The images in the following program are highly sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals, praying that you will help to stop it.

And contrary to popular belief, it is not your right in any way, shape or form to eat meat, cheese, milk, and eggs. That's not what rights are about, denying somebody else their equal rights and their freedom so you can harm them, enslave them, and murder them.

This is the Stop Animal Cruelty series on Supreme Master Television. This week we’ll meet Gary Yourofsky of Detroit, Michigan, USA, a dedicated protector of animals and devoted vegan, who has spoken to more than 60,000 students in 170 schools and universities about animal rights. Through real-world stories and solid statistics, Mr. Yourofsky urges people to be kind to animals and adopt a vegan lifestyle.

In 1996, he founded Animals Deserve Absolute Protection Today and Tomorrow (ADAPTT), a non-profit vegan organization that believes animals have the inherent right to be free. ADAPTT firmly opposes the meat, dairy, egg and honey industries as well as the abuse and killing of animals. Gary first became aware of cruelty to animals as a young man, when he was invited to go backstage at a circus.

My stepdad is a clown in Shrine Circus, (and he) invites me backstage when I’m 23, and I got my blinders on like everybody else. So I went to see the elephants. “Come back, come backstage.” And I’m excited, and I go back there and I stop dead in my tracks. Now, when you see cruelty in front of your face, even if you cannot explain it in detail, you know something’s wrong.

I couldn’t tell you at that moment like I can now what was wrong, but I saw three elephants in chains, front left feet, back right feet chained to the cement floor in the warehouse in the Michigan State Fairgrounds, swaying neurotically back and forth. I know that’s not elephant behavior; that’s a neurotic movement. I found out later that every elephant in every circus, because they’re all kept backstage in chains, always gets a neurotic and swaying motion.

To show you how identical animals and humans are when it comes to pain and suffering and neurosis, you know what children in orphanages to do most of the time? Rock back and forth. Elephants don’t rock, elephants sway instead. Same reason for the neurosis: no love, no mother, no family, no stimuli, and no natural environment. In the wild, elephants walk about 20 to 50 miles a day.

I didn’t even know the training was vicious. They beat these elephants with hooks and whips, iron bars, and baseball bats. They have to beat the pride out of them to make them acquiesce. I stepped face to face with these elephants, three of them, and nothing but sadness, and hopelessness, and fear was emanating from them.

I remember turning to the left and I saw a monkey screaming in his cage and grabbing the bars. I saw two tigers to the right pacing pathetically, and it didn’t add up. I knew something was wrong. It made me question where my food came from, where my shoes came from, and what really went on in an animal research lab.

When Gary told his best friend about this traumatic experience, the friend suggested that Gary visit the slaughterhouse near his home. The next day, Gary managed to get inside the killing factory, and was horrified to learn firsthand what went on there.

Beings were being treated like they’re worthless, people laughing at their suffering, ignoring their suffering. I remember walking up to a truck full of pigs. Now the way it was set up there, there was always six trucks filled with pigs waiting to be called in to the killing floor area.

And I peeked in this truck and this pig looked out at me. Our eyes locked together and I dropped the cameras. I was videotaping, tears rolling down my face, as a meat eater. His eyes were screaming at me, “Why are you doing this to me, to us? What have we done?” And in my head, I am saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

From that moment on, Gary's life changed forever. He became a vegetarian and later a vegan. But he felt this was not enough and wanted to find more ways to save animals from torture, exploitation and suffering.

I felt like I had to be their voice. I felt like I can represent the animals properly and effectively. So I started running the gamut of activism from radical to non-radical, from getting arrested and doing civil disobedience to freeing mink from a fur farm in Canada, in 1997 in Blenheim, Ontario.

Gary successfully liberated 1,542 mink from certain death at a Canadian fur farm. As this was an illegal act, Gary was arrested and sentenced. However, his heroism won him much publicity, and he soon began to receive invitations to give lectures about animal cruelty, and now delivers hundreds of talks each year to students, informing them about the immense anguish caused by the animal-based diet.

