Could look clearly into the eyes of an animal and tell them that your food preference matters more than their suffering, pain and death?
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
This is a highly controversial post and it taps into many people’s ideas of what is morally right and morally permissable.
The reasonings behind why people eat animals are many, but all are weakly clung to. People tend to brandish well-crafted delusions that:
Animals are lesser beings than us.
Animals are less intelligent and value their lives less than we do.
Animals are simply unfeeling non-sentient “resources” or utilitarian objects to be dispensed with as humans see fit.
Other delusions and cognitive dissonance comes in the form of:
“Oh but we’ve always done it this way…”
“It’s our tradition you know…”
“It’s our right to choose.”
“We need to eat meat for health reasons”
“In many parts of the world, people don’t have a choice, they don’t have that luxury. They have to eat meat.”
Fruit, vegetables and grains have been available to eat just as long as meat has been around.
We have the ability to choose and we have the ability to be kind to animals – then we should.
The hard-to-face reality of eating animals
They have rich and complex emotional lives -all of them – including deer, pigs, sheep and cows and fish, ducks, turkeys and chickens.
All of them feel pain and they suffer enormously before dying for people’s god-given and culturally approved “right to eat” Some die in this way for absolutely no reason, destined to be past their “used by” date and sent straight to the trash.
Who are they? Just because they can’t speak a language you or I understand doesn’t mean they have no inner lives, memories and that they do not have love in their hearts.
Love for the soft sensations and simple pleasures of being alive. They enjoy soft cool water like we do, they enjoy the enveloping rays of the sun as we do. They feel love for each other in their intimate communities. This love and community is only ever seen obliquely and in part by you and I.
Some even foolishly and blindly love those who will eventually kill them.
All of them value their own lives and the lives of their children. All of them want to live.
We haven’t evolved as a species until we can stop being monstrous to other species and treating them like disposable inanimate resources.
Are there points here you agree with? Look forward to hearing your thoughts. This is possibly the most political post I’ve ever done.
Content Catnip 
Completely agree. The cognitive dissonance many people have around this is strong; see how people treat their pets and then turn around and eat bacon – it’s pretty hypocritical. When you also consider how the meat industry is a massive contributor to deforestation, pollution, CO2 production, it just becomes glaringly obivious that we as a society need to stop eating our animal kin. This is an excellent post, and I applaud you for not shying away from discussing difficult realities on here. Perhaps a link to some resources for vegetarianism/veganism could help those who are new to this concept? The Vegetarian Society (https://vegsoc.org/) in the UK have some good guides.
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Thanks so much River. I don’t want to go on about it too much on this blog and make it too militant because I do the animal actvism but it is a part of me how I feel about the world. It’s a harsh reality of life that most people refuse to acknowledge or they put it into the too hard basket. I try and make this blog positive but out there, there is so much pain and suffering other beings go through…shining a light on it all is another way of saying ‘I love you’ to all of them…if you see it and I see it, this is hopeful.
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There are so many reasons to live vegan, still many prefer the excuses… No excuse is acceptable when cruelty and suffering is involved!! Great post!! For those wanting to know more about veganism, I am sharing Vegan All In All: Everything You Need to Know About Veganism, the most comprehensive book ever written about veganism. It’s available on Amazon:
Thank you for sharing and caring!! Blessings***
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This is amazing thank you Susana for sharing this and I am very glad to meet a fellow advocate for all animals.
