Happy Pretend-You-Give-a-Shit-So-Your-Family-Won't-Get-Mad-at-You-Day!

Now that Christmas is over, I feel like I can post this without ruining anyone's day. I don't much care for the holidays. I can almost hear the booing and calling of "Grinch!" and "Scrooge!" now, but I don't care. It seems to me that all the holidays are any good for is bringing out the hypocrite in all of us.

Holidays for me (and I think quite a few others out there) mostly mean spending time with people I have no desire to spend time with and pretending that it doesn't bother me to watch them gnaw on the carcass of someone who I actually would have liked to spend time with. Don't get me wrong, there are some members of my family whose company I actually enjoy , but when it comes to those people I don't really need a holiday as an excuse to see them.

I don't understand why it is that every major holiday somehow ends up centered around a dead animal. In most cases the very idea of killing completely contradicts what the holiday is supposed to be about. We talk about being grateful and charitable and kind while ripping apart the body of an animal who was never shown the tiniest bit of kindness.

Thanksgiving is my most despised holiday, for obvious reasons. Every time I hear someone call it "Turkey Day" it takes every bit of restraint I have to stop myself  from grabbing em* by the throat (but I do restrain myself because I'm a vegan and vegans don't believe in violence.) Thanksgiving is supposed to be about being thankful for all of the good things in our lives. So how do we celebrate? by taking the life of someone who never had one single thing to be thankful for. Although I suppose in reality that fits right in with the whole history of Thanksgiving. So perhaps Thanksgiving is actually one of the less hypocritical holidays.

By the way, if anyone else out there is fed up with a typical Thanksgiving I would recommend going to the Celebration FOR the Turkeys at Farm Sanctuary next year. I went this year and it was wonderful.

A close second to Thanksgiving is Christmas. First of all, I am not religious in any way so celebrating a religious holiday automatically makes me feel like a hypocrite. What really bothers me about it though is the fact that, no matter how much people care about being in the "Christmas Spirit" they never seem to apply that to nonhuman animals. People give money to the salvation army, donate toys to charity, spend absurd amounts of money buying presents for their friends and families but still go ahead and have their ham for dinner. Don't they realize that the pig they're eating could have used some of that generosity? I'm not saying that people should stop doing things to help other humans during the holidays. I think it's great that the holidays inspire people to be charitable. I just want them to take other species into consideration and realize that they deserve a little good will too.


So yes, perhaps I am a grinch but I think I have a pretty good reason for it. I don't hate the holidays just because I feel like it and, no matter what some of you out there may think, I do care about people. I just happen to care about animals as well and when I see them so blatantly disregarded it kind of ruins any good feelings I might have had about the holidays. Also, just so you know I don't actually have anything in particular against New Year's.

* Not a typo, but my idea for a singular, sexless pronoun. I plan to discuss this in a future post.

Loving Hut Grand Opening

This past Sunday I went to Pittsburgh with my sister and her boyfriend for the grand opening of a new vegan restaurant. The restaurant was called Loving Hut and it was wonderful! The place itself was beautiful, the staff was friendly and the food was delicious, even my sister's omnivore boyfriend said so. He also said that he felt full without feeling weighted down, which I thought was great. I had heard vegans say things like that about vegan food but I had never heard an omnivore say it. 

I absolutely loved the design of the restaurant. It just looked like what I think a vegan restaurant should look like. Everything was bright and welcoming, and they made no attempt to hide the fact that they were vegan. The tables and chairs were all white which made it seem bright and sunny inside even though it was cold and dreary outside. There were quotes relating to veganism and pictures of famous vegetarians and vegans all over the walls. My favorite part of the decor though was the giant, brightly colored L set into the ceiling. Like this one.

I had never actually heard about Loving Hut before this, but I looked them up and found out that they are a chain with locations all over the world. Each Location has its own unique menu, but everything is completely vegan! They had a limited menu for the grand opening, but their regular menu offers a ton of different choices, including some amazing drinks and desserts. Check it out here. You can't tell me that stuff doesn't look delicious.

