I am a human being.
Therefore I am a murderer.
My ancestors killed yours,
my people enslaved yours and killed them
so I am responsible for their crimes.
We are our past and it makes us what we are.
Thus we are responsible for what those who were us have done
since they were us and who is to say we will not do what they did?

I have killed animals indirectly. I am the second killer
the one that eats, the person who feeds off death.
I am the reason the animals die.
I have blighted the oceans, killed the life there
the very life we all came from I have helped destroy.

And when I knew this, when I accepted this as true,
I refused to eat them and shunned their killers:
my fellow men. But since they kill I also kill.
We cannot escape the responsibility for it. We are all one race
And all responsible for what we do.
The sins of one are reflections of the sins of many --
and the sins of many cannot be stopped by one.

Then I only ate vegetables and fruit
but who am I to say that vegetables and plants do not feel?
And I see the fields, rows after row, nature being held
imprisoned by our need and food -- the land slowly dying
and being killed to feed us.
And so I came to the conclusion that I could not eat.
Not that and be responsible for those deaths.
I am not the conscience of humanity but I am my own
and thus to expiate this pain I do not cause pain.

And I have been placed in this building.
Made to eat food, forced to in fact. Forced to live and ordered to kill.
Anorexic, bulimic, they call me out loud.
Insane when they think I do not hear.
But I am sane -- I do not wish to kill. And to do that I must not eat:
my death is necessary to preserve life.

I am willing to do this for the sake of life
for I have no wish to preserve my living at the cost of the lives of others.
Can any other say the same?

- Josh MacLeod (1999)