Making the hard decisions

1787: 

People don’t usually like hearing stories of cruelty and waste in relation to animals. They feel guilty about what they’re eating and wearing, but the problem is that they can’t imagine a world without animal farms and animal foods and animal-based clothing. Most people can’t accept life without meat or, if they’re vegetarians, without eggs, cheese, milk and the hundreds of products using animal ingredients. Most people think a plant-based diet would be boring and unhealthy. But today people are better informed, and if they are not yet quite clear about why cruelty is linked to dairy products, they’ll have no trouble understanding that such things as leather should be avoided, because it is the skin of executed animals.

Back in the 1970s there was far less information. I knew very little until I met the son of a dairy farmer, who knew about what they did to animals, for their meat and milk and eggs. I vaguely knew it wasn’t nice but he went through the details, and explained why consumers were always kept in the dark. But, as he pointed out, that was just what the customer wanted; they didn’t want to know too much, in case they might persuade themselves to act.

This was true for me. I really didn’t want to know. And yet now I did. I liked all the delicious foods and yet had to bring myself to dislike them because of their animal content. And this is the dilemma for most people today, unable to face a life without prawns, steak, ham, eggs, ice cream, milk chocolate, melted cheese on pizzas, fruit yoghurt and cream cakes. And a lot else besides.

Every time I eat out, go to a dinner party or a function or a celebration like a wedding, there are always attractive items to eat, made with lots of animal ingredients. To pass it up might seem masochistic. So, while all the others are stuffing their faces I end up with a bowl of salad. And it's just about the same when it comes to clothing, to leather shoes, woollen jumpers and blankets, silks and furs, etc.  It amounts to a long list.

As a vegan, there's a lot of ‘doing-without’. It’s quite a discipline to impose on yourself. If you decide to deny yourself these ‘eating pleasures’ and wardrobe items, you’ll effectively be stepping aside from normality and from the lifestyle of most of your friends and family.

So, you have to adopt an alternative lifestyle. You have to use your creativity to make it attractive. You find ways to make plant-based foods interesting and delicious. You wear canvas shoes, cotton, linen and synthetic fabrics. You have to get used to explaining to people why such radical changes are being made - yes, it's healthier but mainly it to stand aside from animal-based products, to ‘save animals’.

At this point some will fail to understand, since they feel no particular empathy for pigs and chickens. But for those who do have some empathy, they’ll realise why we’ve had to make these radical changes to our lifestyle. And if we don’t become too evangelical when we explain things, they might just go away and consider things afresh. Who knows, they might admire the principles we live by and decide to move towards becoming vegan themselves.