This week I dropped the V-bomb and disclosed to my friends and family that for the foreseeable future I’m going to be… wait for it... partially vegan-vegetarian. Their response was suspicion, derision, hilarity - all the things you’d expect when you make a life change intended to better yourself and the planet at large.
I’m not quite sure why people are so excruciatingly uncomfortable with the idea of someone cutting various foodstuffs out of their diet, but one thing is for sure - it’s not a move you make if you’re trying to boost your street cred. There’s this notion that V’s (vegans/vegetarians) are preachy, self righteous hippy types who just don’t get how the real world functions. Maybe they are. You know who else they said that about? Anti-slavery campaigners. People who choose to cut out unethically-produced animal products are told that ‘your lifestyle choices will never change the system’, that ‘it’s just how the world works’ and that ‘people’s livelihoods are dependent on it being this way’. This is not the first time these arguments have been used to justify a morally questionable practise. And you know what? Things did change, people found other ways to make a living and the world didn’t stop spinning.
Unlike a lot of V-inclined individuals I’m not actually opposed to the idea of eating meat in and of itself. To be honest, I think eating meat is just part of the circle of life. Massinyahi'meatinabanana and all that. What I cannot get onboard with, however, is this -
For those of you who don’t have the time/the stomach to sit through this, it’s 6:40 of animals being maimed, neutered, electro-shocked and crushed alive - fully conscious and anaesthetic-free. Being shackled in racks smaller than they are, being forced to live in conditions so cramped they trample each other to death and are left to rot unnoticed. Being painfully, perpetually impregnated and then immediately separated from their babies (who often are left to scream for their mothers for days before being slaughtered). This is not footage from some overseas scandal about big-chain fast food providers. These are the practises being used by the largest farming companies and supermarket suppliers in the UK. By household names like ‘Bernard Matthews’ and ‘The Happy Egg company’. How is this acceptable?
If people treated their pets like this they’d be facing a fine, a ban from keeping animals and potential prison time.
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'A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig (sow) may be kept during pregnancy and for most of her adult life'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestation_crate |
If you haven't switched off already, I'm willing to bet the last thing you want is a lengthy sermon on the ethics of what you choose to have for dinner. So I’m not going to expend page space trying to convince you of these (well established) facts:
FACT: Eating too much meat sucks for your health (excessive red and processed meat slices years off our lives)
FACT: Eating too much meat is wrecking your surroundings (deforestation and production of methane gas is wrecking our environment)
FACT: Eating too much meat exacerbates world hunger (due to misdirection of grains and other resources)
Any casual Google search can do that for you. What I would like to discuss (by which I mean 'annihilate entirely'), are the routine arguments used to persuade people out of taking the V plunge. And why they’re a load of crap (incidentally, much like the supermarket milk which is currently available to us. A fresh glass of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and pus anyone? Yummm.)
1.‘But meat tastes so good!’.
Yes, yes it does. ‘Fancy a dirty kebab for breakfast? Hells yeah. ‘2am bacon cheese burger’? Hit me up. But - and maybe this is a product of growing up in a faith that promotes abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol - to me, ‘I really enjoy it’ is just not an argument for pushing on with something you consider immoral. Also, you can still eat meat without perpetuating the highscale-horrific practises which are just an undivorceable reality of cheap meat. Yus, even if you’re skint. If you can’t afford to buy ethically produced meat at your current rate of consumption, just eat less of the stuff. It’s good for you.
2. ‘But you cutting that stuff out of your diet won’t even make any difference to the system you’re trying to change!’.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Food is a consumer industry. It’s driven by supply and demand. If people stop buying dirt cheap, mass produced meat then people will stop supplying it. If people start demanding ethically produced meat instead, then that’s what they’ll provide. And there are enough people making resolutions about 'responsible eating' for the industry to have already begun making changes. Every restaurant I’ve visited in the past 10 years has offered a vegetarian option. More than ever, menus state the sources of their meat. In London alone there are hundreds of restaurants marketing exclusively vegan/vegetarian food - and many more that serve only organically reared meat. No one who decides to go vegan/vegetarian/organic needs to be a lone wolf.
This question remains though - even if your actions count for nothing on a grand scale, is that a reason to continue participating in something you consider immoral? Like ‘you know what, I’m never going to be able to halt the people trafficking industry, so I think I’ll just go to town on an underage call girl. It’s not like me choosing to have consensual sex with a fellow adult instead is going to change anything anyway’. Is the principle not essentially the same? How do any large-scale reformations to immoral social/political/cultural/industrial practices come about? It’s through individuals resolving ‘I will have no part in this’.
3. ‘But people make a living out of producing meat this way! You’re putting their livelihood in jeopardy!’.
Actually, changing the way we rear meat would INCREASE agricultural jobs. Organic farming requires MORE labourers than factory farming. Yes, there will be smaller profits for those at the very top, but there will be far greater employment opportunities for others.
So yeah. Some inconvenient truths I have had to come to terms with this week. In short, I have made the following resolutions:
1. Non-organic meat is off the menu.
2. Meat is on the menu once a week at most.
3. Free range eggs or bust.
And, most brutally,
4. No more dairy. That’s right. I feel strong enough about this to forsake camembert and ossau-iraty. Pray for me.
I was raised in a faith which teaches that humans are intended to be custodians over the Earth - guardians who are supposed to manage and look after the natural resources around us, not exploit them to the point of destruction. A faith that, long before we had scientific proof of the dangerous effects of over-eating meat, promoted eating meat ‘sparingly’ and only in times of nutritional need (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/89?lang=eng). (Incidentally this revelation also advises “tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man” 100 years before science confirmed cigarettes are essentially coffin nails).
To the compassionate amongst you: please send me care packages of vegan cheese and Green and Blacks 85% cocoa dark chocolate. It’s milk free. And so am I.
Some P.S's:
Here's an article about the production of milk that I just find abhorrent (you're welcome):
And helpful info for anyone wanting to cut unethical meat out of their diets:
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