The past few days I have been feeling a little down and overwhelmed about things I can’t control. I’m on tour working for an amazing group called Animal Equality. I, along with another girl, are taking the 5 minute video, iAnimal narrated by the one and only Tony Kanal (that’s exciting because now if I ever meet him I’ll have an excuse to talk to him) to California college campuses for the next two months. The video is footage of how pigs are raised for food. The video and hard to watch from start to finish. It’s mind boggling how any of this is legal, and it’s down right depressing that anyone could do the things in this video to a living creature. It’s also been very hard to show this to people and have a handful of them tell you it had no affect on them. And what is it all for? For a tasty lunch or dinner?
People ask me why I don’t eat meat. People wonder what the big deal is, people say we have been eating if for years so what’s the problem? If you ask people if they love animals the vast majority of them will say yes. No one wants to hurt animals or see them suffer. But that’s the problem; you can go your whole life and not personally hurt an animal because you can pay someone to do it for you and pick it up at the market or a restaurant without ever having to face the facts of how it got there. What I’m hoping to do with this tour is show people that animal abuse is standard practice and that there are other and better ways to live and let live.
Humans have done a lot of things for a lot of years; is that a reason to continue a flawed way of thinking? We also used to enslave black people. We also used to used to not allow women basic rights, but we learn, grown, change, and do better.
People say, “but we are meant to eat meat.” I’ll let Gary Yourofsky explain it. *Disclaimer: I’m not fully behind all his statements but he knows his facts and explains things well.
I had a animal science major tell me they have to pin the mother pigs down to protect them from crushing the babies. My point is that we shouldn’t have them in these tiny pens to begin with which would cause them to crush their babies. You can’t initiate a problem and use that to justify your wrongs.
I saw videos like this when I was 14 and decided from them on that yes, meat tasted and smelled awesome, but it was no longer worth it to me knowing where it came from. The more I learned the more I realized that I don’t need it to be healthy, to be happy, to thrive. I know plenty of fat, thin, buff, lazy vegans to know that anyone and everyone can live without eating meat.
*Both David Cater and Torre Washingon are vegan
I haven’t felt this way since first learning about factory farming and animal abuse but being so immersed in this topic for the next two months is going to have hard days.
I hope one day people look back and say, “I can’t believe we used to eat animals.” What I have been telling students when they ask why I’m vegan is, “If I can live my life without harming another’s, why wouldn’t I?”
I hope at least some of these people will see what’s going on and be affected enough to take meat off their plates even if just once a week. We are asking people to cut back and try Meatless Mondays or Meatless Monday Wednesday Friday. Hopefully we are planting seeds that will eventually grow. These animals don’t deserve to suffer and I wish I could do more to help. Cutting out animal products is the best decision I have ever made and I hope you take a look at my Instagram and realize that I have not sacrificed eating good food in any way. If you have any questions at all about how o cut back or cut out meat from your diet, I’d be more than willing to help you. NO judgement, I used to eat meat too. I’m here to help!
I’ll leave you with my current favorite video to lighten the mood.
Sapling Vegan 