For those old enough to remember it, the 1973 thriller The Exorcist is undoubtedly among the most frightening movies ever made.

Depicting a teenage girl possessed by the Devil, the Exorcist was slammed by Catholics for its demonic portrayal, despite having been written by a devout Catholic, William Blatty. The star of the movie was Linda Blair, who’s name and face remain synonymous with the movie over 40 years later.

Few would recall many of Linda’s later roles I suspect, but she has gone on to make a contribution in a far more tangible arena than Hollywood.

America has a massive pet animal problem.

In 2003 , she became acutely aware of America’s pet animal “over population” problem and formed The Linda Blair Worldheart Foundation, which fights against domestic animal abuse, particularly in Dogs. Blair takes a stand against Dog Fights, Puppy farms, and generally strives to rescue and re-home at risk or abused dogs.

When hurricane Katrina ravaged the US in August 2005, Blair spent over two weeks camped in the back of a truck, near an animal shelter in Louisiana.

She would eventually personally take in 51 dogs from that shelter, 48 have since been rehoused, whilst 3 are waiting for their new home 8 years later.

Turning Vegetarian

Linda says she was reading a book in 1998 about acid rain, pesticides, and the way commercial interests “farm” animals. That book made me a vegetarian, she says, and becoming Vegetarian changes your life. It\’s a step to living more sustainably.

It makes you more aware of the foods that you eat, and brings animal cruelty and the damage done to our planet through animal farming into focus.

The way we choose to farm animals definitely impacts on our environment, clearly affecting the air, oceans, rivers and land.

Few people realize that the largest contributor to greenhouse gas is cattle farming.
Equally concerning is the cruelty to animals that comes from so called \”factory farming,\”

Another part of the puzzle is the growth in diabetes and obesity, the incidence of those has never been so high.

Becoming Vegan

Becoming not only vegetarian , but a Vegan, and being an example of another way, is part of the stance behind a new

book co-written by Linda, called “Going Vegan”

which can be purchased at The Linda Blair Worldheart Foundation, where sales assist in funding the rescue of domestic animals.

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

As Linda Blair has discovered, going Vegan is one step better again.
“No animal has to suffer for me to live”…Linda Blair.

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Being a Vegan you might not think of yourself as being a environmentalist. Recent research has established that the livestock industry is the single largest producer of Global Greenhouse Gases (GHG), more than global transport and industry put together.?? Today’s meat-filled Western world is unsuitable for today’s world. If you go back to the early 50’s where the population was a 1/3 of what it is today, the need for mass livestock factory farms were not needed. ??However, today, pollution, overuse of fossil fuel, water and land resources are causing massive wide spread environmental and land degradation.

These are the by products of the burger that you are so disconnected from. How easy has it been for today’s society to pop down to their local macca’s store and pick up what ever they wanted. No longer do they have to see how much pain and suffering the animals have to live in, let alone the massacre that occurs for their meal.

As stated, the livestock industry is the single largest cause of GHG’s. This is due to the huge crop fields that are needed to sustain the animals. These crop fields have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the Amazon. They have found it more efficient to chop down a massive slice of the rainforest in order to produce soy farms.?? 55sq feet of tropical rainforest are consumed along with every quarter pound of rainforest beef, and 85% of lost topsoil is directly related to livestock grazing. If you mix this with the industries massive use of fossil fuels and water required you are looking at an industry that is stripping the planet bare.

The average person in the Western World consumes 260 pounds per year and to produce that quarter pound of beef is 55sq feet of tropical rainforest. Each person is responsible for 14,300sq feet of rainforest destroyed per year.

Adopting a plant based diet (a kinder diet) can have massive reversible environmental impacts on our Planet. By each person making that simple choice to stop consuming meat, they are helping to save our precious resources, and precious human lives that are starving, and of course our precious animal friends lives.

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