To wrap up, let me summarize once again — and now from a positive perspective:
A vegan lifestyle not only avoids unnecessary violence against animals, prevents many forms of environmental destruction and improves your own health, but also protects your fellow human beings from hunger, misery and exploitation.
Honestly, can you think of a more convincing reason to try out a new diet and lifestyle?
…
Thank you so much for listening.
Downloads
You can download the speech in PDF format here (with or without references):
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Don’t forget to share this post with your fellow vegan activists so they can use this speech, too:
Great job, Pala! I love that you created an entire speech people can use, and made it concise and convincing.
Excellent, shared!