Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
To vegans who consider their lifestyle an effort to make change, would you consider it helpful if someone were to decrease the amount of meat in their diet (though not eliminate it), or hypocritical?
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I feel it is *very* helpful when people reduce the amount of meat in their diet, Pedestrian.
Reducing cruelty toward animals is my goal, because I feel eliminating it would be very difficult right away. Baby steps. I haven't been able to eliminate all harm that I do to animals and doubt it is possible to do so thoroughly.
Examples: My house's window wells sometimes bring about the demise of field mice. (I need to buy covers.) I'm sure vaccines from which I benefit were tested on animals. I work in a lab and some ingredients in solutions are derived from animals whom people slaughtered. I buy substitutes when possible, such as a genetically engineered enzyme rather than one purified from pigs directly. Sometimes it isn't possible, so I weigh the benefits of the research with the harm caused to animals (usually animals slaughtered for meat, but pharmaceuticals are made from byproducts).
Quote:
Originally Posted by AwwSugar
See, I'm not even like that.
Eating animals makes me sad. So I don't eat them.
It's literally that simple.
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Eating animals and foods made from them also makes me sad, AwwSugar. That's the reason I became vegetarian and then later vegan. That's the reason I *care* that being vegan makes a difference.
When I know an animal has been hurt, I feel this as a painful emotion. When I see eggs, I know about the piles of dead male baby chicks people kill (suffocate) because they will never lay eggs, and I am sad. When I see someone bringing home a dead pheasant from hunting, I've burst into tears before. When I sit in a lobster house and people around me are eating lobsters whom chefs just boiled alive (though research suggests this is painful to lobsters) I've similarly burst into tears
Blow for fans of boiled lobster: crustaceans feel pain, study says | Science | The Guardian).
At my in-laws recently, when they were watching a rodeo video of one of their children running to a staked goat, grabbing her, smashing her down on the ground, and tying her up, I started to sob, right there in the room, surrounded by 20 suddenly very uncomfortable in-law relatives. And I didn't sob quietly. My mother-in-law told me a little angrily, "Just go," and I replied, very adamantly, through my sobs, "No!!! I *won't* go."
When other in-laws over-handled a scared goat they'd purchased for their 4-year-old to practice roping on, and I heard the goat bleating...I could feel her or his fear...I got very agitated and started to say very loudly, "You're scaring her! Stop scaring her!"
Watching people mistreat and then eat animals makes me serious and sad. The former lives and the deaths of those animals are so close, I can't push them away. I can't stay unmoved, Sugar. I can't ignore their fear and pain any more than I could ignore yours, if we were in a room and someone were hurting you. I would try to rescue you.