changing our personal habits

Anyone who instinctively sees the urgent need to do something about the way we treat food-animals, must ignore what they have previously been taught about eating habits. They must go against their own tastebud-advice, against the advice of corporations, governments and educational authorities, and turn to themselves for advice and to those who have already gone against their own self-interests. People like vegans who have stopped sponsoring the use of animals in the food and clothing industries.
The issue sits like a lead weight on our collective conscience. What we do to animals makes us feel like monsters. Any sensitive and well informed person must be ashamed of the practices we are condoning. Any example is enough to illustrate why we should take this matter seriously. The way animals are slaughtered, the imprisonment of hens in tiny cages, the theft of their newborn calves from dairy cows, the sow stall, the mutilations of cattle. The list of horrors goes on and on and each one reflects on the human consumer who supports abuse by buying the produce from the animal industries. It is likely the sickest of all our habits, responsible for killing us by the death of a thousand cuts. But perhaps we can’t talk about it because we want the subject neglected by governments and ignored by everyone. It throws up just too many problems. To repair any of the damage we do with respect to exploiting animals seems as though we are going to have to make too many changes of habit, more than we are capable of. But there are, nevertheless, many examples of people doing just that. They have established these changes in their lives and are now helping others to understand and carry out similar lifestyle and attitude changes.
They are reacting positively to this need to alter attitudes to animals. They want to show that humans are capable of this level of change, that we all can possess the self discipline and good intentions needed to change the daily habits we grew up with. That is what vegans are doing.