Srila Prabhupada has also written, “Real philosophy is nothing more than this: friendliness to all living entities.” Elsewhere, he writes, “If people are to be educated in the path back to Godhead, they must be taught first and foremost to stop the process of animal-killing.”

Most of the problems plaguing society are caused by killing animals. Srila Prabhupada said that abortion, like war, is the karmic reaction for killing animals–especially cows. He said, “If you kill the cow, who is your mother, then in some future lifetime, your mother will kill you.” Devotees have always scoffed at people who protest war, march for peace, protest nuclear weapons, etc., while eating meat, but Srila Prabhupada said the same thing about abortion!

In a purport from the First Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada writes, “It is nonsensical to say that the killing of animals has nothing to do with spiritual realization.” Similarly, in his purport to the Srimad Bhagavatam 6.10.9, Srila Prabhupada writes: “One cannot continue killing animals and at the same time be a religious man. That is the greatest hypocrisy. Jesus Christ said, ‘Do not kill,’ but hypocrites nevertheless maintain thousands of slaughterhouses while posing as Christians. Such hypocrisy is condemned…”

Srila Prabhupada even candidly told a Catholic priest in London in 1973, that, “Animal-killers cannot understand God. I have seen this. It is a fact.”

Srila Prabhupada said: “…as far as meat-eating is concerned, every cow will die–so you just wait awhile, and there will be so many dead cows. Then you can take all the dead cows and eat…Don’t kill. When the cow is dead, you can eat it.” One of the first things I learned from devotees was that Srila Prabhupada said this about meat in general: if you want to eat flesh, wait until the animal dies of natural causes. This indicates that Srila Prabhupada was not thinking in terms of “dietary laws,” or food in the mode of goodness, passion, or ignorance, but rather in terms of the animals’ right to life.

The Mahabharata (Santi-parva 141.88) also says that the eating of “unclean” food is not as terrible as the eating of flesh (it must be remembered that the brahmins of ancient India exalted cleanliness to a divine principle).

The Srimad Bhagavatam quotes Maharaja Pariksit as having said: “only the animal-killer cannot relish the message of the Absolute Truth.” And Srila Prabhupada said: “If the Christians want to love God, they must stop killing animals.” Srila Prabhuapada not only opposed killing animals for food, he also opposed killing animals for sport and animal experimentation. These facts indicate that devotees of Krishna are vegetarian out of compassion for animals, and not just because meat, fish, and eggs are unofferable to Lord Krishna. It is a significant fact that Srila Prabhupada did not reject any of his fallen disciples, as long as they did not return to flesh-eating.

Lord Chaitanya made vegetarianism central to the sankirtana movement when He discussed flesh-eating with the Chand Kazi of Navadwipa, a local Muslim ruler, learned in the Koran. And Srila Prabhupada followed our Lord’s example by repeatedly bringing up the moral issue of killing animals with Christian clergy (“Thou shalt not kill”).

Srila Prabhupada said: “Animal-killers cannot understand God. I have seen this. It is a fact.” Vegetarianism, like prasadam distribution, softens the heart. It makes it possible for people to understand things of the spirit. Back in the ’80s, when I was part of the San Diego FOLK program, one Prabhupada disciple, Mahatma dasa (Martin Hausner), described an incident where he was preaching in Balboa Park. A man came up to him and said, “I’m a Christian. What do you believe?” So, Mahatma told him about bhakti-yoga, devotion to a personal God. The man replied, “Then you’re saved.” His response surprised Mahatma: Why did he answer like this? Usually, Christians are hostile and antagonistic. So Mahatma asked the man, “Are you vegetarian?” The Christian replied, “I don’t eat any red meat, and I was thinking of giving up chicken and fish.”

Dr. Richard Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, asked me why I began the first chapter (which focuses on the Old Testament and the Jewish Tradition) of my book, They Shall Not Hurt or Destroy, by stating that the ethical basis for animal rights and vegetarianism is secular and nonsectarian, while the religious basis in the West is strongest in the Bible and the Jewish tradition. I told him I did this to emphasize the point that one can become a vegetarian or vegan without fear of being “converted” to another religion. Animal rights and vegetarianism are a secular and nonsectarian campaign, comparable to women’s rights or civil rights: it applies to everyone, including atheists and agnostics.

