Lifelong vegan - Jehina Malik
This blog post may possibly get "fine-tuned" and be submitted to a local online magazine. It has some parts taken from my "Sermon," but a lot of it is new!
Lame Excuses People Use to Continue Eating Meat
What do you think of when you hear the word “vegan?” Someone who eats mostly green food, looks
like a skinny bohemian, and is no fun to be around?
I have been vegan for 4 years but I remember what it was like to be a meat
eater, since I ate meat and drank milk most of my life. I can remember what it felt like to think
there was nothing wrong with eating meat.
About 20 years ago, I have a memory of my mother handing me a book about
animal rights. The book was probably
Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, but
as you can see, I paid so little attention to it I am not even sure of the
book. I kept it for a reasonable amount
of time to make it seem like I had read it, and then I gave the book back. The next Thanksgiving, as I opened my mouth wide
to cram it with a huge fork full of turkey meat, I caught sight of my mother
glaring at me. It was so out of
character for her that the image has stuck in my memory for life. I guess it was that important to her, and I
just wish she could have known that I became a vegan. It would have made her proud, but she died nine
years ago.
Nowadays, I try to educate people about what is going on in
factory farms and fur farms. I usually
ask people simply to cut down on meat and dairy, and sometimes, after hearing
their myriad defenses, I just beg them to drink a glass of juice instead of
milk for one meal. It seems to be way
too much to ask. I always wonder then,
whether the words “sacrifice for others” is ever put into practice, or is it
something that is just talked about in churches and claimed but never done.
I plead for people to watch a few factory farm videos, but my
pleas are met with refusal. “Oh, I just
can’t watch them; they’re too horrible!” Well, if they know it is so horrible then why
do they continue eating meat and drinking milk?
Since my pleas have been met with so many defenses, I thought
I would list them, and my responses, so that perhaps the conversation can move
beyond giving these defenses again and again.
1. “We are carnivores. See, right here on the
side – this pointier tooth? This proves
we are carnivores!” (Also “We are omnivores.”)
Actually, there is more evidence that we should be
herbivore. But it really doesn’t matter
whether we are supposed to be carnivore, omnivore or herbivore. We have a huge choice in what we eat and if
we know we cause suffering, pain and sadness to animals, then we should make a
choice to eat something else. By the way,
hippopotami, camels, and gorillas have huge canine teeth and they are vegan
except for when they are stressed, so it doesn’t matter whether your teeth look
like Dracula, you can be vegan.
2. “I am a predator.”
My favorite defense is seeing a person who sits at a
computer all day and then goes home and sits and watches T.V. telling me he is
a predator and is comfortable with his status in the animal world.
3. “Plants have feelings too! You’re killing plants!”
The answer to this is obvious to any thinking person and any
non-thinking plant. Plants have no
brain, no spinal cord, no highly evolved nervous system; in fact, no nervous
system. Which emits less pain, cutting a
cow’s throat or cutting a blade of grass which grows back?
4. “I would rather help starving children than
animals; I think helping humans is more important.” Look
into your heart, and then ask yourself this:
Why is this an either/or statement?
Why only help humans when you can help both humans and animals? If you really want to help humans, then go
vegan, because we can use all this cropland that is currently for animal
consumption and grow food crops for human consumption instead. The environment will be better off, and if
everyone were vegan, we could feed the world.
(Once I tell people that being vegan helps humans, they seem to no
longer care about helping humans.)
5. “The farmers will suffer.”
It is sad that we would put the livelihood of farmers over
the suffering of animals. Truly, many
farmers want to get out of the factory farm business and hate the toxic ammonia
in the barns, but as long as people eat meat and dairy, they have a lucrative
business they feel they can’t move away from.
Changing this country to a vegan diet will not happen overnight, so the
farmers will have plenty of time (perhaps several generations) to learn how to
grow other crops.
5. “Animals are here for our use.”
The last time I checked, humans are not here for another animal’s use. Take the mountain lion who would love to make
us his meal. Is our only purpose in life
to be eaten by a mountain lion? It seems
to be more our purpose to avoid being eaten!
If animals can live to reproduce, it keeps the species going, which can
be seen as a purpose, but for humans, our purpose is to fulfill our lives, so
an animal’s purpose is not to be food for us. They are here to live. When I
read or see videos of foxes being electrocuted anally, baby chicks being ground
up alive, baby cows taken away from their mothers and the mother’s milk given
to humans with the baby cows never getting a drop of their mother’s milk, and chickens
squished eight to a cage with cages stacked on top of each other so their urine
and feces drops on those below, I cannot agree that “animals are here for our
use.” This is not as nature
intended! I think the animals are here
to live their lives with minimum interference from us, unless we help to make
their hard lives better for them.
6. “The Bible says we have dominion over
animals.”
Humans have used this word, dominion, to mean they have the
right to treat animals any way they want, and usually it means poorly. Dominion means being the caregiver and ruler,
but that does not mean being abusive. We have dominion over our children; but
none of us would ever force feed our children, operate on them without
anesthesia, or send them to stand in the slaughter line. If we would not do this to a human, why would
we do it to an animal?
