Some Thoughts on Veganism

When I was 14 and had just become a vegetarian I used to really believe that everyone would make the same choice I did if they only knew the reality. About the animal factories, transports, the moral issue with killing for a taste sensation (since we can survive quite comfortably without meat, a taste sensation is what it is to me). To me, when you grasp the whole concept of our animal consumption, it is insanity. I miss having that faith in my fellow humans.

I never start a discussion about why someone eats meat unless that person means a lot to me and I know then well. It is personal. It’s about respect for the other person’s privacy. But I get attacked whenever there’s a clue that I’m Not Like Everyone Else. Why won’t you eat this cake? Vegan?! WHY? When I’ve confessed my early beliefs and naivety, my faith in humans, to others in debates I have been compared to a religious fanatic. After years of trying to explain to people, to make them understand, I’m afraid I have started to give up.

I feel like every debate I have about meat, animal rights, animal tests, the environment, is eating me up. I have so much knowledge. I have read so many books on the subject of consuming animals, based on moral, environmental impact, its connection to starvation. I have taken a course from January to May about how to solve the environmental issues. But when I meet people at parties, and I’m confronted about my eating habits, I tell them the facts, things I know, from everything that I’ve read; their reaction to this always baffles me. They treat me like I’m a child, I’m a silly weak hearted thing, I don’t understand that animals are made to be eaten by us. We have always eaten meat. We have teeth made for eating meat. Silly little vegan, what do you know? How can they believe that I would make such a difficult decision, such a sacrifice, alienating myself from the normal, doing something to enable people to attack me like this, would I do that without seriously thinking it though, getting the details? It is as if they cannot grasp it. Yes, it might be that we always ate meat, but we also always killed and made war. Should we continue everything simply because we have done it for a very long time? Where would we be today with that kind of attitude?

And yes (I say for the 100th time) we have teeth for eating meat, like pigs we have teeth for eating both vegetables and meat, but we also have a highly developed intellect, and Moral. With great power comes great responsibility? Just because we have the power to do something, do we have the Right to do it? Yes lions eat meat, but we are not lions. We are actually confronted with a choice. And lions do not produce their meat food in factories, as if the victims were not alive. Meat today is produced. It is a product. How can we maximise the profit? Smaller space, make the food grow faster. Should I tell them about all the diseases the animals get from being bred in such a small space so close to each other? The consumer does not need to worry about this; those deceases can be dealt with: we’ll give the animals some antibiotics… If you know anything about antibiotics you will know that this leads to creating bacteria that is resistant to our medicines. After this it’s usually something about that I can’t possibly think that this is a possible solution, am I really so stupid as to think that everyone will become vegetarians or vegans? Again, why do you tell me these things when you have no backup for these facts? I have for mine: There are 6 billions humans on this planet. Many are starving. Take a second to think about how meat production works. Cow eats crops until its big enough to be killed for us to feed on. It also drinks shitloads of water. If we just drank that water and ate those crops (not grass, if you have any brains you’ll know that we could grow something else on the same bit of land) we would be able to feed many more.

There is also the problem of the world’s fossil fuel supply is going to be gone by 2050, roughly. Lots of people are trying to work out a way to keep our comfortable lifestyle by the time that happens. Mostly all countries need to reduce their energy use. Meat production used much more energy than vegetable production. If you know anything about global warming, you also know that all countries must cut down their emissions. Again, meat production fails. Meat is in every way worse than vegetables. By now the person I’m discussing with usually falls back on “but meat is so tasty…” I find this to be a suitable time to ask them if intelligence plays a part in why they think we are superior to animals to such a degree that a taste sensation for us is worth not only the life of animals, but their suffering as well. (“Loreal-because you’re worth it.” ARE YOU?! ARE YOU REALLY?!) For example, if we have a retarded child, which has lower intelligence than a pig, can we eat it? Can we test medicines on it? The answer I get is: “It’s not the same”. No motivation. They just know. It’s not the same.

“If you can save a humans life by sacrificing animals you must do it”. There is no need I tell them. I have read that the are ways of growing human cells and testing on them, computer simulations and much more, that is so much more accurate than animals since we are quite different from pigs and rats, even apes. My friend tells me that one drug that had been tested on small animals was approved, and though it had worked perfectly on the animals, it was deadly to humans and lots of babies died. Time after time I go through everything I know on this subject, hoping that a small seed of reality, empathy, moral, sanity might start to grow in the person that is questioning me this time. And almost every single I fail, and go home frustrated, feeling that I should have done better, and knowing that most of the people I’ve just left behind me are glad to see me go, whiny, angry vegan.

There are often lots of objections when vegans try to explain how they feel by comparing the treatment to animals to they way Jews were treated during Nazi times. I watch my brother, my father, my family, my friends eat the corpses of animals whose entire lives were stolen from them, their pain ignored: their lives and pain deemed by others to be irrelevant. I know all the facts, but not even those closest to me will listen. How can I have faith in humans?