Anyway, my vegetarianism has become much clearer and more logical, after being informed about what's the deal with the meat you eat. I should tell you, I used to be a 'flexible' vegetarian. After a trip to South-America where I discovered I could easily survive without meat, I chose - as I was about to live in a student's residence without parental supervision - not to eat meat anymore. My main motive wasn't because of the constant abuse of the animals or the bad circumstances in which they were bred. After 18 years of eating meat on daily basis, I discovered I was happy without eating it. I liked the idea of being happy and sufficiently fed without having to eat animals. Apart from that, I wasn't happy with the soy grown in Brazil and being fed to our cows. While people were/are starving living next to the soy fields... But in one way or another, I managed NOT to inform myself about real ethical reasons not to eat animals... I think I was afraid to face it. I mean, why bother? Why take another worry you can't affect individually? I was wrong...
I remember that when I was a kid on my way home, I passed this field with cows from a local farmer. I used to feel so guilty looking at their peaceful behaviour and imagining them on my plate as lunch...
Well, animals...as I had 'hushed' my mind with the declining of steaks, I kept on eating fish.You have to admit, the white, crusty fishfingers or fishburgers hardly remind you of vivid, jumping fish. Apart from that, I used to believe they were leading a happy life in the ocean, and then were suddenly caught and prepared for lunch. I didn't know or did not want to know that 1. our ocean is extremely contaminated and is being 'emptied' by our fishing strategiess 2. a big part of the fish we consume is also bred, genetically manipulated and is fed chemical bullshit. Yuck!
So... I decided to take a stand. I decided to inform myself and make a well-reasoned decision based on several sources. I was partly convinced after reading 'No Impact Man' by Colin Beavan (see an earlier post). But it wasn't until I read 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer that I made this decision.
"I will totally delete animals from my food list unless I am positively sure that the animal I am about to eat has had a nice, outdoor, animal life, has been fed real food (no chemicals or additional feeding) and has been slaughtered with uttermost respect."
Basically, in the society we are living in now, it's a synonym for declining all animals as a food source, because main stream meat or fish on your plate has NOT experienced any of what I described above...
One of the main reasons I was attracted to this book was his motive to write the book... Compared to a lot of activists who write pro-vegetarianism-books out of really animalcaring reasons - which I do not reject at all but I believe they can't connect with a lot of 'mainstream' people - Jonathan wrote the book out of a concern for his own progeny:
"But on the brink of fatherhood—facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf—his casual questioning took on an urgency. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong."
For many, having a family is the most natural thing to do. It connects thousands and thousands of people. And everyone wants the best for his/her kin isnt' it? How come so many people have never even questioned what they feed their beloved ones? I'm glad Jonathan did it.
In his book Jonathan sails from 'how to justify vegetarianism in your social life' til investigating the turkey farms where a lot of people's Thanksgiving or X-mas-turkey is bred...
I hope I have aroused some reader's interest here...
I will leave you with this website to hopefully keep you interested and have you follow my story...
www.eatinganimals.com
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