{"id":266,"date":"2012-09-06T14:40:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T14:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lamp1.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/?p=266"},"modified":"2019-06-12T10:22:20","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:22:20","slug":"jennifer-kepner-animal-advocate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/2012\/09\/06\/jennifer-kepner-animal-advocate\/","title":{"rendered":"Dishing up healthy: Jennifer Kepner &#8211; animal advocate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Missouri Western student Jennifer Kepner believes that if meat packing plants had glass walls, more people would stop eating meat, as she has. \u201cAnimals have the right to be left alone,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t eat meat knowing how the animals are slaughtered.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer had been a vegetarian for about three or four years, but after watching videos and documentaries, such as \u201cMeet your Meat,\u201d about animal treatment at meat packing plants, she became a vegan this past year. \u201cI just assumed laws would protect animals,\u201d she said. But her research made her realize they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer\u2019s youngest son is on board with the vegan lifestyle, but her husband and one son are not vegans. \u201cIt\u2019s their choice. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s right for me to tell them how to live.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the criminal justice major, her vegan lifestyle is all about the treatment of animals, but she said many people choose to be vegans because of issues such as sustainability, water use and pollution.<\/p>\n<p>Veganism has become a way of life for her \u2013 she tries to buy clothes made from environmentally friendly fabrics, and of course, she does not buy leather products. She also visits the website, leapingbunny.org, to learn which consumer products are made with no animal testing.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019ve discovered that you kind of ease into it and replace one thing at a time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer set up a table in the Blum Union last semester and passed out vegan food and literature, and she is starting a new student organization on campus for animal advocacy, all in an effort to make people more aware of how animals are treated in food processing.<\/p>\n<p>Students were receptive to trying her vegan choices in the student union, Jennifer said, and several picked up information that she had displayed. It was out of her comfort zone to set up a table and talk to people walking by, but she is passionate about her beliefs and wants to make other students aware.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think people can make a difference,\u201d Jennifer said. \u201cIf a person would stop eating meat just once a week, it would save a lot of animals.\u201d<br \/>\n-end-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Missouri Western student Jennifer Kepner believes that if meat packing plants had glass walls, more people would stop eating meat, as she has. \u201cAnimals have the right to be left alone,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t eat meat knowing how the animals are slaughtered.\u201d Jennifer had been a vegetarian for about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4219,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/4219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}