I want you to think about how you would feel, if the moment you were born, somebody else had already planned the day of your execution, because that’s what it’s like to be a cow, a pig, a chicken or a turkey on this planet. Every year in America, without mercy, we murder 10- billion land animals, and18-billion marine animals, not for health, survival, sustenance or self-defense. People eat meat, cheese, milk and eggs for four reasons: habit, tradition, convenience, taste; all unjustifiable reasons.

In his talks, Gary challenges many of the misconceptions that people have about meat eating; for example, the common argument that it’s all right to eat meat as long as the animal is killed humanely.

What about a slaughterhouse? Do you really think there is such a thing as humane slaughter? Exactly what is your definition of humane? Besides psychological and physical abuse, torture, dismemberment and murder, what else do you think happens to animals inside of a slaughterhouse? I’m well aware that animals suffer and die just because we’re here on the planet with them.

We build homes and roads through their habitat; we pollute their environment and destroy their habitat. Is there a reason we have to maximize the suffering and maximize the cruelty and the death that they already endure, by eating them on top of it all? Ninety-eight percent of animals who are abused and killed on this planet are abused and killed by the meat, dairy and egg industries.

Another misconception is that it’s all right to drink milk, because the cow is not killed in the process.

I think there's more cruelty in a glass of milk than a steak. First of all, 90% of hamburger meat in America comes directly from the dairy industry. When cows don't give huge amounts of milk, after three to seven years, (they are sent to the) slaughterhouse, no exceptions. If given a chance, cows can live to be 18 to 25.

I know you understand the concept that a female mammal has to be pregnant to produce and give milk. You just never think about it when it comes to the animals. Every cow on every dairy farm once a year a long steel device is shoved in her vagina to inject her with bull semen. When she gives birth later on, the baby is stolen. A couple of months later, they repeat the process all over again.

And let me tell you something, the worst scream I've ever heard, and I've heard them all firsthand, because around 17 years ago, when I started hearing about this, I was like every other stubborn, addicted meat eater. I didn't want to hear about it either.

The worst scream I have ever heard, by far, is a mother cow on a dairy farm screaming her lungs out day, after day, after day for her stolen baby to be given back to her. And why do they steal babies from their moms? Well, the dairy industry can't have little babies sucking up all that milk that was meant for them. Every time you have a glass of cow milk, some calf is not.

Gary believes those who eat animal products continue to do so in part because of the addictive nature of the foods.

This is the problem, see. Most people don’t want to put meat, cheese, milk, and eggs in the addiction category. They want to leave that to drugs like heroine and crystal methamphetamine. This is the world’s oldest and strongest addiction, meat, cheese, milk, and eggs. That is why it is going on so long. And that’s why people become so irrational when you ask them to stop harming cows and pigs, like asking a cigarette smoker to stop smoking.

They’ll come up with any excuse in the world, “Why? Everything’s fine. I don’t mind.” This is what meat eaters do all the time. In fact just to show you how irrational meat-eaters do become and can become when faced with the question of being kind to animals, last semester at Barry University in Miami (USA), I had a student, a grown man, say to me, “Hey Gary, cows and humans aren’t equals because cows can’t drive cars.”

At the end of his lecture, Gary challenges students to make a lifesaving, ethical decision.

You got a choice today. You hit that door and you can choose to be radically kind, never to intentionally harm another animal for breakfast, lunch or dinner ever again. These creatures have never harmed you and violated you in any way, shape or form. The least you can do is return the favor.

Or you can stay radically cruel, keep the status quo as is, make sure animals have their babies stolen from them, make sure their horns are cut off and beaks sliced off, testicles ripped out, make sure they never experience one drop of human kindness, and make sure there's a knife in their throat every second of every day for eternity. I hope you’ll make the right choice.

Many thanks, Gary Yourofsky, for your courageous, steadfast efforts to protect our animal co-inhabitants and encourage people to adopt a plant-based diet. Your work has saved the lives of countless fellow beings. We wish you every success in your future, noble endeavors, as we move toward a world in which all beings live together in harmony and dignity.

For more details on Gary Yourofsky, please visit: www.ADAPTT.org

Thank you for joining us for today’s program. Enlightening Entertainment is next, after Noteworthy News. May a peaceful, vegan society soon come to pass.