I have been vegan for over five years now and, sadly, this was my first dining experience in an all vegan restaurant. It was really exciting for me to be able to go into a restaurant, look at the menu and pick whatever I wanted without having to ask a thousand questions or request that half of the ingredients be left out, or worse yet wonder the whole time if what I'm eating is really vegan or not. I must say, I find it rather aggravating that there is finally a vegan restaurant within a reasonable driving distance from where  live and I am about to leave for New York. Oh well, I am the queen of poor timing.

So the point is, if you live anywhere near Pittsburgh, go check out Loving Hut! I promise you will be glad you did, whether you are vegan or not. 

Hit the Switch

"There's this switch that gets hit and it all stops making sense."
Bright Eyes

Yes, this post is titled after a Bright Eyes song. No, it doesn't actually have anything to do with that song besides that one line.

I recently watched Peaceable Kingdom which, by the way, is a wonderful documentary that I would recommend (and lend) to anyone who still has a VHS player, since it apparently doesn't exist on DVD. I really enjoyed listening to all of the people who were interview. Two of them were Gene Baur and Lorri Houston, the founders of Farm Sanctuary, which automatically made me love this documentary. But the one who really stuck with me was Harold Brown. He was a former beef farmer who had been involved in animal agriculture his entire life and then one day just decided that he couldn't do it anymore.

The thing that I found so interesting about Harold Brown was not so much the fact that he was able to go from being a farmer to an animal rights advocate, I had heard similar stories before, but the way he described his transformation. He talked about how he had felt about animals when he was a child, how he had somehow known that it was wrong to kill them. He explained how he had learned to ignore the way he felt and eventually grew up to do the same thing his family had done. It doesn't surprise me that all those years of killing finally got to him, what does surprise me is the way it happened.

He said that he went to visit Farm Sanctuary shortly after it opened, which is a good sign that he was already starting to seriously doubt his lifestyle. After listening to Gene Baur speak, he felt compelled to sponsor an animal. He chose a calf named Snickers who had been rescued along with his mother. After spending some time with Snickers, Harold went back to his life as a beef farmer. A year later he came back to Farm Sanctuary and was shocked to find that Snickers remembered him. When Harold called his name, Snickers ran over and gently head-butted him in the chest. Harold said that it was as if Snickers had hit a switch in his heart. He realized that he had learned at a young age to turn off the switch which allowed him to think of farm animals the way he thought of dogs and cats. He had turned off his compassion for these animals and Snickers had turned it back on. After that, he just couldn't be involved in animal agriculture anymore. 

The more I thought about what Harold Brown had said, the less I knew how to feel about it. On the one hand, it's extremely encouraging to know that even someone who has lived his whole life killing animals for a living can realize that it's wrong and decide to change. On the other hand, it makes me feel like the whole idea of me trying to change people's minds about killing animals is kind of hopeless. The thing is, everyone has that switch but the thing that finally hits it is different for each person. Harold Brown saw cows everyday of his life. He interacted with them constantly. So who would have thought that a cow head-butting him in the chest would change his mind? Who would have thought that anything a cow could do would change his mind?

It's really amazing sometimes what that one things is that finally opens a person's eyes. I find it incredibly frustrating to know that if I just knew what that one thing was, the one thing I could say or do that would finally get through, I could convince anyone. If there were some way for me to tell where each person's switch is, I would spend my whole life going around and turning every switch on. But there really isn't any way to tell and that's what makes fighting for animal rights so hard. Sometimes it seems like no matter what you do and no matter what you say there are some people, a lot of people, who you just can't ever seem to get through to.

The good news is, because we never know where someone's switch might be, we never know what small thing might hit it. Sometimes it's as simple as being handed a pamphlet. When I went to the AR conference, one of the speakers I listened to was Dallas Rising, the program director of the Animal Rights Coalition. She said that, when she was in high school, as she was getting off the bus one day someone handed her a pamphlet. It was cold and she was tired and she just took the pamphlet and kept walking. She didn't even look at the person who gave it to her or pay any attention to what it was about. Later in the day she started looking through it and it was about veganism and animal rights. That was what started everything for her, and now she's this amazing activist who also speaks at conferences and motivates other activists form all over the world. 