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This is a great, and very thought-provoking post, and I can see both sides of the argument. My boyfriend became an ovo-lacto vegetarian at 24 years ago after reading Fast Food Nation, and I tried to adopt a vegetarian diet when we met ~11 years ago, for the first 4-5 years. I’m highly allergic to eggs, milk, dairy, and nuts, so I struggled to get enough protein via soy, beans, and lentils and my health declined significantly during that time. Even when I shifted to pescatarian, my health continued to decline. Eventually, I made the choice to reintroduce animal protein and it was the right choice for my health, but I’ve tried to be very mindful. I don’t eat highly intelligent animals (e.g., pigs), I buy pasture-raised chickens from a local farm and wild-caught fish from the farmer’s market so the animals have hopefully endured a life of suffering. I eat nose-to-tail and reuse bones for broth so nothing goes to waste. Also–and maybe this sounds morbid–I express appreciation before meals to that animal that died to support me. Ethically, I would love to be a vegetarian (and most meals in our home are), but doing so was to the detriment of my own health. It’s a hard question. I think, at the end of the day, we should do our best to respect all living creatures. Any harm to another should be entirely necessary and we should practice gratitude for the sacrifices made to support our sustenance. I think some people do exceptionally well on a vegetarian diet but others dont. Maybe it come down to genetics and what one’s ancestor’s diet consisted of, or maybe it’s something else. I try to be empathetic to both sides because I can see both pretty clearly and I think it’s less black-and-white than many make it out to be.
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Thank you so much for this thoughtful and insightful reply my friend, I can see that you’ve thought over your decisions very deeply and you decides what works best for you ๐
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A brave post. Many people scoff and make fun of vegans. I’ve even been met with hostility when I was a guest in another person’s home. It’s easier to look away because no one really wants to face the reality of how we are treating animals. It’s too much and we’ve gone too far, but people want their fried chicken and ice cream. Here in SEA there’s more awareness of how animals are treated, but there’s “karma” tied into it, so a “justification”, even though Buddhism is, ironically, the dominate religion of the region.
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Thanks so much Lani glad you liked it. That shocks me that someone was openly hostile to you when you went there for dinner. It just shows how sensitive people are about food, it reminds me of how dogs growl when other dogs get close to the food bowl, people become protective of what they eat! I was fully expecting more sarcastic responses from people to this post be honest. It is hard when you rub up the wrong way with peoples habits and challenging what people eat. But its more scary when people realise the true horror movie of what happens too animals. I am not brave at all just aware of whats going on. Good on you for sticking to your guns and doing the noble thing for animals too.
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It helps that my husband and I are in this together. Most folks, in my experience, are sensitive to our needs by choosing restaurants where there are vegan options. And luckily, Siem Reap, is very vegan friendly — it’s also not uncommon to see gluten free marked items on menus, too. But the way I see it is, if it’s vegan everyone can eat it, but if it’s a meat-only restaurant, then not so much.
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That’s totally true…you are lucky to be in Siem Reap with a lot of vegan options.
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What about you over there in NZ?
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It’s a bit of a mixed bag. There is a very entrenched culture of eating meat with every meal here and people get incredibly aggressive if you even try and talk about it in some circles, but there is also a growing number of vegan restaurants especially in Wellington and a small number of animal advocates but it is still very niche. ๐ ๐
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very good blog
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Thanks a lot ๐
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It’s a mixed bag, there’s a very entrenched culture of eating meat with every meal here and people get incredibly aggressive if you even try and talk about it in some circles, but there is also a growing number of vegan restaurants especially in Wellington and a small number of animal advocates but it is still very niche. ๐ ๐
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I have been moving farther and farther in this direction. Sensitivity to the suffering of animals was not part of my upbringing… but I believe that my Christian faith has brought me quite near to the point of abandoning the eating of meat.
A jarring turning point occurred when I saw trucks filled with docile dogs being taken to the market in Korea. As horrible as it was, I don’t regret witnessing it.
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Thanks so much for your comment. I’ve met quite a few people who are Christian and don’t eat animals, one who is vegan and very devout to God, it may be more common than people realise. That scene of impending brutality in Korea sounds horrific! We put animals into mental categories, some we eat and some we protect but all want to live and all have consciousness or awareness of the world and lives independent from ours, they exist and deserve to exist aside from their usefulness to people – at least in my opinion anyway.
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