Why Did You Go Vegan?

Daharja

I grew up as a meat eater. Mum and Dad raised me as they themselves had been raised - with meat on the table at every meal. Furthermore, every meal was centered on the meat it contained. When I came home from school and asked what was for dinner, the answer was invariably "fish" or "chicken" or "beef". It was as if the rest of the meal - the vegetables, salad, bread and such - didn't even count as real food. Meat was real food - vegetables, fruit and grains were "accompaniments".

I never thought to question this lifestyle. It simply was. I ate meat without pausing to consider where it had come from, or how it had arrived on my plate. It wasn't a dead animal - it was food. There was a subconscious divider between what I was eating and what it had been. I didn't think of the steak or chicken wing on my plate as having been a body part of an animal. It wasn't that I was unaware that this was the case - I just never thought about it. The mental block between meat and death was firmly in place in my mind. I realised that, for me, "liking" meat was not enough of a reason to kill.

It was only when I got to University, and started to listen to the talk of vegetarians that I began to analyse what I was eating and why. I started to realise that meat was litte more than a habit. I began to understand that I really only ate meat because I'd been brought up to do so. I'd been taught that meat was good and healthy, and a necessary part of my diet. Meat was central to the way my family and I ate, because of tradition - a tradition that had never been questioned.

Listening to vegetarians and the points they were making which were so different to what I had been taught, I felt challenged and attacked. I felt like they were attacking me through what I ate. They were trying to make me feel guilty, by telling me that to eat meat was, in effect, to condone (if not to commit) murder.

So I decided to do some reading on the subject. I sat myself down in the Uni library, and read everything I could find on nutrition and vegetarianism, about the raising of animals in Australia and elsewhere in the world for food.

I discovered that humans don't need meat to be healthy. That, in fact, too much protein in the Western diet (caused in large part by an excess of animal products) has been tagged as a significant factor in causing many different types of cancer and in diseases such as osteoporosis. That bowel cancer is, in more than 90% of cases, linked to high animal fat intake and a lack of fibre (from plant foods) in the diet. The mother of one of my boyfriends died at only 49 of bowel cancer. If she'd been a vegetarian or vegan, she'd almost certainly still be alive.

I also learned a little of how meat gets to our plates in Australia and around the world. I learned how factory farm animals are referred to as "units" and are, in many cases (such as pigs and veal calves), caged so cruelly that they can't even turn around or lie down. Battery hens are kept in cages so small that they can't even open their wings!! Animals are treated so inhumanely in so many ways in Australia - they are branded and debeaked, they have they tails cut off and their teeth ripped out, they are mutated genetically and bred for weight to such an extent that they can't even mate without assistance. I read all of this and I felt so ashamed and horrified that we could treat our fellow creatures in such ways.

I also read about the environmental damage caused by raising animals for food. I read about how many countries in the first world have such an excess of animal manure that they load it onto ships and dump it in the third world. I read about how in Britain the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is the methane from the millions of cows. I read about (and saw) the huge salinification and desertification problems in Australia caused by overgrazing, and the tearing down of trees to create pasture. I read how to feed a meat-eater uses some ten times the resources as a vegetarian. I started to realise that to eat meat was to contribute to the world's problems, both physically and morally, in a scale far greater than I'd ever imagined.

Finally, I made myself face facts - that meat is the rotting corpse of an animal that has been raised and butchered to please our palates, and that to get that meat from factory "farm" to table involves cruelty, torture and murder. What's more, I couldn't even pretend that meat-eating was acceptable because humans need it - there was enough evidence before me in the books and scientific papers I was reading to confirm the fact that meat is totally unnecessary to human beings. We don't need it. Our bodies don't need it. The slaughter of animals to fill the already-overfilled gullets of western society is totally unnecessary and unwarranted.

So there I was, with the pared-down truth about meat: that we eat it not because we need it, but because we "like" it.

I realised that, for me, "liking" meat was not enough of a reason to kill.

So I became a vegetarian. Then vegan.

My mother freaked. She told me I'd get sick, catch all sorts of nefarious diseases. She told me there was nothing wrong with eating meat. Humans had always eaten meat (humans have always committed many atrocities, but that doesn't make what we have always done right). My mother argued that vegetarianism and veganism was unnatural, and a distortion of the natural diet of humans.

It's really hard to make a critical life choice when your whole family think you are crazy and are convinced you are wrong. I think my Dad though it was "something she'll grow out of". I think Mum was just plain worried - confused about the issues surrounding veganism yet not brave enough to find out the truth for herself, just in case she might find out that I was right. She wanted to keep that mental block between meat and death intact.

I've been a vegan for many years now, and I know I'll never regret my decision. I have made the right choice.

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