So to all of you animal rights activists out there, don't give up! Everyone has a switch, even your friends and family who you've been trying to get through to for years, even that guy at work who thinks it's hilarious to make fun of you for being vegan every time he sees you, even that girl who looked at you like you were the most disgusting thing she had ever seen and then proceeded to tell you about all the meat she was going to eat just because you tried to hand her a pamphlet. It is there, you just have to find it. And to all of you omnivores out there, please I'm begging you, hit the switch. I would gladly do it for you, but I don't know where it is. Try starting here http://www.earthlings.com/

Sneaky Animal Ingredients

So by now, you all know that I'm a vegan. What you may not know is that I'm probably one of the most obsessive vegans who ever lived. The thought of supporting, in any way, the exploitation of animals drives me absolutely crazy. Anyone who has ever tried to go shopping with me knows that I spend a great deal of time and energy trying to remove all traces of animal products from my life. Have you seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World? Do you remember the part with the Vegan Police? Well they live inside my head and they are a lot pickier than they were in the movie.

That being said, I want to address the issue of those sneaky animal ingredients that go by mysterious names and make their way into everyday products. Over the years, several different people have told me that they could never be vegan because they could never live the way I do. They could never spend as much time as I do researching ingredients and they could never give up as many basic, everyday things as I have. When this happens, I always try to make it clear to these people that it doesn't have to be that way. Being a vegan does not mean that you have to be an obsessive vegan like me. I would never even consider holding anyone else to the same standards I hold myself to, not because I think they couldn't do what I do but because why should they?

The choice to become vegan is both an emotional and a logical one, though I'm sure most meat-eaters would claim that it's purely emotional. From the emotional side, it stems from a feeling of connection to and empathy for nonhuman animals. From the logical side it is a decision not to provide financial support to the industries responsible for causing the pain and suffering these animals face on a daily basis (and the destruction of our environment and widespread disease and obesity in the general public and extreme poverty in other parts of the world etc.)

The fact that veganism has these two distinct sides can make it very difficult to decide on the best way to fit it into your life. I have found that, for me, one of the most troublesome decisions is what to do about hidden animal products. This decision, again for me, required the answer to two questions, one logical and one emotional. The logical question is "Would I really be contributing to industries that exploit animals by using products with small traces of animal ingredients?" I believe the answer to this one is "No", and I will explain why in a moment. The emotional question is "Will I feel like I'm contributing to the exploitation of animals by using these products?" The answer to this one, unfortunately, is "Yes."

I have found that I, personally, cannot feel good about myself when I use a product that contains animal ingredients, no matter how small the amount and no matter how difficult it may be for me to find out where an ingredient came form. If I'm thinking of buying something and it doesn't specifically say that it's vegan, I will do extensive research to find out if it is or not. However, I would never recommend this to anyone else, because the truth is that animal products are everywhere. In reality, it's almost impossible to actually remove all animal products form your life and, logically speaking, I don't think it's necessary.

Almost all animal products are completely unnecessary. Just about anything that can be made from animals can also be made from plants. The only reason animal ingredients are used instead is that they are byproducts of animal agriculture. If people stop eating meat, milk and eggs there will no longer be any hidden animal ingredients because it will be infinitely more economical to make these ingredients from plants instead. Imagine how ridiculous it would be to raise a cow, provide her with food, water and shelter then slaughter her, which means paying for expensive equipment and labor just so you could take a small bit of her fat to make glycerin, when the alternative is just extracting it form a plant.

