Why vegan?

Why did I decide to be vegan in the first place? Why would anybody want to be vegan? I've been thinking about this a lot, because after a one-year period during which I was not vegan at all, I have a new appreciation for the reasons behind being vegan, and why most people aren't.

I have a friend whose boyfriend started this website called "Vegan Represent". His whole philosophy is basically that a vegan who "reprazents" is a happy, healthy, whole, fun, interesting, normal person, and is a good representative for veganism. People would be drawn to this person, and want to ask, through the course of normal human interactions, "why are you vegan anyway?" or, as happened to me recently "what does it mean when you order your burrito vegan?" Then you explain to that person, and quite possibly that causes the person to consider what you have to say. This is in contrast to the often-represented stereotype of a vegan who is in-your-face, angry and sullen--and easy to dismiss. People also think vegan food is boring and gross, which could not be further from the truth. But I'll save that for a later date.

I have to admit that I used to be more akin to the latter rather than the "vegan represent" variety. I have seen a lot of things through the course of educating myself, and then working for Farm Sanctuary, that made me want to yell "HOW CAN YOU NOT BE VEGAN, YOU SELFISH JERK?!" Usually, when you yell something like that at someone, they tend to want to ignore you or make fun of you.

After spending a year eating dairy, eggs and even fish, I grew accustomed to these things. I stopped feeling guilty about it. I started thinking things along these lines: After all, everyone around me eats these things, and they are Good People, so it can't be totally evil. And besides, I'm sick of feeling deprived, left-out, etc. I like eating these things.

After a few months, I just stopped thinking about it. I just ate what I wanted, and what everyone else was eating (except beef, chicken, pork, etc.)

Contrary to what most people think, vegans are actually a very compassionate and forgiving bunch, on the whole. Most of my vegan friends were like "I understand. It's hard." I don't think anybody gave me a hard time. I think if they would have, I would have only become more entrenched in my non-vegandom. A vegan friend (the same one whose boyfriend runs Vegan Represent) finally called me out on it. "So, on your blog it says you are eating half-and-half. What's up with that?" I explained to her my feelings (I like eating these things, etc.) and a conversation ensued over email that I was going to post here, but she wanted to edit. It finally just got edited, but is really long and full of potty language. It's so long that very few people will probably read it, so I won't post it. Suffice to say, it hit very near the mark and snapped me out of it. I had been vegan for nearly 7 years when I stopped, so it wasn't some passing fancy on my part. It was really a part of who I was. Being a non-vegan never did stop feeling strange, like I was impersonating something I wasn't.

Another wise vegan friend of mine, in an earlier conversation, after assuring me that she understood my lapse, told me about her thinking. She said that she can completely understand why people aren't vegan. Its easy, it tastes good, and its not exactly like meat and dairy producers are trying to tell you where the food comes from. You have to seek out information about the problems with it. Most people just don't do that. She said that there are two ways of thinking about something. The first is "should" thinking, the second is "is" thinking. For example, everybody should be vegan. People shouldn't shop at Wal-Mart. VS "people aren't vegan, they do eat lots of animal products." "People DO shop at walmart". The "is" way of thinking recognizes things as the way they are. And it causes the thinker to accept reality: You can only control what YOU do. You cannot control anybody else. This kind of thinking helps with not being angry. Because if you are going around talking about "people should be vegan" all the time, you are bound to notice the reality that people aren't. They "should" but they don't. Can you see how that would make somebody mad all the time? To think that way? It certainly did for me. My motto now is "I can only control my own actions (and through my actions, I might cause others to follow suit.)"

These days, it feels good to go back to being vegan. I have stopped feeling like it is a deprivation because it is a choice. I don't say "I can't eat that." I say "I choose not to eat that." One sounds like i'm being prevented from doing something I want to do. The other sounds like I am making a decision, and have power. I can actually picture where the food came from, and then I don't even want it anymore. For example, my biggest weakness would always be some kind of sweet, like brownies at a party that have eggs in them. I would want them, and would try to justify eating them. Now, I just picture the chickens that had to endure horrible conditions to lay those eggs, and ask myself if I NEED that brownie. Of course the answer is no, I don't need it. And when I think about the animal cruelty involved, I can say that I honestly don't want it anymore, either.

I would like to think that most people just don't have the facts about their food, and if given the information they would choose not to support those practices. It is true that some people don't want to know, and hope that through willful ignorance, they can just keep eating what they like without facing the fact that they are contributing to some pretty horrible suffering in the process. I know that is how it was with my thinking: If I don't think about it, then it doesn't exist.

In the spirit of dispelling some of this ignorance, for those who would choose to know, I am going to include the following information. I know that many people won't read this, or won't click on the links. I can only say that just because you don't look at it, doesn't mean its not happening. If you feel like knowledge might make you "have" to stop drinking milk, for example, and you are afraid of that, maybe you should think about it. If, on the other hand, you educate yourself about where cheese comes from, and you are still ok with eating it, then you are doing better than most people who have no idea why someone would choose to not eat cheese. I say these things truly in the spirit of non-judgment, but with the hope that people can use this information to make informed choices, and make the world a better place.

Eggs: Come from chickens who are de-beaked, force-molted and live in battery cages. "Free range" and "cage free" are terms that have no legal meaning (unlike Organic, which has strict standards that need to be met and certified to be labeled as such), and thus can be applied to eggs that are produced in extremely inhumane conditions.

Dairy: The only way to get a mammal, like a cow or goat, to lactate is to get that animal pregnant. You then have to take the baby away from the mother, (IF YOU ONLY CLICK ONE LINK HERE, MAKE IT THIS ONE) so it doesn't drink that milk. The dairy industry thus has a huge surplus of baby cows that they needed something to do with. That thing became veal. Thus, veal farming, a practice so cruel that most people won't eat it, couldn't exist without dairy. It can logically be argued that you would do more to alleviate animal suffering if you stopped drinking cow dairy than if you stopped eating meat. The same is true for organic dairy.

Meat: This issue is more varied. In some cases, animals like beef cows, have a much better, more normal life, than a battery cage hen or a dairy cow. They are still killed, of course, but generally aren't packed into tiny cages until the final feedlot stage of their life. Pork is another matter. The sows that produce the piglets are living in tiny cages called gestation crates and it is a pathetically miserable existence. Pig factory farms are some of the worst kinds of animal farming. Chickens and turkeys raised for meat are usually housed in huge warehouses. They are "debeaked" and don't have much room to move around. Its a filthy, uncomfortable and sad life.

There really isn't any way to eat an animal product without giving money to somebody to do something (that I hope) most people couldn't do themselves because it would be too sad and awful. If you rescue a chicken and that chicken lays eggs and you eat them, that's pretty much the only humane animal product. Otherwise, where animal's bodies are used to make a profit, those animals get turned into things. We all know that animals feel pain. So when they get treated like a thing, rather than a being that can experience suffering (sometimes intense, incomprehensibly awful suffering), it is incredibly tragic. People, like vegans, who have found out about this, are understandably angry and sad about it because they feel alone and mad that nobody but them cares about the pain these animals endure.

I hope you can take the time to examine your habits, and ask yourself if you need cheese, eggs or meat. Or if you are making an informed choice about it. I'd be interested in your comments on what i've posted here, if you'd like to add them.