“How my vision changed on a vegan diet” - a short story from Ed Winters
I see a world of good people causing harm to others. I see a world where my family pays to cause someone else to scream in terror. The CO2 gas chambers are not controlled by someone evil, but by the choices of someone that I love. The pigs thrashing and crying out, their bodies soon to be dismembered and disembowelled, so those close to me can declare that their loins and flesh are tender and juicy.
I see a world of contradictions. Pet the dog, cut the cow. Pet the cat, bleed the pig.
Do you love animals? “Of course I do, just ignore the body on my plate, or the baby who cries out for the mother I have separated them from”.
Are you against animal cruelty? “Of course I am, just don’t mention the pig locked in the farrowing crate, their tail docked, their teeth cut out. Or the chicken confined in a barn, their bodies selectively bred, their organs failing as they die slowly trapped on their backs”.
”What they do to dogs in China is terrible. Just don’t remind me of the mother cow being forced into the stun box, her eyes wide in terror, her mind frantically looking for a way to escape as the slaughterer bolts her in the head so I can eat the piece of steak that I just love too much.”
As I travel through the place where I live, I now see the huge barns that litter the countryside. Buildings that bear no markings and instead sit nestled amongst the landscape. Salient, yet simultaneously unnoticed. Conspicuous, yet unconsciously ignored. These obstructive, yet often dilapidated structures are everywhere, incarcerated inside them hundreds, thousands, often even tens of thousands of animals, sentient beings who are forever locked inside these omnipresent prisons. Prisons for those whose persecution comes not because of any wrongdoing on their part, but simply because of the species they were born into.
I now see the huge vehicles with farmed animals inside, being driven to a slaughterhouse where their lives will be taken from them. Death trucks whose one job is to take animals closer, and closer, and closer to the bloody knife that will soon be dragged across their throats.
Before I was vegan I saw the world so differently to how I see it now. If I enjoyed the comfort of ignorance, or the bliss of being unaware, you could say that veganism ruined my vision.
For there was a time when I used to walk through a supermarket and didn’t think twice about the rows of body parts that lined the shelves. There was a time when the glow of red from a butcher’s shop didn’t cause me to think of those whose flesh was there for sale.
There was a time when a leg of lamb was not the leg of a lamb; or when milk simply came from a cow, and was never for a cow. There was a time where I would have been gassed to eat bacon, not that pigs were gassed to make bacon.
There was a time when a cow was a cow, and not a mother. Where chicken came fried in a bucket, not from an animal whose throat had been severed.
There was a time when a zoo was a fun day out, and not a tour of a prison. Where a whale in a tank was an entertainer, and not a prisoner. There was a time when horse racing was a sport and not a death sentence. There was a time when leather was clothing, and not skin.
But now all of that has changed. The supermarkets are lined not with cuts of meat, but the remains of animals whose lives were taken from them. Where butchers are selling the flesh of someone who did not want to die, and their white coats are stained with the blood of someone who did not want to be bled.
I see a pig’s pink snout poking out of the slats of one of these trucks, breathing in fresh air for the first time in their life. The head of one chicken amongst thousands emerges from one of the truck’s crates, feeling the heat from the sun for the first time and inquisitively looking around. The wide fearful eye of a lamb, peering through the holes, terrified and panicked.
I see through the labels, the adverts and the tricks of an industry that relies on our ignorance. The pictures depicting happy animals on green, lush pastures. The labels that seek to reassure us that the body part wrapped in plastic came from a sentient being who was slaughtered and exploited with compassion and kindness.
But veganism didn’t just open my eyes to the negatives of the world, it showed me the good in people. It showed me the strength of community and the inevitability of change. It showed me the fragility of the industries that exploit others and it showed me the power of change.
You could say that veganism ruined my vision, but actually the opposite is true. And although the reality of the truth can be harder than the comfort of the lie, it is through this realisation that we can actually create the kind of world where we don’t need to hide behind a lie to feel comfortable.