Another side to this issue, which I feel is equally important, is the fact that every one of us becomes an example to those around us. Vegans are becoming more and more visible all the time. There are many celebrities out there now who are outspoken vegans and animal rights activists and more average people are seeing the benefits of veganism everyday. Despite all of this, we are still a very small minority which means that we all need to do our best to promote a vegan lifestyle to others. I think one of the best, and easiest, ways to do that is by just making veganism look good. The people around you are much more likely to try veganism if they see vegans as happy, healthy, well-adjusted people. Unfortunately, I have only ever been able to pull off the healthy part. The thing is, I've never been happy or well-adjusted and veganism has nothing to do with it. I have always had obsessive and neurotic tendencies and because veganism is such an important part of my life now, that is where they tend to manifest themselves these days.

I know this has become rather long and rambling, but the point here is this. I don't think it's really necessary for vegans to obsess over all of those sneaky animal products that seem to be in everything. I really don't think it makes that much difference in the long run, and it will just drive you crazy and make all the meat-eaters in your life think that all vegans are obsessive, masochistic nut jobs (you know, like me.)

P.S. Animal testing is a little different, and I'm sure I will cover that topic eventually. Until then I will just recommend that, within reason, you try to avoid as many animal tested products as you can.

Which Side Will You Be On?

There are many people out there who think the idea of fighting for animal rights is completely insane. They believe that animals don't matter. They believe that humans are "better" than nonhuman animals and that this gives people the right to do whatever they want to animals. What they never seem to realize is that this same argument has been made in countless different situation throughout human history. Another thing they don't realize is that the people who make this argument always lose in the end.

Animal rights activists aren't trying to do anything different from what other activists have been doing for...... well, forever. We are just trying to expand what they have already done. As long as humans have walked the earth, there has always been one group that believes it is better than another group. "Your skin is a different color than ours and that makes us better than you" "You are of a different sex than we are and that makes us better than you" "You practice a different religion than we do and that makes us better than you" etc etc etc. What I find even harder to understand than this need to be "better" than someone else is the idea that being better gives you the right to abuse them. "We are better than you and that means we can own you." "We are better than you and that means we can force you to do whatever we want." "We are better than you and that means we can kill you for no reason."

The good news is that, at this point, most people understand that this kind of thinking is wrong. Thanks to all of the activists of the past, we have been able to (mostly) do away with the worst examples of this kind of behavior in regards to other humans. The bad news is that nonhuman animals are getting more extreme abuse than any humans have ever faced at any time in history. There have been incidents that were comparable to the way animals are treated today, but never for such an extended period of time or on such an incredibly huge scale.

So if you think of yourself as an open-minded, caring, logical person it should not be hard for you to see that  the animal rights activists of today are no different than any human rights activists of the past, and that certain animal rights groups are much more the new Underground Railroad than they are terrorists. Yes, it may seem like we are asking a lot of you. It may seem unreasonable for us to ask you to compare yourself to someone of a different species. But remember, there was a time not so long ago when it would have seemed just as unreasonable to ask you to compare yourself to someone of a different skin color.

I have no doubt that there will come a day when animals will no longer be exploited and abused for the (perceived) benefit of humans. The question is, how long will they have to suffer before that day comes? How many generations of nonhuman animals will have to live in misery before we realize that they shouldn't have to? The answer to these questions depends on how many people decide to stand up for them now. So ask yourself this; the next time they write the history books, which side will you be on?

A Bit of Background

I've always had a deep love and respect for nonhuman animals. I've always felt a connection to them and a desire to help them. As soon as I was old enough to understand the concept of killing animals for food, I knew it wasn't right. Long before I ever found out about the horrors of factory farming, I knew there was something terribly wrong with the idea that it's okay to take an animal's life, just because you like the way that animal tastes.

My mom (who has been vegetarian for over a year now, yay!) told me a story that reinforces my belief that I was born to be an animal rights activist. She said that, when I was three, she was cooking a turkey and started explaining to me what the different parts were. She told me "these were his legs" "these were his wings" etc. When I realized what she was saying, I started crying and shouted "you mean this was a real turkey?!" Until that moment, I had never even considered the possibility that turkey, the food, and turkey, the bird, were the same. 

