Before you read this, please remember that what follows is a bit of a rant.
Being vegan is something I believe in for multiple reasons, the most prominent being health and the environment. I am very aware that many people make their livelihood by farming. I come from a farming village and yes, I worked on a farm for a few summers (and absolutely loved it). My father is a hunter, and many people I know are hunters.
This post is not meant to hurt, insult or degrade anybody. I have my reasons for eating the way I do, but I will not sit behind a computer and insult the people who rely on farming to make a living.
I disagree with the systems that produce the animal products we eat, but that doesn't mean I hate the people I know who are farmers or hunters.
So please remember that when reading the following, and if you disagree with veganism, then by all means, don't read on. That simple.
During my third week in Ireland and UK I was lucky enough to couchsurf with a beautiful group of vegans - and I learned so much.
I've drifted to and from veganism, unintentionally really, for the past couple of years. I switched to the Paleo diet when I moved to Montreal for purely health-related reasons (also known as the Caveman diet, this is more of a lifestyle than a "diet", and excludes all processed food, grains, legumes and dairy, focusing on food from the earth: vegetables, fruits, nuts, meat and eggs). But, as a student in a new city paying her own way, I avoided buying the most expensive food: bread, meat and dairy - being Paleo. Yes, laziness also enters into it. I much preferred to grab a piece of fruit or some carrots instead of cooking meat. Bonus! So, for over a year and a half, I ate fresh fruits, vegetables and raw nuts - and raw cacao....SO MUCH RAW CACAO. And yep, believe it or not, cacao is immensely beneficial to your health.
Anyway, back to the topic here. I spent little under two years eating Paleo, but more on the Vegan side due to my budget. Yes, I felt different. I felt clean, like a brand new stainless steel machine. No sugar, no heavy bread, little to no difficult to digest meat...it was kind of eye-opening.
When I temporarily moved in with my vegan hosts, it wasn't any kind of shock for me to exclude animal products from my diet. The only difference was the presence of legumes and the absence of eggs - I normally eat eggs at home, and the only reason I do is because we own the chickens that produce them, and I know exactly what it is they eat and in what conditions they are kept.
So one day where I had nothing particularly planned, my host asked me if I wanted to watch a video about veganism, and I happily agreed. I was more than eager to learn about the philosophy behind being vegan, as I tend to avoid jumping blindly into something most would call radical.
This is the video I watched. I strongly suggest you watch it as well. It is a lecture, so it's a bit long, but it's well worth the time to listen to a man who has undergone jail time for his beliefs.
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Des6U00LMmC4&h=VAQFttXOZ
I won't lie - some of the things he showed brought me to tears. As someone who has always loved animals, I was utterly disgusted by the things I was witness to. I won't jump into preaching - I don't like being preached to, and I generally don't like doing it. But I truly think it's worth it to look into veganism. Not only because it's healthier for us, but because we are on the verge of environmental collapse and the systems that provide people with the animal products they eat are terribly detrimental to this planet.
We don't need to eat meat - red meat tends to rot in our intestines before we expel it anyway, and for those who don't know, we absorb our nutrients from our intestines. I'm not keen on absorbing whatever comes from rotten meat. We get more protein from dark greens and legumes. We don't need dairy. We're the only species of mammal that drinks milk after weaning and it isn't even milk from our own species. I will advocate the consumption of milk when it is from a human woman's breasts, not otherwise.
And I refuse to pay for torture, rape and murder.
The thing that eludes many people, including me until recently, is the cruelty that takes place in the factory farming industry. I specify "factory farming" here, because if you own a hobby farm and your animals are content and well cared for, I can sympathize to a certain point.
One would imagine that dairy farms and egg farms aren't cruel, seeing as the animals aren't killed. Although this is true to a certain point, one has to look beyond the simple fact that the animals are kept alive. Milking cows are kept in utterly horrible conditions, restricted from movement and force-fed genetically modified crops (which aren't part of their natural diet - cows are grazers and not meant to consume soy or wheat, the mass production of which continually exhausts the earth of its nutrients), injected with hormones to make them produce more milk than they normally would, and, most horrifying of all, are promptly led to the "rape-rack", as it is referred to by some. Female mammals produce milk when they are pregnant. This goes for hamsters as well as humans. In order for a cow to produce milk, she must be impregnated, and this is done by artificial insemination - carried out by the farmers. As soon as she begins to lactate, she is plugged into a milking machine and literally dehydrated day after day as she struggles to develop a healthy calf - as every female mammal's body naturally does when she is pregnant. As soon as her calf is born, he is removed from his mother's care, as he would (as nature dictates) drink the milk that is "meant for us". This newborn calf, who should be receiving his mother's nutrient-rich milk (and TLC, let's be honest), is sent to a different farm where he can grow for a few months before being sent to the slaughterhouse. The cow, traumatized by the immediate loss of her calf (as any mother would be - I will have heated words with the person who claims that animals other than humans are psychologically incapable of emotion), is soon re-impregnated so that she can continue to produce milk. This cycle continues until the cow can no longer take the physical strain, and she dies after a mere 5 years (on average) as opposed to her normal lifespan of up to and above 15.
Egg farms aren't too different. Yes, hens lay eggs daily, but the population of egg-laying birds must be up-kept if the farm is to be prosperous long-term. Therefore, hens are impregnated through artificial insemination and lay fertilized eggs. This is the ugly part - when they hatch, the male chicks, as they do not produce eggs, are sent promptly to something that resembles a VitaMix blender, and soon turned into the Chicken McNuggets in your child's Happy Meal.
I used to see grey areas in this topic...I used to think that if the animal whose flesh is on my dinner plate was born in the wild and contributed to the ecosystem on some level, then I would consume it. But I don't see it that way anymore. What right do we have to extinguish a complex, emotional life - to snatch it out of existence? What right do we have to the lives of any animal? None. None whatsoever.
There is no life on this planet worth more dead than alive.
I'm not an expert. I haven't always been vegan, and preaching it now is plain hypocritical - I know that. I've spent most of my life eating according to the society-approved "food pyramid", which includes meat products and dairy. But when I realized how the system works, the effects it has on the environment and our health as well as the health of the animals being used, my view was radically changed.
I will not judge someone for not being vegan, and I will not try to persuade someone to be vegan if they aren't interested. In this society, becoming a vegan is a radical and very foreign concept. It wasn't easy for me to abandon the staples that I grew up with and was taught were healthy, but my particular values helped me make that change. Being vegan is an entirely personal choice, but I think it's well worth it to inform yourself about exactly what you are eating and the things you are paying for when you buy animals products from the supermarket.
I value life in all its forms, and I do not believe that human life is in any way more valuable than other animal life. As I said, I am not willing to give my money to the system that promotes and practices the systematic torture, rape and murder of animals in order to feed us "superior beings".
