Silver Chips Online

A vegan's beef with meat-eating

Glue for my craft projects, Tupperware to hold my lunch, plastic bottles for my soda and the cheese crackers on which I munch.

The daunting list of animal-exploiting products that I’ve used nearly every day goes on and on.

In a quest to combat our societal dependency on animals, I’ve been a foot soldier for the past three weeks in the vegetarian brigade, marching forward in a personal experimental journey to experience firsthand the discipline of veganism, the ultra-vegetarian lifestyle.

The V-word

I’ve joined a whole contingent of vegans (pronounced VEE-gun) who avoid using animal products and products tested on animals. This includes eliminating not only meat and fish from their diet but also milk, cheese, eggs, honey and clothing made from leather, wool and silk. Motives for such drastic dietary limitations stem from the belief that the lifestyle reduces animal suffering, conserves resources and benefits one’s personal health.

In the U.S. alone, there are an estimated 12 million vegetarians, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), including some right here at Blair. And some Blazers, like me, have taken vegetarianism a step further and have adopted veganism. Gone are our cheese omelet breakfasts, after-school chocolate milkshakes and traditional roast-beef suppers.

Meeting my meat

When shopping for my new diet at the natural-food store, I run into a fellow vegan soldier who encourages my reconnaissance of the vegan territory. Eager to help, the man loans me a video called Meet Your Meat, a short, PETA-made documentary exposing the horrors of the meat industry processes for raising and slaughtering livestock.

Back at home, I brace myself to watch the video, comforted knowing that under federal law, slaughtered cattle and hogs must be “stunned"—rendered insensible to pain—before meeting their death. But on screen, a subtitle reads, “Many pigs have their throats slit while they are still conscious," while the accompanying image shows a man swiftly cutting the necks of pigs. As if on cue, the pigs begin to jolt and spasm, but the killer saunters off unfazed. The video continues to show similarly stomach-churning scenes at farms and processing plants.

A meat-eater all my life, I am bothered by these brutal images. For starters, my conscience begins pondering the difference between pet animals and livestock: I fawn over the fowl that is my beloved parakeet but think nothing of hungrily devouring the fowl that is my rotisserie chicken dinner.
My own soul-searching helps me understand why veganism regards animals as sacrosanct; nothing should be done that violates the integrity and well-being of any animal.

Embracing alternatives

Secure in my new vegan outlook, I see that respecting animals includes not only avoiding their meat but also avoiding the leather that comes from their skin. Luckily, as the anti-animal-cruelty contingent continues to grow, shunning animal products is easier because of the increasing availability of alternatives.

Senior Michael Blair, a vegan for 18 months, can prove that there are viable ways to avoid consuming animal products. Pulling up his pantleg and stretching out his leg, he shows me his vegan and sweatshop-free shoes bearing a white tag which reads “Vegetarian Shoes."

Others, however, don’t see the need to find alternatives for their chicken nuggets, let alone their designer leather boots.

Got beef?

Senior Sergio Garcia believes that meat is a fundamental part of the human diet which should not be sidestepped. “Ham for breakfast, some meat for lunch," Garcia says, pausing to pull out a sandwich from his backpack and flop it open to show me the ground beef packed inside, “and ham, beef or steak for dinner."
Garcia justifies his ideas, citing the human race’s historical diet of animal meat. “Yes, it’s sad, but it’s the only way," he tells me. “I just think, ‘It’s meat. I’m gonna fry it, gonna eat it, and it’s gonna taste good.’ End of story," he says, his voice confident.

Vegans, however, point to the fact that every day, 840 million people worldwide, one quarter of which are children, go hungry. Producing meat, a food high up on the food chain, requires much more energy and many more natural resources than crops do; the beef in just one Big Mac represents enough wheat to make five loaves of bread.

It is estimated that if everyone adopted a vegetarian diet and no food was wasted, current food production could theoretically feed ten billion people, which is more than the projected population for the year 2050, according to PETA.