7. “It is the way of the world.”
This is probably the hardest excuse to overcome, because
people really believe they are stuck in one culture and one way of eating and
that the world must be this way. They
resign themselves into accepting violence against animals, because they think
it is necessary for the world. In fact,
with animals as circus entertainment, bullfights, horse racing, dog racing and
other ring entertainment involving animals, I am not sure we have come very far
from gladiators fighting lions in the Coliseum.
If we did not eat animals, it would not be the “way of the world” for
humans. It’s that simple.
8. “I only buy humane meat.”
With a few exceptions, I have found this to be a bluff. Most people do not buy humane meat all the
time and they never eat humane meat out at restaurants. People who claim they eat humane but do not
research humane meat farms do not realize that even recently certified humane
meat farms contain abuse. Any male calf
born to a mother cow will be taken away and made to become a veal calf, or sold
or killed if they are extra. Chickens in
most cage free farms have had their beaks painfully burned to a shorter length
and might not even be allowed out of doors.
All breeders have been artificially inseminated, and no one addresses
what happens to the male chicks. Allow
me: At one day of age, the male chicks on most factory farms, humane farms and
organic farms are either ground up or thrown into a bin to be crushed by the weight
of other male chicks. The egg laying
industry does not need male chicks and these chicks aren’t worth raising
because they were not bred to be meat chickens.
We have not even talked about the breeding farms that artificially
inseminate the chickens that will become the egg laying chickens on factory
farms and on many mom and pop farms. Still
think there is such a thing as humane meat?
9. “We need meat.”
I find this so sad.
Just look at long-term vegans such as Robert Cheeke, Torre Washington,
life-time vegan Jehina Malik, and 160 mile World Champion extreme runner Scott
Jurek. (Go ahead – Google them please!) My
own total cholesterol is 120, I am 57 years old and I am the same height and
weight as in high school, 5”4 ½” and 115 so I really think we can disprove the
“We need meat” statement without even bringing up scientific studies and statistics. I do eat some vegan chocolate (Ghiradelli
semi-sweet chocolate chips) every day and usually a little Tofutti sour cream! I eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner,
and then cereal before bed, so never think a vegan suffers!
Scientific research shows that saturated fat and cholesterol
clog arteries. X-rays show that giving
up meat and dairy and adopting a low fat plant and starch based diet can
re-open those arteries. The x-rays results are amazing.
We know that nitrates in meat can cause Cancer, that a recent sampling of chicken
in grocery stores showed 85% of the chicken to have feces on them, that girls
are hitting puberty earlier with a meat and dairy diet which will cause them to
have more of a chance of breast and ovarian Cancers and rob them of childhood, that
three year olds have striations of fat on their arteries from the typical high
fat, high protein American diet, and that Type II diabetes can be cured on a
low fat starch and plant based diet.
Meat is a very dangerous food. It
floors me that people are not eager to ditch meat and dairy, but I don’t think
they know how to cook anything else, and they would rather look up another diet
that allows meat and is similar to what they are already eating.
“It is my personal
choice!”
Finally, people who want to continue eating meat and dairy claim it is their
personal choice and they have a right to eat what they want, and that is technically
true because there are very few laws to protect animals. But this personal choice has victims. Is an animal’s life less worthy than a few
seconds of taste?
I look at what I used to eat – gooey glue-like cheese, skim
milk that looked like it had a tinge of urine and tasted like it too, and meat
that had slimy lines of fat in between the grains of meat; and can’t even
imagine eating that food.
I would say, just try it.
Try some soy milk or almond milk.
Go on sites like “vegweb.com; findingvegan.com and
veganmotherhubbard.com.
There are so
many great sites for vegan recipes! Also, check out “I Can’t Believe It’s Vegan”
to find out what is already vegan in your grocery stores.
http://www.vegfamily.com/lists/its-vegan.htm.
Contact a local Vegetarian Society
and maybe attend a meeting.
The pot-luck
meals are wonderful for discovering new recipes.
Eat more starch, and more fruits and vegetables
and that will push meat out of the diet.
There will probably be comments against my article, such as
“She’s arrogant, she thinks only her way is right, how dare she tell me what I
can or cannot do with my life?” It’s
common. I speak for the victims in a
desperate plea for people to help.
Animals on factory farms have no choice and no voice. We must be their
voice. The strongest compassion can be
for those innocent beings we do not see because they are hidden away. The greatest compassion is when we do not
personally get rewarded for it, but do it from our hearts.
If you eat meat and dairy you are the reason for the
enslavement, the torture and the killings.
Immediately, people try to divert from this idea by blaming individual
grocery stores, claim they always eat “humane” or just get angry, but it is the
truth. If you eat meat, animals are
being tortured and killed for your food.
Most of you have now read my responses, and my guess is that I made
sense but will have no influence on your actions or may possibly have a counter
reaction.
