I changed my mind about eating meat after watching a documentary about the food industry. To know that they torture animals just to make money was enough for me to take a decision in the same hour. I cant imagine having a tortured dead chicken on my table and wont enjoy eating it.
I got to know that eating vegetables and fruits is more healthier than eating meat. I could replace meat with other healthy choices and get enough vitamins for my body. I felt more energetic, healthy and active. I could wake up early in the morning and sleep late at night without any alarm. My face was glowing and all my friends noticed that.
I ate meat all my life, but could give it up in no time. After some weeks I started seeing as the most disgusting food, mostly when I see it raw in the supermarkets. There is no guarantee of getting fresh healthy meat of an animal that was not tortured in the process, so why eat it!
I choose my food very careful when I go to restaurants, even it can be sometimes very difficult, mostly when you live in places where the idea of being vegetarian is still a bit weird. I buy only fresh fruits and vegetables. I still have problems with replacing milk and cheese , but still trying hard :)
Thank you for this nice opportunity :)
Your effort is great. But I must say animals used for meat or any dairy go thru same torture, so there is no difference in that. You don't need milk from another species. Only milk you need was from your mom. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to convince you in anything and I'm not trying to you feel bad, but really there is no difference in abuse. Maybe even more abusing is milking the cow because cow must be pregnant to produce milk, and for that it must be raped again and again after giving birth her baby. Killing is "only" one time thing, milking the cow continue all the time...
A cow does not need to be raped in order to produce Milk.
Moreover, cows are able to continue being milked for several years after giving birth to their calves. I know people within the Krishna Consciousness society both here and abroad that do not engage in any of the standard industry practices in milking cows and it's factually wrong and ill informed to proclaim they are partaking in animal cruelty by milking cows.
See Ahimsa farms
The only question morally speaking is whether the interaction is consensual. If a cow does not want to be milked or worked on a farm, it would object to this through it's behavior. Anyone that is not emotionally retarded is able to observe this and thus forcing the cow to engage in the said activity would then be immoral.
There is nothing inherently wrong however with having a symbiotic relationship with an animal where you both benefit and the interaction is consensual. In using their manure, in benefiting from working sheep dogs, snow dogs, using eggs from backyard chickens when their eggs would otherwise go to waste, or milking a cow once you remove the violence and ensure they are being looked after. To imply so has more to do with being in line with the dogmatic views of an ideology than to eliminate suffering.
Let's not forget that we are all complicit to varying degrees in our support of animal agriculture but the question is where one draws the line.
Being Vegan you are NOT removing yourself from all exploitation and violence, however are striving to do so.
This is evident in the taxation system which in most countries subsidizes the cost of meat and dairy and there are a plethora of other examples.
It may be humbling as a Vegan to bear in mind that there are branches within Vegetarianism e.g. Jainism and Fruitarianism that take the virtue of NonViolence/Ahimsa further than Veganism.
It would be just as valid for these groups to maintain that being a Vegan is hypocritical and is not going far enough. Moro-ever whereas obtaining animal bi-products often
requires violence to be perpetrated on these animals within the dairy and egg industry, it does NOT require one to do so.
This is evident in backyard-eggs, and farmers that treat their cows as family members, abstaining from industry standards like the rape of cows, separation of calves from their mothers
and the shipping of these cows to slaughter.
The 'current' definition of Veganism is rooted in Marxist ideas e.g. commodification and exploitation which are philosophically flawed. The original meaning of Vegan, coined originally from one of the readers of Donald Watson's newsletter, simply meant Non-Dairy, Non-Egg eating Vegetarians. The philosophy around Veganism was later codified by the Vegan Society and over several years morphed into the obfuscated definition we now have around abstaining from exploitation and commodification.
I still don't understand why people think you need milk from another species?
I'm gonna be 32 years old soon, not consuming meat, dairy or any animal products for over 10 years. Didn't go to my doctor for over 15 years and I feel perfectly fine. I even never get sick from season flu.
Saying all this because my opinion is that we don't need milk from another species. I don't know why people use milk at all? What are benefits we can live without? I think most of people just have belief they must drink milk or their bones will get weak or something bad will happen to them.
About Krishna Consciousness society...
They maybe have good intentions, but still they are holding animals in cage when they want to. They do with them what ever they want to. Only freedom for those animals would be to letting them free and building shelter for them in which they can return when they want to. Someone could say this cows don't seem to mind the life they live. That is because they don't know there can be more freedom. If we give them more freedom, they would wonder around on fields and wouldn't choose to be in cage.
Taxation system is fraud anyway. Don't know what that got to do with being vegan?
I would add up that being vegan is not enough. If everyone went vegan without producing any food, that would create same situation what we have now. That is massive production of food for people who don't produce food at all living mostly in cities. (In my opinion big cities are completely wrong organized). For those who produce food on massive scale it is usually more easy to use some kind of poisons to be able to produce food on massive scale. Yes, these are more ecological ways, but it is mostly easier way with poisons like pesticides etc.
So being vegan without producing food is not enough. We must build society where there wouldn't be need to big farming. In my opinion, one of first things we must do is dismantle big cities they are today. Too much concrete, too less nature and food we can eat.
Anyone who grow some food know that it is not so hard to grow tomato's, potato's and other vegetables. If most of people do that, it will more easy...
In the end I think it is easy to be "perfect" vegan where you will ecologically produce food and exchange it with others who also don't harm anyone in production of food. Then you couldn't call those people hypocritical or whatever. But again, there gonna be always people who will try to justify killing of animals by pointing at vegang with absurd claims. Just few days ago, one guy on Facebook were trying to convince me that killing of lamb is same like picking apple from the tree. He also said that potato's have feeling also. Wtf are those people talking about? Do they even hear themselves? Yes, I know they are only trying to justify their meat eating habits, but still can't believe someone can compare killing of living being with picking apple for tree, apple that is meant to be picked up from tree.
You are absolutely right in everything you said. I reduced consuming milk in the last years and was buying baby powder milk from pharmacy from time to time. Lately I started making coconut and almond milk at home and need to stay that way. I used to drink milk 2 - 3 times per day all my life. Now maybe twice a week, but I think almond milk is good and healthier.
I wished people could be aware of what we are doing to animals and to the planet itself :(