1529:
Animal activists make it
their business to look where others don’t care to. When I visited my first intensive farm and my
first abattoir, straight away everything changed for me. What I saw turned me vegan, and I knew if others
saw what I saw, whether at first hand or via video footage, they’d react as I did;
they’d be outraged enough to change their eating habits. With that sort of evidence, it would be enough
for them to boycott the whole Industry’s products. But I was wrong. When all this was receiving mass exposure in
the 1980s, what a shock I got when I saw that there was NO great surge of
compassion.
This more than anything made
me wonder about people, particularly about parents, politicians, preachers and pedagogues.
Now, some decades later, I’m still
wondering why they aren’t telling the kids the truth about animal farming. It’s not that they don’t know, it’s just that
they don’t want to know, or more
particularly, they don’t want the kids to know for fear of it reflecting badly
on them.
As I moved into adulthood, or
at least into a state of independence (buying my own clothes, preparing my own
meals), I began to focus on the job in hand. The shock was gone and I was moving on from
the easier game of blaming ‘those who didn’t tell us’, to the much more difficult
work of activism via communication.
Activism shouldn't waste
energy on blame. The fact is that, to
some extent, we’ve all got blood on our hands. But as activists we don't have
time to waste. We should be looking
where others don’t look and make sure we respond appropriately to what we
discover. If we see how the pig is
forced to live, then drop pork; if we see how the battery system operates, then
drop eggs; if we see the abattoir in operation, then drop everything that has a
face – that’s vegan principle in operation.
And once our own life has been cleaned up, then it's time to tell this
story to others.
As adults with free choice,
we should make a study of the faces of animals. If you look into their eyes you will see a downtrodden
look of resignation. Then take a look at
the face of an animal at the abattoir, being led into the execution chamber. It’s an unforgettable face of despair. And this is the terror that the carnivore condones
or ignores; this is a reflection of the lengths they'll go to, to get a taste
of animal flesh or secretion.
When I first saw the faces of
captive animals, in zoos, on farms, or in laboratories, it was enough to stop
me in my tracks, make me check my habits, make me boycott, make me plant-base
all my food and clothing, and then move on to activism.
So, what is activism?
For some time, for me, it was
a huge project - changing my food habits, changing my choice of shoes and
jumpers and blankets, but later, when diet was resolved and shoes and clothes
sorted out, I looked deeper. I saw something
even sadder than the waste and cruelty. It
was my own loss of faith in human nature, and that, not anger, began to fuel my
activism ever since.
Giving up on human nature,
not seeing the potential in people, is ultimately sad. The one spark of hope comes from some of the
turned-on youth of today, who are moving away from all this cruelty and waste, and
becoming vegan and pro-active animal advocates.
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