Stinkerpants

Why I’m a Vegetarian (no gross details, I promise!)

February 4, 2009 in Urban Hippies • Urban Farming • Miscellaneous Ramblings

Photo from here.

Y and I are in the process of doing something right now (we’re getting chickens), and I’m going to talk about it tomorrow.  As I was writing that entry, I realized that I needed to provide a bit of background about why we’re doing what we’re doing before I could describe the chicken situation.

Okay, so I’m a vegetarian.  It’s not that I don’t like the taste of meat–on the contrary, I actually like it quite a bit.  I’m a vegetarian because I’m disgusted by how animals are treated while they’re being raised for food, and how they’re slaughtered.  I won’t go into detail here.  I figure you’ll do the research yourself if you care about the poor widdle animals.

I was a vegetarian for five years (back then, it wasn’t about the animals–I just felt like I wanted to be a vegetarian for some reason), until I went to live in Italy for three months.  I started to feel really sick after awhile, because there aren’t many options there for a well-balanced vegetarian diet.  I ate meat for about four or five years.

Then I started reading.  If you’re interested in learning more about how animals are raised and slaughtered (and their impact on the environment), I recommend checking out these books:

Skinny Bitch / Animal Liberation / MAD COWBOY / Slaughterhouse

I personally feel that you should know what an animal had to go through to provide your meal.  I also believe that if you’re going to eat something, you should be able to kill it.  I know I wouldn’t be able to kill an animal, so I don’t think I should be eating meat.  I have no problem slaughtering a vegetable, though (haha).  I’m not doing this because I think I can make a difference in the meat industry.  I’m doing it because the idea of eating meat now disgusts me.

I am not a vegan.  I don’t really care if it’s “unnatural” for humans to drink milk.  It is delicious.  And life without ice cream and cheese?  That sounds horrendous.  I also don’t care if an egg is an unborn chicken.  It doesn’t hurt the chicken to lay the egg and it doesn’t hurt the chick to eat him, so whatever.

Photo from here.

Except.  Except it does hurt the cow to give milk, and it does hurt the chicken to lay the egg.

I have been trying to reconcile this for quite awhile, and up until this point, my solution has been cage free eggs and organic milk.  I knew that neither of these were awesome solutions (because animals who are part of any industry probably aren’t treated that well), but I wasn’t sure what else to do.

Anyway, I’ve eaten cage free eggs for as long as I can remember, and I’ve converted other people to eating them, too.  Recently, though, I learned a lot about what it means to be a “cage-free” or “free-range” chicken.  To be honest, there’s not really that much of a difference (this documentary looks awesome, and it’s all about chickens if you want to learn more).

I don’t think I can continue to eat eggs without picturing their poor little chicken faces (dammit!).

Sooooo…that there’s a good reason to get some backyard chickens.  Which we are doing!  I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.  :)