That's what what I call being vegan. Especially on thanksgiving.
While the other eight seats at the table are content eating turkey with all the fixin's, AKA murder induced plates, I had the opportunity to enlighten all of my guests of what it means/what it's like to be vegan. While they understood why I chose and follow the decisions I did, they listened contently to the catastrophic events that took place to get the turkey on their plates, the gravy on their mashed potatoes, and the dairy in their desserts. All without the flinch of an eye. Some people see the foods we eat today as "the way it is these days: you have to eat, and this is how it's done." I see the choice of going vegan as finding alternatives to eating, rather that murdering living souls to consume food for our own benefit.
I ate my hummus and edamame more than contently, while they stuffed their faces with the traditional thanksgiving foods, all contributing to murdering a soul in some way shape or form, and told them true facts about how each main course and sides got onto their plate. "But not all farms work that way....", they insisted. But they do. Farms that mass produce meat, dairy and eggs function the same way: they use the most cost effective/cheapest ways to kill/sell/deliver their profits to your plates. Especially during thanksgiving. In fact, most farms won't even shoot their livestock with guns to kill them after they have been used for all they're good for, as guns and bullets are cost effective. Slitting a throat while alive, however, is not.
This means that they "starve" the animals by not feeding them, but injecting them with only the hormones or chemicals need to make that specific animal produce more of their specific need (aka: they give cows tons of hormones to produce milk, without feeding them, all while making sure they give birth to at least one calf per year. The calf will be used for veal, and the adult cow specifically as a dairy cow, not a beef-giving cow.) Once the cow has been exhausted of food and it's body has been tormented so horrifically that it can no longer hold or bear a baby, it is killed in the most catastrophic, disgusting way possible.
For example, a dairy cow (females only, males are usually used as beef-raised cattle, or killed) is fed nothing but milk-inducing hormones/chemicals into order to produce milk at an extreme rapid rate. It is also forced pregnancy so that it can give birth to calves that will be raised/sold for veal, a horrific upbringing in its self. Once the dairy cow has been starved to death, it's milk-producing organs have been exhausted, and it can no longer function as an animal (most go insane or their bodies shut down from being abused), they are hung by one back leg from a rope which dangles from the ceiling, while still alive and conscious, their throats are slit, and they are left hanging while their bodies drain of blood. More than one hundred thousand cows are unable to walk off of the transport trucks every year, but are slughtered for human food anyway. Some farms even go as far as skin the animals while they are sill conscious. The squirming and noises which come from their mouths are heart-wrenching. In one video I witnessed, which can be watched here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 ,
two pigs were side by side, their throats being slit, one pig is squirming and screaming so badly, that it slips out of the rope, only to drop into the blood bath below him, sloshing around the blood of him and his hanging partner, left to die. This is all because the constant electric prodding and forced onto the killing floor, had not killed them first.
Please think about this when you sit down at your next meal. Do it for the animals, the environment, and for your health. Realize that what you're eating, is not just beef or chicken, but a true murdering and torturing of a living soul.
