Animals, Vegetables and Me: A Tirade

In the evening I ate dinner again with Anna (redhead, Vegan) and the other lady whose name still eludes me, I am embarrassed to say. After that we took a walk in the city, and an interesting dialogue came up between us. I think it was sparked off at dinner, as Anna, being Vegan, has to have the kitchen staff prepare her meal separately from the usual fare, because the usual fare is all animal products. She was saying she felt bad for asking. This led into me asking how she had become a Vegan. She told me that she had been completely turned off eating animals or animal products because of videos she had seen and learning about how the animals lived and were killed. I have seen some of these videos myself, and I am familiar with the slaughtering process (although I have not witnessed it first hand for anything except poultry). Anna was very passionate about, in light of all this information, why you should become a Vegan. She used the points many of my other vegetarian and Vegan friends have, about the suffering and pain that we put our food animals through. She knew that I was thinking about becoming a vet, and said that becoming a Vegan was bound to happen (paraphrasing here on my memory of the convo). Vegans use up less arable land than meat eaters do, it’s healthier, kinder, and as far as we know, a pain free way to eat for all involved. I have heard these arguments before, and said so, and she asked me why then was I still an omnivore. I replied that in the animal world, animals are omnivores, carnivores, and herbivores. Biologically speaking, humans evolved to be omnivores. Also, when animals kill, it a lot less pretty than our current slaughtering practices. Anna replied to this by saying that humans, as a conscious species, are allowed to shape how they live. We are higher than the animals, and therefore can choose not to act like them. We can choose a more peaceful way of existence. A more moral one.

Now comes the tricky part for poor Marisa. She has this theory about animals “being people too