I attended my first anti-vivisection protest in 1985, as anti-apartheid demonstrations rocked the UC San Diego campus. I first got interested in promoting vegetarianism in mainstream society after reading John Robbins’ Diet for a New America (1987). Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, it makes veganism seem as reasonable and mainstream as recycling. For example, half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause ten times more water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation’s industries combined. Meat producers are the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contributing to half the water pollution in the United States.

Joanna Macy, author of Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, depicts the advantages of America moving towards a vegan diet in her foreword to Diet for a New America:

“The effects on our physical health are immediate. The incidence of cancer and heart attack, the nation’s biggest killers, drops precipitously. So do many other diseases now demonstrably and causally linked to consumption of animal proteins and fats, such as osteoporosis…

“The social, ecological, and economic consequences, as we Americans turn away from animal food products, are equally remarkable. We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population; so we have become able to alleviate malnutrition and hunger on a worldwide scale…

“The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes, begin to grow again. Oxygen-producing trees are no longer sacrificed for cholesterol-producing steaks.

“The water crisis eases. As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources. The amount now available for irrigation and hydroelectric power doubles. Meanwhile, the change in diet frees over 90% of the fossil fuel previously used to produce food. With this liberation of water energy and fossil fuel energy, our reliance on oil imports declines, as does the rationale for building nuclear power plants…”

Joanna Macy goes on to admit, “This scenario is wildly, absurdly utopian. It is also clearly the way we are meant to live, built to live.” What could possibly make it a reality? “It is this very book!” Paul McCartney also says, “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is stop eatring meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it!” When I first read Diet for a New America, I thought it could have the same kind of impact on mainstream American society that Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet had in the ’70s.

His Holiness Hanumat-presaka Swami, an ISKCON sannyassi based here in Northern California, was so impressed with Diet for a New America, he said it was the kind of book a devotee should have written! The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in pounds. A fellow animal activist, Tricia Fernatt, felt as I did: since the vast majority of animals are being killed for food, why are we wasting our time on peripheral issues? Shouldn’t veganism be the main focus of our movement? And Diet for a New America tied it all together. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10 percent, it would release enough grain and soybeans to feed over 60 million people.

In writing his expose on the meat industry, John Robbins has been compared to Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader and other whistleblowers. In Diet for a New America, he demonstrates how all the various causes that concern the Left: healthcare, a sustainable energy policy, hunger, malnutrition, etc. are all taken care of in one fell swoop by a vegan diet. I had the opportunity to meet John Robbins in September 1988. It was one of the most inspirational moments of my life!

He was heir to the Baskin-Robbins fortune. He renounced it at a young age. He traveled to India, opened a yoga ashram in Canada, etc. He spoke of Gandhi and nonviolence. His son Ocean Robbins founded Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!) and is also dedicated to promoting veganism. I asked John if he would try and get the American Left to support animal rights. He told me that he sent a copy of his book to Mother Jones, a left-liberal periodical published in San Francisco.

Many on the Left are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. Joanna Macy spoke at the San Francisco Green Festival, in November 2005. In his 1990 updated and revised edition of Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that many of the political parties leaning towards the “Green” end of the political spectrum in Europe were beginning to oppose animal experimentation.

John Robbins elaborated further on the economic waste of raising animals for food in May All Be Fed, which my brother gave me for Christmas in 1992. Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Mexico, 80 percent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, yet the livestock are fed more grain than the human population eats! Meat consumption in Taiwan increased 600 percent between 1950 and 1990. In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used. Twenty-five years ago, Syria was a barley exporter. But in the intervening years, livestock have consumed increasing amounts of the country’s grain. Now, despite a phenomenal 1000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.

John Robbins spoke before the United Nations in 1994, where he received a standing ovation.