Between a rock and a hard place

1510: 

The horror stories about animals in farms and abattoirs horrify and confront all sensitive people, whether vegan or not.  But for omnivores it’s a  mixed message.  “I love animals but I like to eat them, so I don't want to find out too much.”

As soon as we know what’s happening ‘down on the farm’, we realise that it implicates us because of what we eat (or wear).  Almost all of us are implicated in something so routine and on such a massive scale that it seems futile to try to fight it, especially when it seems most people are either cold-hearted or burying their heads in the sand.  Most people just don’t want to know.  The plain fact of the matter is that the 'animal-holocaust' is a daily event, and yet, however horrific it is, it doesn’t make most people step away from their eating habits.

However, vegans have stepped away.  And having done that, we now want to change everyone, not for the sake of their being supportive of us, but being supportive of animals themselves. We have a big task on our hands. To be an animal activist is to be prepared if necessary to act solo, in defiance of family, friends and other social pressures.  To act independently takes courage.  Some would say Animal Rights is an impossible dream.  But what else can we do but try to change the pattern of human violence against animals?

Farm animals (‘food animals’) are badly used, and we know it.  But even though every educated adult, in every part of the world, feels some guilt about it, still they won’t shift.  They possibly know ‘animal-based food’ isn’t healthy and is the product of a cruel and exploitative system, and yet they will not act on this knowledge. The reason for this may be obvious, but nonetheless it’s the never ending question all vegans contemplate - how to get people to take animal cruelty seriously.  What can we do about it?  Until we unlock this particular mystery - why some do respond, why some don’t - our way forward won’t be clear.

If you DO act, if you do respond, you can guarantee that your life will change quite radically.  By being an advocate for the ‘abolition-of-animal-slavery’, one is marked-out as an ‘all or nothing abolitionist’.  And since you can’t be a little bit abolitionist anymore than a woman can be a little bit pregnant, once you’ve said, “I’m vegan-on-principle”, in reality there’s no going back.  Once you’ve faced your cravings, only then can you step out of one world into another.  I don’t mean there’s a Vegan Club-of-Paradise, only that there's a different mind-set and a thunderingly altered perception of things, which, now, I personally wouldn’t want to move away from on any account.