OK, once and for all, I’m kind of tired of all the questions:
- You’re a vegetarian?
- How long have you been doing that?
- That’s weird! Why the hell would you want to do that?
- Why did you quit eating meat? ("you big dummy" or "weirdo" implied with the non-verbals)
Just click Read More below to get the story. Fair warning – it’s a "Pat’s Soapbox" story that I’ve been thinking about for a while.
In the mean time, here are some videos for you:
Baby Chickens (actually very interesting)
OK, I plagiarized this paragraph from www.slaughterhousecam.com. Read it, and most of you will understand some simple reasons I’ve made a choice not to eat land animals:
Consider the two-way love affair between you and your
dog, cat, or parakeet. Did the bird sing when you entered
the room? Did the cat brush up against your leg, purring
with her pleasure in pleasing you? Did your dog cry
when sad, or jump with joy, his tail unable to contain the
excitement in seeing you come home after being away
from your presence for just one hour?
Do animals feel? Do pigs smell death and hear cries of
those who are slaughtered before them? Do calves cry
when separated from their mothers? Do animals feel pain?
I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t consider yourself an "animal lover" because you love your dog or cat. You’re a dog or cat lover. You’re not animal friendly, and you don’t love animals if you eat meat.
There are plenty of countries that enjoy eating horses, dogs, cats, or anything else they can cook up and eat. What makes you better than them? Why do you consider that gross?
When you were in school, what were the food groups in the pyramid? Yes, one of them is meat. We’ve been trained in the United States that you must eat meat to stay healthy. We’re trained that the center of a meal is a piece of meat. That’s a big lie. You don’t have to eat meat to be healthy or get nutritional balance. You’ve been more or less lied to, maybe by the meat industry? I don’t know for sure.
Typical meat eaters are selective about the part of the animal they eat. Tongue, intestines, liver, feet, udders, etc. are all gross to many people. Veal is considered cruel by many. Don’t be a hypocrite – you should eat them.
I think every meat eater should go take a blade to a cow or pig’s throat. They should watch it die. They should remove their favorite parts with their bare hands, take it right over to the stove, cook it and eat it right there. If a steak doesn’t look like an animal, people are OK with it. How about placing a picture of a cow’s face, those gentle eyes, one reflecting the animal’s soul, while you enjoy your meat?
Some statistics blame the meat industry for 17% of CO2 emissions / greenhouse gas. If everyone in the USA didn’t eat meat for ONE DAY a week, it’s like removing 80 million cars from the road! That’s unbelievable.
I was out riding my bike in the country one time. I saw a cow sitting in a mud pit, covered in flies, out in the heat. No one cared about how that cow was being treated. Again, if it were a dog, cat or pony, people would be in an uproar. But since we’re gonna eat it, it really doesn’t matter. Does it?
I rode across Iowa over the summer of 2007, after I had made my decision to quit eating meat. "Pork chops on a stick" were for sale everywhere, though we passed dozens of high density pig barns. The smell was so bad we had to hold our breath as we passed. No one seemed to be bothered. Another day, we passed another pig farm where the pink pigs were finally butcher size. They were being loaded up in a truck, and they were squealing their heads off. And, they had no idea they were being hauled off to die. One day, the Pork Chop Man was selling tons of pork chops, right across the road from a pig farm. Disgusting.
Chickens spend their entire life in a space the size of a piece of paper. It stresses them out so bad that they peck feathers off each other. To combat this behavior, the farmers use a hot knife to cut the ends of their beaks off. After growing to a fryer size, the chickens are hauled in a truck to the processing house, their feet are attached to a conveyor belt, and their heads are drug through a electrified pool of sal*censored*er. Any chicken that’s still alive on the other side, a worker stands there and slices their neck before their neck is sliced and their bled out. Enjoy!
What broke the camel’s back? I read a book called The Life of Pi, some time about April of 2007 (I was already trying to skip meat one day a week.) Pi’s family were zoo keepers in India, and the zoo went out of business. After selling the animals to a Canadian zoo, the ship sank while the family was escorting the animals to Canada. Pi was the only survivor, as well as a Bengal tiger who made meals out of several other animals that also ended up in a single lifeboat. The story spent a lot of time on Pi’s suffering – the food running out, and the threat of the tiger eating him. He finally learned to fish, to feed the tiger and finally keep himself from starving. Since he had never had a piece of animal flesh in his mouth, he described the revolting feeling of taking his first bite of fish. That’s the moment that convinced me that I needed to switch from one meatless day to seven meatless days a week. I haven’t intentionally consumed beef, pork, chicken, lamb or turkey since.
Yes, I still eat seafood, eggs, dairy, cheese. I mainly eat these things because it’s tough to get the nutrients I need due to poor availability of options on menus, and the willingness of those around me to eat that way. I hope to over time find ways to give these things up too.
Animals do NOT have to die for you to maintain a healthy diet. There are tons of things you can eat to get all the vitamins and minerals to stay very healthy. I’m still learning. I have a friend that hasn’t eaten any meat, including eggs or seafood for 20 years. He’s way more fit than me, and 20 years older. Do you the meat eater have low cholesterol? Do you eat enough vegetables? Do you get enough fiber? Contrary to popular belief, vegetarians don’t have trouble getting protein. I personally worry about iron, or some other missing nutrient sneaking up on me. But I’m not afraid enough to go eat meat.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re either extremely bored, or you’re looking for a good reason to quit eating meat. Just give it a try. It’s not easy at first to develop the habits necessary, but it’s easier than riding your bicycle 100 miles over three mountains.
I’ll add links here later. I’m going to bed.