After that incident, I tried to give up meat several times throughout my childhood. Unfortunately, I lived in a small town, I didn't know anyone who was vegetarian, and my parents didn't have any idea how to help me (they also didn't think that being a vegetarian was a very good idea anyway). So it never lasted very long. Finally, when I was thirteen, I decided that I just wasn't going to eat meat anymore. No matter how hard it was, and no matter how much my parents disliked the idea, I was going to be a vegetarian. And it was really hard for a while, because I still lived in a small town, I still didn't know anyone who was vegetarian, and my parents still didn't have any idea how to help me. But I made it, and it has been more that worth any difficulty I may have had in the beginning.

To get off on a bit of a tangent for a moment, I just want to say how truly amazed I am at how much things have changed since then. In just ten years, it has gone from a point where I had never even heard the word vegan, and being vegetarian made people think you were crazy (at least where I live), to now when I can go to any large grocery store and find all sorts of foods stamped with that wonderful little heart with the V inside. Today, being a vegetarian or vegan doesn't have to be hard. It still takes dedication, but it no longer requires seemingly superhuman levels of self-control. There are endless resources out there to help new vegetarians and vegans and so many great products to make the transition easier. It gives me hope for the future when I see how much these things have multiplied over the years. It makes me believe that someday we really will be able to eliminate the cruelty of animal agriculture altogether.

After I gave up meat, I started slowly learning more and more about factory farming and I began to realize that just not eating meat wasn't good enough. It took me five years to finally decide to become vegan, and now I really wish I had done it sooner. I don't think most people have any idea how much suffering goes into the food that they eat every day, I know I didn't. I have been researching it for years and I am still shocked every once in a while at how truly awful the animal agriculture industry really is.

Even after I became vegan, it took me a long time to get to the point where I am now and I know I still have a lot of growing to do. I've found that, at least for me, a commitment to animal rights is a constant process of learning and changing. It has only been within the last couple of years that I have decided that I'm actually willing to put myself out there to help animals. For years I thought that my own dedication to not supporting cruelty was good enough. I would intentionally avoid talking to people about it, just because it was uncomfortable. I wouldn't tell people that I was vegan unless I had to, and then when they asked me why I would give them some short, vague answer in an attempt to avoid the awkward debate that was sure to follow.

Now I know that the only way things are ever going to change for nonhuman animals is if those of us who care, those of us who know the truth, do whatever we can to spread that truth to everyone. It's still a struggle for me to confront people about animal rights but, when I can make myself do it, it's always worth it. I'm working toward the point where I will be one of those fearless activist who don't care if they make people angry or if some people don't understand what they're doing. That's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of person we all need to be if we are ever going to create a world where animals can be free from the suffering they face today. Thanks for reading.

Best Birthday Present Ever.

So, yesterday was my birthday, which is not something I normally care much about, but this year was a bit different. About a week ago I applied for an internship at Farm Sanctuary and yesterday I had my phone interview. I didn't really expect to find out whether I had gotten it or not, but at the end of the conversation I was told that I had been accepted. Working with Farm Sanctuary is something that I have wanted to do for quite some time now and, while this is only an unpaid internship, I feel like it is a huge step in the right direction.
    
Usually, my birthday just reminds me that I have wasted yet another year of my life doing nothing that I actually care about, but it looks like this year might be a bit different. Assuming this internship actually works out, which is something I probably won't really believe until I actually arrive at the farm on my first day, I will be spending three months taking care of rescued farm animals. This might not sound so great to some people but, for me, helping non-human animals is the one thing that I think will actually make me feel like I'm making a difference.
    
I also decided that this year I am going to start a blog, actually tell people about it, and make a sincere effort to keep it up. I've started others in the past but I knew no one was reading them so I found it very hard to stay motivated to keep writing. I want this blog to be my outlet for expressing my thoughts and ideas, mostly about animal rights and veganism but probably about other things as well, and also, eventually, as a way to chronicle my experience at Farm Sanctuary.
     
Since this is my first post, I am going to keep it fairly short but in the future I'm sure they will become much longer and more rambling. Hopefully at least a few people will care enough to read them anyway. Thanks for reading.