Famous Vegans

Moby, 2009.

Moby

Born Richard Melville Hall on September 11, 1965. He is an American musician, DJ and photographer. He started making music when he was 9 years old. When he was 14, he played with the hardcore punk group The Vatican Commandoes. He studied philosophy at the University of Connecticut and started DJ'ing while in college. He released his first single Go in 1991 and has been making albums ever since. He also produces and remixes scores for other artists, including David Bowie, The Beasty Bows and Public Enemy. You can check out his music and his website.

He also has a website called moby gratis, which provides free music for independent, non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.

Moby has been doing photography since he was 10 years old. In 2011 he released his first photography book Destroyed, which was released at the same time as the album Destroyed. He shot all the images while he was on tour, to show the side of touring that is often not exposed.

He became vegan when he was 21 and is animal rights activist. He is the co-editor of the book Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat). He also created a design for animal rights t-shirts for PETA, that you can find at this link.

In 2002, he opened a vegetarian/vegan café called Teany, together with his ex-girlfriend Kelly Tisdale, who runs it. Together they wrote the book Teany Book, which contains recipes from their restaurant.

He provided the soundtrack for the movie Earthlings, for which Joaquin Phoenix is the narrator.

Warning: very shocking images!
Choose carefully whether you want to watch this trailer.

Quotes by Moby:

"I became vegetarian because I didn’t want to be involved in anything that caused unnecessary animal suffering. That same reasoning led me to become a vegan."

"I like being vegan, I think it's good for my health. But honestly, one of the main reasons I'm vegan is because I'm ethically lazy. My friends who eat meat or who eat eggs have to sometimes wrestle with the ethical consequences of their actions. By being vegan, I take the easy way out. I truly don't judge other people's actions. But I think that factory farming is an abomination, and that's what the book Gristle is about."

When asked why he is always very outspoken about animal rights and veganism, he answered:

"Because billions of animals are suffering and it’s incumbent upon us to do all that we can to alleviate their suffering."

"Factory-farm lobbyists are so powerful and so well funded and they do everything in their power to hide the truth about farming. They keep the farms and slaughterhouses in places that most people never visit; they execute huge marketing campaigns in an effort to make animal production look like a happy, nice, benign institution."

"If the entire world decided to become vegan tomorrow, a whole host of the world's problems would disappear overnight. Climate change would decrease by 25 percent, deforestation would cease, rainforests would be preserved, our water- and air-quality would increase, life-expectancy rates would increase, and our rates of cancer would plummet, so certainly, with that one action of becoming vegan you are quite effectively making the world a better place."

When asked why he named one of his albums Animal Rights, he answered:

"There are a lot of pretty compelling issues that we're faced with. The fact that human beings are torturing and killing maybe 50 billion animals a year needlessly. As a food source they're very inefficient, and it's bad for us. As far as animal testing goes, it's scientifically not valid by any stretch of the imagination. And I think it's absurd that so much suffering and so much cruelty is being done needlessly."

"The number one cause of water pollution in the United States is animal production. And then the number one cause of deforestation in the Third World is clearing land for grazing. The environmental ramifications of animal production are almost as depressing as animal production itself."

"'Vegans are wrong'? Based on the bible? You're sadly ignorant, and here's why, scripturally: genesis 1:29 'and god said 'behold I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food...I have given every green plant for food'.' this is before the fall of man. before being cast out of Eden. So god proscribed a vegan diet for humans before the fall. And when god gives man 'dominion' over animals you might do yourself a favour and look up the etymology of 'dominion'. It means essentially, to act in a god-like way towards something. 'Domine' latin for 'god'. So in giving us 'dominion' over animals god is asking us to treat them as if we are god. In other words, with kindness and compassion and great reverence. I have almost no patience for anyone who uses religion to justify cruelty. And a belief in the rights of animals doesn't involve any sort of compromise in a belief in the rights of humans. The two rights go hand in hand, and they're both the product of love and compassion."

"I made what I would arguably maintain is the world's most obscenely healthy smoothie: almond milk, spinach, kale, cacao nibs, spirulina, bananas, strawberries, and blueberries. I use homemade almond milk, which is really easy to make — just take almonds and water and put it in a blender for 45 seconds, and then strain out the chunks of almond."

Quotes are from a 2001 comment he posted in his journal, his 2010 article in Grub Street New York, his 2011 interview with The Quietus, his 1997 interview with eWire, his 2008 interview with VegNews and his interview with PETA2.