This year marks my ninth year as a vegan so to mark it I
thought I'd dedicate a blog post about the question I'm often asked
(not as much as 'How do you get your protein?') 'Why are you vegan... out of curiosity?'
Well, I believe simply that animals are beautiful creatures
with a right to life (as wild or domestic animals would normally have)
and rear their young. To kill them for food or clothes, to breed them
just for slaughter or their produce FEELS wrong to me, especially in
this modern, industrial, mass production age.
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| Cowspiracy.com |
I want to avoid the dairy industry because it can be very cruel. Baby calves are
dragged away from their mothers (and then killed or put on the same cycle)
so that the mother can produce enough milk for the consumer market.
Hundreds of baby chicks are either gassed or ground up alive because
they are 'surplus' and won't grow up to produce eggs. Chickens often live maimed and kept in cages and cows are injected to speed their growth and impregnated
unaturally.
I think there's also a huge discrepancy between the brutality and killing of the animal
and the neatly packaged 'family friendly' food presented in the supermarket. I met a vegetarian once who
said they didn't eat meat because if they were faced with actually
killing the animals themselves they wouldn't be able to do it. Paul
McCartney fronted a campaign years ago about 'if slaughterhouse had
glass walls' which addresses this same concept. If you actually saw what was
being done to the animals would you feel the same about eating the meat?
We grieve over the death of our pets but not the slightly different
looking animals that are bred, raised and killed out of sight. I don't
want to cause harm to animals, even distant harm that I can't see and being vegan
allows me to feel free this way.
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| Peta.com |
I also don't see a distinction between my animal companions
and industry-bred animals. Moby once wrote that he became vegetarian when
he realized he saw his dog as his friend. Personally I wouldn't eat my
own animals so I can't justify eating others.
There are many physical, health and environmental benefits I haven't even touched on (so helpful infographics attached!). Although these weren't my primary reasons, they always reinforce for me that veganism is positive in more ways than one.
I don't see a vegan diet as restrictive but liberating from a food industry I disagree with. I think 'living off the earth' or being plant-based is beautiful both because it is natural and because it's cruelty free (also you can still eat chocolate...).
So that's why I'm (still) a vegan,
since you asked...
Literary Vegan Feb 16
