Don’t tell the kids

The quiche we eat, a biscuit with coffee, and many other thousands of brand named items taken for granted, are not benign. They connect back to the ugly event of animal abuse. The connection between that quiche and the creature who laid the egg is devastating enough to make us choke on our quiche. It’s simple enough for a three year old to comprehend. It’s why vegans are vegans.
Comprehending the connection isn’t the problem, it’s the habit of ignoring it that’s the problem. It isn’t hard to grasp what vegan principle is, it’s just too hot to apply to daily life. By NOT applying it we can eat delicious quiche. We are used to doing delicious things (quiche is delicious). Having no-quiche is self-denial. And for what? A chicken? A creature whose body we eat anyway, on a regular basis?
To think it through, from egg to quiche, from imprisoned animal to dinning table, is a process a three year old child could understand IF they were told ... about entombing hens in wire cages, egg dropping to fill cartons like the one in the fridge. They’d object if it were explained to them, but whoa! That would mean one huge hassle for parents making breakfast. If the kids got wind of it they’d refuse the meal on the table. So, parents use “a small deception”. They withhold information. This is one farmyard story they don’t tell. It’s not lying, just omitting a crucial factor in the forming of values, and kids may be confused but there’s nothing they can do. They have zero power. They aren’t free to ask a simple question and expect a truthful answer.
Keeping the kids in the dark, over this matter anyway, is convenient for parents and teachers. If children start to get ethical about food, life could become complicated. They’d drive you nuts, refusing food. Parents fill their fridges with handy, ready-to-go foods, which works well with the kids. Eggs in all their many forms, mainly used as ingredients for composite foods, work wonders, as do most meat and milk products.
Okay, well you see where I’m going. This isn’t a tirade about cruelty and cages and thoughtless parents, but our reaction to it all. We come back to our own fuming and spluttering anger, about people who “back the bastards who do the caging”. We fume because we can’t do anything, because it’s still legal to buy eggs!! Out of frustration, we force the issue, and consequently vegan-to-omnivore talk ends up in grief. Listening to this talk, if you spoke another language and couldn’t understand the English words being used, you’d have no trouble understanding each person’s feelings. Especially the invective. If our words are “meant”, it’s likely they will be intended to make the opposite party feel like a cornered rat.