Differentiating the V-isms

The difference between veganism and vegetarianism lies in a vegan’s refusal of eggs, dairy and honey in addition to meat. Many foods are out-of-bounds when these are cut from the diet, especially tasty treats like pastries, pies and buttered popcorn.

But the reasoning behind relinquishing these foods is good enough for me. “Egg-laying hens are the most abused animal on the planet," says Josh Balk, Outreach Coordinator for Compassion Over Killing, a Washington, D.C.-based animal advocacy organization that promotes vegetarianism as the way to take a stand against animal cruelty. “And male chickens in the egg industry are useless in production because they can’t lay eggs," Balk continues. “So as soon as they’re born, they’re discarded in trashcans and simply thrown away."

Hearing about the horrible treatment of egg-laying hens roused vegetarian sophomore Mollie Segal’s interest in adopting a more restrictive vegan diet. Segal is an active and devoted member of PETA 2, PETA’s kids’ and teenagers’ domain, and recently founded Blair’s first Animal Rights Club.

Despite her devotion to animal rights, though, she expresses the difficulties that may prevent many people from assuming a vegan diet: the temptation to delve into yummy desserts and non-vegan foods. “It’s easy to forget sometimes and, like, dive into a chocolate bar," Segal admits, smiling sheepishly (most chocolate contains forbidden milk).

Cravings may be abundant in the world of veganism, but hit with a hankering, I simply recall egg-laying hens who pass their brief lifespan jammed into tiny wire cages and the resulting cage-mate cannibalization and self-mutilation. Suddenly, dealing with the cravings is not half as bad.

Nailing nutrition

For Segal and some others, practicing vegetarianism hasn’t been easy. In her early days as a vegetarian, Segal faced a problem not uncommon among teen vegetarians and vegans—malnutrition. When fits of vomiting and fainting became more frequent, Segal soon learned from her doctor that she suffered from anemia, a lack of sufficient iron in the blood.

Sophomore Stephanie Alfaro was forced to drop her vegan diet after being hospitalized for complications relating to anemia. She had been a vegan for one year and started to have fits of fainting, cold hands and concentration troubles.

Anemia-related sickness can be avoided, though, by the use of iron supplements and nutritional discipline. Both Segal and Alfaro now take iron vitamins, and Segal, still a vegetarian, pays better attention to eating foods that are rich in protein.

Christine Rushing, a registered licensed dietician at Brook Lane Health Services in Hagerstown, says the most important thing vegans must do is get enough Vitamin B-12, a vitamin that is found almost only in meats. Rushing is yet another dietician to endorse vegetarian-related diets.

Every person counts

As for me, I don’t feel more energetic or more tired since adopting veganism, but I do feel an enlightened sense of accomplishment. And I didn’t suffer during these several weeks of veganism, except when watching slaughter sequences on tape and scratching my head on how to push veganism to a scale large enough to tackle world hunger.

But I’m inspired by the committed words of Blair MAPS teacher Alan Kellerman, a vegan of 22 years, which will guide me as I continue to maintain a vegan diet and outlook. “It’s a long process," he tells me, following up with references to the significant strides veganism has made in the past decade.

“Who are [consumers] going to listen to: Colgate, Palmolive or me?" Kellerman asks rhetorically, pausing long enough for me to smile at him. “That doesn’t mean I have to give up, though. And I won’t."
I agree.


Pocket guide for the beginning vegan:

*Learn the fundamentals: Research veganism online, check out books from the library and talk to vegans around you.

*Get stocked: Keeping healthy vegan food around the house is important, so stash your fridge with vegetables, sesame crackers and soy ice cream.

*Find a friend/family member to do it also: The two of you can create a mini support group.

*Take vitamin supplements (protein, calcium, B-12): Keep yourself healthy by getting
the nutrients your body isn’t getting through the meat you used to eat.

*Keep your motives in sight: If at any points you doubt your commitment and feel like giving into a craving, remember your reasoning for becoming a vegan.

http://silverchips.mbhs.edu/story/3149