About the author ( GEORGE POWELL.)

                                                                                                 The Formative Years

I was born in 1952 the son of a Coal Miner and grew up in Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire, which is the world centre of Pottery manufacture. This was one of the most polluted areas in Britain at that time, a place where vast quantities of animal bones were consigned to, for use in the manufacture of fine bone china which the area was world famous for.

There was certainly no idea in my mind, that I would break away and pursue a rural life! However an opportunity arose in the form of a part time job, carrying the hunting bag, for some local men who went out at weekends shooting for sport.

As years went by I reached the age of 14, and one day as I criss-crossed the countryside with the shooting party who were flushing out Pheasant, Partridge and Snipe, I came across a local farmer to whom I mentioned that I was leaving school, and he very kindly took me under his wing and offered me a job, so on the night that I left school, I jumped on my rickety old bicycle and peddled many miles to his farm, and started to live and work in a rural community deep in the Shropshire countryside, and over time as I progressed in knowledge, I started to develop a greater interest in nature.
The farmer I worked for was thankfully very antiquated, and I got the chance to work alongside such gentle giants as Shire and Suffolk Punch Cart Horses, we worked together through all kinds of weather, and I made close friends with these magnificent creatures. On the farm they also bred Hunters and Polo ponies, and while helping to run the dairy farm and the horse unit, I studied a wide variety of agricultural practice at college.  As a matter of course, I became very skilled in the damnable act of castrating pigs, yet just as all the others in my class I thought nothing of it at the time, even thinking it was stupidly funny. I also learned to dehorn cattle, tail dock lambs, and perform a host of other animal husbandry practices, that I now see as exploiting, and violating the rights of other creatures, these practices are still viewed by the farming community and the majority of people in general as perfectly acceptable. Of course like many young rural men, I myself also liked the idea of hunting animals and birds, and I acquired my first double barrel shotgun at the age of 16, and hunted down and killed many creatures just for the fun of it, however I gradually realised the pointlessness of it.
Some years later, I left Shropshire for Staffordshire, working again in agriculture in a very intensive Pig and Poultry unit, then I entered Horticulture. By the end of my career in agriculture I was starting to grow imperceptibly kinder toward our fellow creatures, as I witnessed their plight at our hands.

Change of Heart                                                                     Image right:  Pre-Vegan years.

Twenty five years ago I went to college again, this time to study Arboriculture ( Tree Care) and gradually started to realise that we are not in a higher position on the planet at all, but are just part of the whole, it was from that point on, that the wonder of our role as carers ( Stewards) for the planet started to grow in me. With this in mind I later set out on my way to seek the creators views concerning our relationship toward the animals as depicted within the pages of several holy books, and have avidly researched religions of many kinds both ancient and modern in this regard.  

In my personal experience I have found it most unfortunate, but it is often the atheist that seems to be the more compassionate, and not the Christian, Jew, or Muslim, for most religiously inclined people usually deem it as God ordained to enslave other creatures, and I have also personally found that nature, and creation itself, can tell us volumes about “God” and not the holy books only.  Years later while travelling through the desert I was privileged to ascend and watch the dawn break at the top of Mount Sinai in Jordan, as I sat there in the darkness awaiting the first shafts of light heralding the new day I considered the world going about its everyday business below and beyond the mountain, could there be room for change within society and religion I thought?, could there also be any real room for growth in compassion?.   Though a vegetarian for some years, I became acutely aware that further changes were necessary in my life that I hadn't formerly realised, and following the expedition I decided to bite the bullet and fully adopt the spiritually, and physically beneficial vegan lifetyle.  I knew then that I could use what I have learnt to help try and bring about changes toward a more compassionate world. This meant that I had to study even more deeply the world of religious attitudes toward the taking of animal life to do justice to the subject, for there are now a considerable number of sincere religious people that are becoming acutely aware that ritual animal slaughter for the Kosher and Halal markets, involves immense terror and suffering, though some worshipers now realise this they are often at a loss as to how to justify such necessary changes within the framework of their religion.  These subjects are covered more fully under the sections of Animal Theology & Kosher & Halal.

Through these later years I have been privileged to be on the list of speakers for addressing the Wildlife Trust groups in Britain, and have also had great pleasure in travelling not only throughout Britain but also ancient sites in Greece, Egypt and the Middle East to collect information for my list of talks which cover in detail mans relationship throughout history with the ancient landscape, the animals, trees and vegetation.   ( "The Green Man").

A UK first - ("Animal Ethics and the Naturalist")

The pinnacle of my 25 years of public speaking was to design a talk that was destined to be a  UK first  designed especially for Wildlife organisations and those interested in the natural world, under the title of ( “Animals Ethics and the Naturalist“). The first evening was at the outset very worrying for me as some of the audience were coming in wheelchairs, and of course the prime objective in addressing the public is to find common ground, and not to alienate the audience, this thankfully came by way of the comparison of human and animal sufferings.

  From the outset I sought to demonstrate how human freedom contrasts with that of some captive species, we then explored images of the animal kingdom, from the time we were bound by our brutal prehistoric beginnings as represented in the cave paintings found at ( Lascaux in France).   We discussed our emerging role as a hunter gatherer species and how we moved on in our development as we learned to develop more ingenious skills of the entrapment of animals and the breeding and cultivation of wild grasses. We explored our record of stewardship of the earth, or lack of it!, and how we as the master race have been instrumental in the unnecessary extinction of some species from the wild in Britain and other lands, we further considered how all creatures in captivity are descended from wild ancestors. Certainly when we begin to undestand that fact and take it to heart, it becomes abunantly clear that those animals held captive by humans today, either for Farming, or Medical research, must, by instinct, hear the inaudable call of the wild, and long for their freedom.  

I asked the audience to consider this point: that we though some among us may be ill, very ill, but do we really suffer like the victims of vivisection, and farming?, for they unlike us cannot make lifestyle choices, struggling and screaming to get out of laboratories or slaughterhouses, they are certainly not willing martyrs, and so definitely do not want to suffer and die for us, yet with homocentric aims and without compassion both men and women vivisectors drag these animals into their laboratories and strap them to frameworks, where their unconsenting bodies are violated in the name of scientific research, in the hope of cures for our ailments, or sometimes just so that products for our personal vanity can be tested.

The talk was very well recieved and after concluding that evening, I shook hands with all, yes,even with those that I at first thought would try to destroy my talk, but who decided not to. These very ones, the sick and the disabled had initially come along to defend there own rights, not that of the unfortunate victims of vivisection and farming, yet at question the speaker time, some kindly offered constructive comments.

We all thankfully departed on friendly terms, however, the seeds had been carefully sown, it now remains to be seen, if the audience hearts have really been motivated toward following a compassionate way of coexistence with other species.  As I drove back home that night, I knew that I had started the wheels of something good turning, something that could be of great value toward exploited captive animals,  and which could help us secure our own survival as a species... "thus ULOVE began" .

As I look back I regret the abuse that I had been trained for, and undertook in the name of animal husbandry, however, I also count myself as being personally very fortunate to have been in the right place, at the right time, and to have witnessed first hand, the plight of other species, for unknown to me back then, it would serve to equip me, to speak, and teach with conviction, and very importantly experience, in behalf of exploited farm and research animals.

In the past many fine individuals have worked very hard in the past, to secure the abolition of human slavery and exploitation, and some were rewarded by seeing its end in their own lifetime, it is my personal hope, to one day see the rightfull end of all forms of animal exploitation, which I am convinced is a vital part of a united, healthy and happy world, one that most people including myself really yearn for, yet somehow, I think it will be a lot more difficult to achieve than witnessing the end of human slavery!.