Famous Vegans - Janez Drnovšek

Janez Drnovšek, 2009.

Janez Drnovšek

He lived from May 17, 1950 to February 23, 2008. He died at the age of 57. He was a Slovenian liberal politician. He was the President of Yugoslavia (1989-1990), Prime Minister of Slovenia (1992-2002) and President of Slovenia (2002-2007). He was fluent in the languages Slovene, Serbo_Croatian, English, Spanish, French and German.

In 1999, he was diagnosed with cancer. In 2002 he stepped down from his job as Prime Minister, to be elected to the less demanding job of President. He moved to a mountain hut near the village of Zaplana where he grew organic vegetables and baked his own bread. He first omitted red meat from his diet, then poultry, then fish and in 2005 he became vegan. When asked how he felt after switching to a vegetarian diet, he answered: "I feel great - they say I have too much energy".

In 2006, he left the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia and founded the Movement for Justice and Development.

When asked about his views and aspirations for the Movement for Justice and Development, he answered:

"My objective was to raise the consciousness of the people, not only in Slovenia, but around the world. I think that we need a critical mass of conscious people to change the present state of the world. There is too much suffering in the world and we destroy our planet, day by day. Only when most of the people of the world become conscious enough, then I think that politics will move and things will start to change."

Other quotes by Janez Drnovšek:

When asked why he became vegetarian, he answered:

"Because I feel vegetarian food is better, better quality. We eat meat because it's the way we had been brought up. I have been a vegetarian for a few years and just recently I have become a vegan, which means I don't eat milk, dairy products or eggs. There is still plenty of choice, varied vegetable foods, which are sufficient to our needs. I took this step following my inner feeling. Some people believe that vegan food is very limited and boring which is not true. It can be very diverse."

"We don't always realize how we treat animals, how we manage them. They are living creatures. People have this set idea of behavior towards animals and as result they very rarely question what we actually cause. If we think for a moment how man manages animals and what impact he has on animal world, we could say he was not human at all. Just think of all slaughterhouses and production of beef or poultry where conditions for animals are impossible. Often animals are transported in lorries without any water, which is extremely cruel. It is not that people are bad they just don't think about it. When the final product is in front of them on the plate, they don't think what was has been before and how it got to this stage."

"It is a question of respecting life in general. Animals are living creatures with feelings. Everyone who has a domestic animal or a pet knows that animals have feelings."

"Animals are beings who suffer and who can be happy, as we can. They have consciousness and they are conscious of what is going on. Animals are conscious that we are going to kill them. They suffer, they are afraid, they feel; and then people eat all these things."

"I think that today we can produce enough vegetarian food to feed everyone in the world. We don’t need to kill animals. It is just the low consciousness of people, in continuing this preference without thinking about it. We could tell someone in the restaurant, "If you order a steak, they will have to kill a cow for you. And then they have to take a part of the cow for the meat, and the cow will suffer. But it’s not necessary that you eat this. You have a variety of good vegetarian foods." Many people just eat automatically. People think this is what everyone does and they just continue with this, without thinking. So we have to raise the consciousness here, too."

"Education is very important. I think that education should contribute to the formation of the consciousness of children. This is much more important for them than to have an accumulation of all kinds of knowledge. They have to develop awareness in themselves, a consciousness or feeling that we are human beings who are interdependent, who must care for each other; that we cannot survive without this kind of connection or solidarity with other people, other living beings, animals, nature and so on."

"If a person's conscience is highly developed they will not kill or be cruel to animals. You can not expect from such person to go to war and kill people for a profit. People who do not kill and eat animals have a greater chance of finding a way to live in peace in harmony. Everything is interconnected in one's conscience. On a higher level one comes with the other."

"When we overcome our selfishness, then we become whole. When we start to think good and to do good; when we feel for other people, for other beings and nature, then we are whole. Otherwise, we do not really live per se. And selfishness is the point, the critical point for a human being or an individual to overcome - his or her own selfishness. But it’s also a critical point for humanity as a whole."

"We need a kind of leadership for humanity. Sometimes I say that politics ideally defend the interests of humanity as a whole. But they are always about the interests of some groups of people or of nations with economic interests. We can speak about geopolitical interests, but who defends the humanity as a whole? Who defends the earth? No one!"

"I believe it is foolish that European Union's main priority is one hundred percent subsidy of farming especially meat products. The fact that EU subsidizes mass production of meat and poultry is really the main obstacle from the ethics point of view. Not only that but also from the point of view of nutrition. We are frequently reminded by nature i.e. mad cow disease, recently swine fever, bird flu. It is obvious that something is not as it should be, something is disturbing the balance of nature, and that should be a warning to us all."

"Instead of using huge resources for mass meat production we should use it for organic farming of diverse produce from cereals, pulses, fruit and all the products that originate from these. This would certainly be kinder to nature as organic production means no use of chemical fertilizers or additives. It would mean no pollution to the environment and no chemical additives in our food. We consume these chemicals every day in our food and they are harmful. But behind all this are the interests of big manufacturers, lobbies, huge profits which are the driving force for these food manufacturers' conglomerates."

"The world's religions often speak about respecting life but they only mean human life and sometimes not even that. Looking back in the Middle Ages, the Catholics proclaimed for a long time that native Red Indians that were enslaved by the Spanish and Portuguese did not have a soul. This meant that they weren't treated as living creatures with feelings. Then they changed their mind and proclaimed that black people don't have souls. Centuries of black slavery followed. All this happened with the blessing of the Church."

When asked his opinion about the slaughtering of animals to be served on people's tables during Christmas celebrations, he answered:

"Jesus would be turning in his grave if he knew that mass slaughter of animals is carried out every year in his name. His deliverance is based on absolute respect of life and it is very difficult to imagine that he would accept millions of living creatures being killed in his honor."

When asked his opinion on live animal testing, he answered:

"You have to ask yourself would you like it if you were the subject of such testing. During the second world war my father was an inmate in the concentration camp in Dachau, where he was subjected to such medical experiments together with thousands other people. He didn't like it one bit. Some people would say it is necessary for the progress of science but I am sure that in most cases alternative methods can be used without the need for animal testing."

"Hunting which is by definition just chasing and killing of animals is, of course, completely unethical."

When asked whether his dog Brodi is vegetarian, he answered:

"You've been informed well. You'd better ask him personally. I'm not authorized to answer in his name." (laughing)

Quotes are from his 2005 interview with Damjan Likar, Chief Editor of the Slovenian magazine Animal Liberation and his 2007 interview with Supreme Master Television, episodes 187 and 188.