Our Veganism is mentioned a lot through this blog, but I have never really written a whole post about it.
I thought I would rectify this and also use it as a good basic introduction to what the path we follow means.
The word vegan was coined in 1944 by Donald Watson, who combined the first three and last two letters of vegetarian to form "vegan," which he saw as "the beginning and end of vegetarian."(@wikipedia)
The definition of a vegan (in simple terms) is one who lives their life as free as possible from exploitation or cruelty to animals in food, clothing and entertainment.
So a vegan is a person who will not eat meat (inc fish and poultry), dairy, eggs, animal by products (ie gelatin, lanolin, rennet, whey, casein, beeswax, isinglass, and shellac.)and honey. They will also not wear leather, fur, silk or wool.
By this list I could not call myself a card carrying vegan, but I'm working towards it!
By going through the list I can explain why an item is not acceptable and if I use it explain why.
Meat An easy one and the first off many would be vegetarians lists. The modern meat industry has changed in all recognition in the last 50 years. Animals have been bred for factory style environments and for quickness in growth. A modern pig would have a very hard time trying to live in the wild. His bristles have been bred out to nearly nil, his skin is as pink as a humans, his immune system compromised with a diet that from birth consisted of huge amounts of anti-biotics and other medicine.
Welfare aside this is not something I would wish in my body.
Slaughter houses have also changed. Due to red tape, all the small family run abattoirs where an animal could expect a kind hand and a dignified dispatch have gone, instead they are throw in one factory door, processed as quickly as possible by unskilled, underpaid slaughter men and thrown out the other end as meat.
The hygiene in many of these places is deplorable and ecoli (which comes from animal poop)is mostly found in meat.
So in a burger you have a genetically modified, highly medicated, highly traumatised piece of meat which if your very lucky won't have shit on it.
yum.
You can find out more about factory farming
HERE .
Fish also have feelings.
Fish was the last meat I gave up, about 18 months ago now. We treat fish and other sea life, as though from another planet, devoid of feelings and living only on instinct, but research has shown that many fish have maternal instincts, family bonds and have even been trained to perform simple tasks in a research environment. Fish have as highly a developed sense of pain as a kitten yet because they are not air breathers they are often over looked. There is many a fish eating "vegetarian" who thinks nothing of putting this to the back of their mind.
Also the factory style of modern fishing is destroying eco-systems, killing other marine life (including air breathers like seals, dolphins and whales). Studies have shown that if restrictions are not in place soon, fish stocks will be depleted within as little as 40 years.
Find out more about fishing
HERE .
Dairy.Got milk?
Then you also got anti-biotics, pus and blood as well as clogged arteries and obesity.
You also get to kill a calf as well.
Dairy is the one thing that splits the vegetarians from the vegans. Most serious vegetarians (as in the ones who don't do it for 6 months when they're 14 because its cool to not eat bunnies and stuff) become vegan at some stage.
Once you look into the dairy production industry you see that you are supporting a just as, if not crueler, method of farming as eating meat.
Dairy 101.
To produce milk every mammal must fort produce a baby.
In the "old" days mama cow would have her calf for a couple of weeks then he would go live with the other male calves for a couple of years before becoming stewing steak. Now he is taken within hours. If he is lucky he is shot. If he is unlucky he gets to ride in a transporter truck across Europe until he ends up on a veal farm, where he will live in a a crate in a dark barn until ready to be killed and turned into that most jelly like of pale meats, veal.
Mama cow meanwhile, is left to produce milk.
No kind hands gently milk this new age bovine. Instead she is clamped to metal tubes that suck the milk out of her.
Now, as someone who has had babies and had to use various expressing (well milking!) machines, I can tell you that an electric driven suction tube stuck to your nipple bloody hurts. As a human I can say "Ow" and turn it off for a while.
Mama cow can't, she is sucked dry up to 3 times a day to get as much as possible from her. The prolonged savage suction causes bleeding and infection, this in turn can result in mastitis, a painful infection resulting in blocked milk ducts (a baby animal is designed to "milk" with tongue and lips as well as sucking, when you just have sucking, milk ducts get blocked). This means pus gets into the milk.
To read more about pus levels in milk click
HERE. .
Oh and that old chestnut about milk being the best there is for strong bones? Too much milk can actually CAUSE osteoporosis, animal proteins make the body leech calcium out of your bones to regulate your body's PH.
Add to this the fact that no other animal drinks milk past the age of weaning and no animal drinks the milk of another species AND that cows milk is designed for baby cows who grow at a staggeringly faster rate than baby humans and...well..do I need to go on?
EggsThis is the one that means that the vegan society would not accept me as a member (probably).
