The most sacred act humans perform daily is choosing what to eat (and drink).

I live in Hidden Valley Lake and am increasingly distressed about the subject of animal cruelty inflicted daily on literally millions of enslaved animals on factory farms, then transported to slaughterhouses to have their throats slashed. So we can eat their dead flesh.

Most human beings have become addicted to eating meat, many of them two or three times a day!
This seemingly normal multitude totally disassociates from what they are eating, as if the meat product was “invented” at the supermarket and placed under cellophane for their consumption. In reality, of course, they are subsidizing a holocaust of cruelty.

We love our pets, but our compassion for them is so selective as to mock all reason. All animals want to live just as people do!

It’s the Easter season, a time for resurrection, rising above our lower nature, seeing anew with clear eyes, helping the helpless.

Please sign my petition urging Pope Francis – who takes his name Francis from Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment – to champion a vegetarian-vegan diet: http://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/urge-pope-francis-to-declare-himself-a-vegetarian-1 .

Jim Perilman lives in Hidden Valley Lake, Calif.