Ready, one, two, three, *serious face*
Okay, I used to be proud to say I was a vegetarian.
It was my New Years resolution for 2010, and the only one I've ever managed for longer than five minutes.
It all started with a programme Jamie Oliver did.
(Pic thanks to Telegraph.co.uk)
It was called Jamie's fowl dinners, an attempt to get Britain to eat free-range.
Well, it sure worked on me.
He showed the kind of living conditions these animals have to suffer, how they're killed, and even showed how the male chicks are put to sleep because they're of no use to the industry.
I watched the little creatures breathe in the gas in the small glass box. I watched their eyelids flutter until they closed, and they laid down and stayed there. Tiny lives extinguished all because they served no purpose.
(Because of course, you don't get eggs from males, they only want the female ones to live.)
My heart broke.
I always feel like I'm thrown in the same category as activists like PETA and the like, and thus dismissed and told to go hug a tree when I voice my opinion on this matter by most people.
But it's something I believe in very strongly, that animals should not be forced to live in disgusting conditions before mercilessly slaughtered just to feed us.
However.
After two years of being a strict vegetarian, checking sweet packets for gelatin in the ingredients, struggling to find easy and nutritious food that didn't have dead things in it, being the awkward dinner guest, I started eating meat again.
Little by little, it crept back into my diet.
Working in a kitchen didn't help. It was always available, and I'd think well fuck, the poor thing's already dead so I might as well eat it, otherwise it's lost it's life only to be thrown away.
It started off as I'd only eat lamb. Then lamb and pork. Oh, but I'd never touch chicken, or beef...
Until I started eating chicken again.
And every time I eat it, thoughts of those poor wee animals dying claw at the inside of my head.
And yesterday, I went to lunch with Dreadlock Steve, and ordered a stone grill meal with pork, ostrich, kangaroo and venison.
My V card was officially revoked at that point.
And Dreadlock Steve told me about how animal activists had stopped deer being hunted in New Zealand at one point, but then their numbers grew and they started starving to death because there wasn't enough around to feed them, so after all that we went back to hunting them and deer eventually made it's way onto restaurant menus. It was actually better for the deer to be shot and killed rather than a long, drawn-out suffering from starvation. So maybe it's not so bad that humans eat animals?
I'm not sure how to feel about that.
Being vegetarian, especially when the person you live with isn't, is harder than you imagine it will be.
But instead of pulling a sad face at Steve and going "Am I a bad person?" every time I eat something, I've decided to still make an effort. I still buy free-range eggs, because cage eggs are fucking horrible anyway, I still try to limit the amount of meat I consume and still cook vegetarian foods because it's better for you too, and yes, I text the number on the SAFE ad, the one with the lame singing pigs, to send them a donation.
I can only hope other people start to care a little more.
Check these guys out ^ if this topic interests you.
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