ZeroAX wrote:Why do you guys exactly do that btw?
I'll probably personally disagree with everything you have to say, but I will still respect your desire to keep on being vegan. It's not like you are hurting anyone
.
I personally think it is unethical to eat animals when it is not necessary. They have the ability to feel pain, so I don't want to cause them undue suffering if I don't have to. Living in a highly urban area like Seattle, I am surrounded by options that makes it relatively easy to have an entirely meat-free diet (although the fact that meat is delicious never makes it completely easy, plus cultural pressure to eat meat makes things complicated). I think in some places it would be very difficult if not impossible to live this way, so it's also about being fortunate enough to even have this ethical choice.
I also worked in a grocery store butcher shop for about 4 years. Aside from the obvious disgusting stuff you can imagine I saw there, I was really weirded out at the time by just how little I cared about these creatures I butchered over time. I was completely desensitized to it and it was very clear that the goal of being a good meat industry employee is to distance your customers from the grim reality of the death you are selling them. We packaged things up as nice as possible and cut things into unrecognizable parts that give people the illusion that they are not chewing carcass. In the back of your mind, you know, but most people find it unappetizing to see the calf cut down for their veal and they're happy to play along in the ruse. After working in the meat industry for awhile, I had to just decide that I didn't think that what we were doing was right, and I felt that to be consistent with my ethics, despite my desensitization, I would have to just decide to stop eating meat entirely. I sort of feel like I'm atoning for my years as a butcher, but I'm also just living by my own ethics.
Over time, I've become more sensitized and find meat kind of horrific now. I know it's hard to understand if you eat meat and have been raised to eat meat, but I really think of it as murder on a plate. I don't expect people to think the same way I do and I know that I go against the dominant cultural view, so I don't go out of my way to push my beliefs, but I've had a shift in how I view things in relation to meat and I really am weirded out by the entire meat-eating culture. I'm happy to no longer take part in it.