I have rescue hens and they lay eggs and I eat them.
The eco side of me will not throw away food so we still get to eat omelets and boiled eggs and quiche. However we don't buy eggs, or products with egg in them, and here's why.
In the "old" days eggs (like lamb and chicken and apples for that matter) where a seasonal product.
In the middle of winter, unless you had stockpiled surplus in the summer, you went without eggs.
A hen has finite amount of eggs in her, rather like ovaries in human females. So a Point of lay pullet is in her prime and will lay (once going) nearly every day for a few months, tapering off in the winter as the daylight is less then stopping to moult their feathers. When they start up again she may lay very well to start and then taper off to laying 4 or 5 days out of 7, and so it goes on until she is 4 or 5 and barely laying at all.
The modern factory farmed hen has a short and brutal life.
She is contained in a cage, her beak cut to prevent pecking. She will spend her whole life in a false lit barn, never knowing natural day and night patterns. This way farmers can produce as many eggs in the depths of winter as he can in the summer.
Hens kept like this are commonly dispatched at first moult, sold for pet food or simply left to die when there is no market for their skinny carcases.
Male chicks don't even get a day of life.
Sense would say that all the boys went for meat production but the egg laying and meat breeds are totally different and so male chicks in this case are worthless. The lucky ones are dispatched by gassing, the unlucky ones are thrown alive into bin bags, dumpsters and in some cases high speed grinders, and at less than a day old.
To find out more about battery hens click
HERE .
HoneyAh come on!
Honey? Whats wrong with honey? Little fluffy bee's flitting from flower to flower, how can that be cruel?
Some vegans still consume honey but it is still food produced by animals under false conditions and this had led to devastating disease among bees today that is threatening the pollination of a high proportion of our fruits and flowers.
Bee's kept domestically are not allowed to choose their own queen and are prevented from laying pupa in most of the combe. They are also prevented from swarming, the hive version of reproduction.
Swarms used to be so common that every village had a man who would come and take a swarm away, I have lived in the country for nearly 20 years and have never seen a swarm.
A swarm is prevent often by killing the queen bee and replacing her with a new queen. Bees are often killed while hives are being raided for honey and then, after working so hard for their honey, they get to eat glucose for the winter.
Now if honey is good for US I would imagine it is very good for bees, so bees fed on what is basically refined sugar will not be happy healthy bees.
Colony collapse is a disease that has hit beekeepers hard in the last few years and has spread to wild bees.
To find out more about bees click
HERE .
ClothingNow every one knows fur is a bad thing.
Most people know that leather doesn't grow on trees.
But what about silk and wool?
To obtain one gram of woven silk fifteen silkworms are boiled alive in their cocoons. Read about silk production and how it harms children
HERE .
Wool is often NOT a by product of the meat industry as many think, in the UK many farmers make no money on wool. Like chickens and cows there are different breeds for different needs, so a sheep that produces good meat won't necessarily have good quality wool.
Sheep have to be sheared, they are bred in such a way as their coat does not shed in the summer like their wild cousins, but in places like Australia where wool production is high, they use a practice called mulesing, where lambs have strips of skin removed from their hind quarters to prevent the wool from growing there and leaving them susceptible to fly strike (where flies lay eggs in dung messed wool and maggots infect the animal). This is done because the sheep are kept in such vast numbers that it would be impossible for a farmer to check them properly. But if this is the case how can they be meeting the sheep's other health needs? Lameness for example, which affect huge numbers of flocks.
To read more about wool production click
HERE .
All this suffering to animals, people and the health of consumers can be prevented by going vegan.
So where does this leave the (almost) car-less family?
I still consider us vegan.
We still have some leather in our house, things we brought a few years ago like tack and shoes and belts. The eco bit of me will not throw these items away in a fit of rage, but they will not be replaced and now we buy none leather shoes and synthetic saddles.
We will still eat the eggs from our hens. We don't breed from them or exploit them. They have been given a taste of a life they could never have imagined before and their eggs are only a bonus to having them.
We still have some products in our house that have been tested on animals, but again they will be replaced when used up, with kinder alternatives.
I still use my inhaler when I need to, although undoubtedly animals suffered to test it, but I am getting fitter every day and now only use it a few times a week instead of a few times a day.
Its a scary step to take, veganism.
Take one at a time and don't try to "vegan-ise" your life all at once. It will overwhelm you and you are much more likely to fall at the first hurdle.
Start looking at the back of packets, get into the mindset of understanding what goes into your food, clothes, beauty products and cleaners.
Educate yourself.
If you have the stomach try google searching for images of factory farming and Mulesing in particular.
And remember, I am here, I have done it and I feel great. Ask me anything and I will answer with honesty.
