PAACE

I used to be vegetarian, but then Diana beat it across my head that I should go vegan. I saw the logic and I took the plunge.

As a vegetarian, I didn't realize that dairy was so inhumane. I always thought that dairy was a fairly good option because I have always seen cows roaming around in fields and chickens prancing about in cheap fenced-in areas and always thought that wasn't so bad. Those are just the few places you see on the side of the road.

Then I saw video footage of dairy farms treating cows & chickens horribly. Video cameras don't lie. These animals were cramped in extremely small spaces, kicked and beaten with blunt objects, rotting from disease, and chickens thrown into cages like they were a baseball, etc.

The worst was footage of cows being forklifted to stand up because they were so weak and near death they couldn't stand on their own (a law requires that cows must be "healthy enough" to stand to produce milk - forklifting them was this company's loophole). Turns out that in this particular case, that milk was going to public school systems. Yeah, that's gotta be some stuff good for kids to drink... milk from nearly dead cows. You have to ask yourself: what will they do next? We have already heard of most of these atrocities. What is going on that we haven't seen? How far will they go? And lastly, why are you vegetarian? Is it for the animals?

If you eat eggs and dairy, I beg you to reconsider. One of Diana's statements shocked me more than anything I have ever read about animal welfare. It was a major part of my decision to go vegan. To paraphrase (I don't remember the exact wording), "I would rather you eat meat and give up dairy than eat dairy than give up meat. Meat production requires an animal to feel only a couple minutes of pain. Dairy requires them to feel years of pain.". Now that I have gone vegan, that statement makes a lot more sense to me.

By the way, it turns out it's a lot easier to go vegan than I ever thought. The only obstacle I have encountered is social events. But if you state that you are vegan like you mean it, people back off quickly and try to appease you quickly. It's quite amusing, really.