You have been lied to for your entire life. You have been taught that meat and animal products make up a valuable portion of the food pyramid, yet it has been proven that this isn’t correct.

There are heavy amounts of scientific proof that humans can healthfully survive on a plant-based diet. In fact, much evidence suggests that veganism would be more beneficial. It increases your antioxidant intake and can help lower your cholesterol and blood pressure. Further, putting organic, natural substances into your body is much better than eating meats filled with hormones, drugs and a slew of other things that can only harm you. The fat in meats and animal products could be easily replaced with nuts, beans and veggies which will not cause as much weight gain.

However, most people refuse to change their diet. They are so used to doing what they have always been doing, thinking what they have always been thinking and eating what they have always been eating that they have no desire to worry about the negative consequences that it brings them. To justify their actions, many claim that we have the right to hunt, farm and kill animals because we have always done so. Yet this argument is as if to say we have the right to continue slavery because we’ve done it before. That doesn’t make it right.

Others argue that animals are not as smart as us, and therefore they must not understand or truly care about the torture they go through at farms. Still others are honest that they just enjoy the taste too much to attempt to try anything else.

Here’s why that’s wrong.

Animals do not belong to us. They are sentient beings who feel things and understand things more than we can imagine. Humans often think that because we are the species with the largest brains on the planet, everything on it belongs to us. Yet this Earth belongs to all of the species on it, and it is not ours to take from or destroy. If we continue to kill off our animals, they will eventually go extinct. Our wildlife population will begin to dwindle, and the positive effects that these animals bring to our environment will no longer be possible.

Furthermore, the acts performed on farm animals are absolutely horrific. Continuing to eat them only confirms that these tortures will continue. Cows, pigs, chickens and other farm animals are raped, confined in small spaces and slaughtered after their job is done. They are not given a life. They are only alive for the benefit of humans, and once they have given all they can, we murder them. Anyone who is morally okay with this has not actually seen the awfulness that is a farm.

Farms are an industry that has convinced us that we need to keep livestock in pens and cages. We don’t. The business thrives on the idea of a food pyramid and the made-up necessity for meat in our diets. Don’t let them kill any more innocent animals.