This is likely to be the first and last time I write about why I am vegan. Right now, when someone finds out you’ve made the choice to be vegan, they feel free to bombard you with questions, dares, name calling and “funny” jokes about bacon. I rarely tell anyone that I am vegan outright. I do post informational memes and photos on my social media but if you meet me in real life, I am not the first to bring up veganism…ever.
Speaking of social media, I belong to a few vegan groups where we share vegan recipes and ideas. Overwhelmingly, those groups are trolled by non-vegans who post counterproductive meat loving memes and photos daily. Why? I can only think that trolls on any site are simply lonely people whose only outlet for any kind of social interaction happens online. So if the can generate negative attention to themselves it feels a sort of sick need. Meh…
So why have a chosen veganism? The answer is very simple to me.
Animals.
I love animals and once I realized how horribly meat, dairy and egg producing animals are actually treated I just couldn’t do it anymore. I believe that what we put into our bodies directly becomes part of us. Trust me, I’ve eaten enough chips to know they have become a part of rather large ass. But it’s more than calories or even nutrients. It’s knowing that the last feeling that sentient being had on this earth before coming to my plate was terror as it was being brutally killed is just something I don’t want to ingest. The road from farm to plate for animals is not the idyllic serene pasture life we would all like to think it is. The animals we eat are pumped full of antibiotics so they don’t get the diseases they would living in the conditions they’re made to bare. Cattle stand shoulder to shoulder in mud and their own shit for days on end being fed low grade, high calorie feed to fatten up quickly. They they are forced down a shoot, crowded with others, terrified, prodded, kicked, hit…and finally throat slit, bleeding out, wailing in pain. Or pushed through a machine that kills them in even more painful ways. Dairy cows are made pregnant over and over again and their calves are taken from them at birth. This keeps their milk flowing but the cries of the mothers to babies is heartbreaking as the calves are either taken to be fattened for slaughter, put into “veal sheds” or just simply brutally killed off. The chicken on your plate has likely lived with thousands of others in cramped spaces, never seeing daylight, loaded with medications staving off natural illnesses from those conditions. If they are laying hens they are shut in cages stacked ceiling high on one another for as long as they are actively laying. The close quarters lead to natural animal behavior and they begin pecking one another to the death. If eggs are fertilized and hatched, females are sorted to be raised to be layers or dinner. Males are killed immediately, usually by getting their heads slammed on the edge of the sorting bin and tossed into bins to be ground into animal feed, some of which comes back to feed the chickens. Yes, dead chicks are fed back to the other chickens. Pigs, one of the smartest animals on the planet, are force fed while the lie in spaces too small for them to even turn over or sometimes stand. They give birth in those spaces, their babies just outside the small pen struggling to get to their mamas. The floors of these places are open with spaces for urine and feces to fall into. Small piglets often fall into that mess which can be several feet deep. They die there, gasping for air as they squeal for help, their mothers and siblings crying out to them. When fattened, pigs are prodded to go into a chute. Or maybe a stall. They are tied up and hung by their back legs and their throats are slit. They bleed out while still alive. Or they get a nail gun between the eyes and are left wriggling and screaming until they finally die.
To me, an animal lover, and an animal living on this earth, this is nothing shot of murder. The most heinous, brutal murder there is. I choose not to have that on my plate. I want peace in my life and I really believe that it has to start with me and my decisions. I know there is no such thing as humane commercial farming. Even those who say “free range” are deceptive. That just means those chickens have a few more inches of space where they are. It does means they are wandering blissfully around the farm pecking at grubs and enjoying the sunshine. The days of the small family farms are nearly over. Virtually all the meat and dairy products in stores come from large, conglomerate commercial farms. And, no matter what they try to sell us, it all results from brutal, inhumane torture and death.
So, that is why I choose to be vegan. I’m vegan for the animals. And it’s been really a very simple journey. I would love to share my ideas and recipes with you. But only if you ask. Like me, you have to decide for yourself and do it for the reasons that make sense to you. I will never being up my veganism first. But, if you ask, I will talk about it all day long!
Go eat some broccoli. And pet a pig!
How Did I Get Here? 