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We’ve nearly all grown up with an omnivore’s indifference towards
the animals we eat, because we are so used to eating animal-based foods. Adopting
a herbivorous diet is quite a big step.
Once I
became a vegan I began to have problems, but surprisingly enough not with diet
and certainly not with my first-time-clearness of conscience. The biggest
problem was in finding hands to hold. Fellow but few vegans were invaluable,
but I was and am still conscious of how hard it must be for people living in
regions where fellow are a rarity. It’s scary out there alone, living in a
non-vegan world.
In time, settled
in and learning more and more, going deeper and deeper into the rationale of
it, I tried to get others to join me … but that’s where I struck real problems,
problems I’d never expected. Shock number one: me, as a declared vegan, was
being pushed away like a dirty smell, especially if I attempted to talk about
Animal Rights with friends and acquaintances. I realised my approach was
fraught with danger, by my not knowing how to talk.
These days,
having thought so hard about food and what we put into our mouths, my
interest is more about what comes out of our mouths.
The standard animal rights-protest-approach
has always relied heavily on evoking shame and guilt in people, for not being
more aware of how their food comes to them. And while my outrage was sincerely
felt I used it as an excuse to hit out. And the response I got back was usually
defensive. People, characteristically, always want to fall back on the norm and
being a member of the Vast Majority. Any attempt on my part, to shame people
into compassion, always failed miserably; the attitude amongst most people is human-based.
They feel that if they are kind to children, companion animals and people in
general, it makes them compassionate people. Few believe there’s any need to go
much further, to extend compassion to ‘food’ animals.
The omnivore is like a major river
with omnivorousness flowing like water. And the more one stands in the way of
it, the more the water will finds ways of flowing around the obstacle. If our vegan
information is ever appreciated, it is usually only by those who already want
to change. We can’t alter the mind-set of the resolutely unwilling. They’ll always
find ways of ignoring what they don’t want to hear. But, what is the nature of
change, especially concerning something as personal as food choices.
This
subject exploded into peoples’ consciousness some forty years ago, when the
book Animal Liberation was first
published and The Animals Film came out. The shock was fresh then, but
now most people, if they know what’s going on, eventually make a conscious
decision to ignore it. “It’s too complicated”.
In consequence our voice is not
heard. Our campaigns seem to agitate or antagonise people rather than inspire
them. All of our detailed facts and shock-horror is old hat. Even back in the
eighties, the ‘latest information’ about factory farming alarmed a lot of
people but it failed to suggest the need to observe vegan principle. That was
considered too radical. Each person chose a cut-off point. Momentarily meat-eating
slowed and there was a quickening of vegetarianism. But few came across to
veganism. Lately, with a different generation, fashion is changing,
animal-eating is considered un-cool, but largely, across the whole of Society,
there is a massive ethical indifference. I suppose it’s that way because there’s
such a deeply ingrained attitude towards farm animals in our collective psyche.
We are precious about food. Food is life, and food must include animal-based
products. That’s a ‘given’. We fear altering our food habits more than we fear
being identified as an animal abuser.
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