Vegetarianism is to not eat meat. Vegans deny themselves all animal products. And in a way I have no issues with vegans. Vegans live by their moral code, they stick true to their beliefs that they shall do no harm to any animal. So in reality I have no issue with them.
The true issue I have is with the self righteous vegetarian. The holier than than attitude I have come across countless times in every vegetarian I have ever met. The one that sits there telling me how they can't stand the thought of harming an innocent animal while drinking a latte. Or then pops a prawn or piece of chicken in their mouth. The one that then looks down their nose at you because you do eat meat.
Let us look at some practices surrounding the food we eat. Milk is produced by getting a cow pregnant then when the calf is a day old it is separated from its mother so that the milk can be collected for human consumption. The calf is allowed a day with its mother so it can drink her milk and begin to build immunity for its life, if that life is to be longer than a couple of days. Most male calves born to dairy cows are dead within a couple of days as they are bred to be dairy cows, not meat cows. Growing them for meat is unproductive. Most female cows will then go on to continue this cycle.
Now perhaps we should assess fish. Fish are hauled out of the oceans in nets or on long lines. They are often tossed alive into tanks on board a fishing vessel. There is water in these tanks, not to keep the fish happy and healthy but to keep their dead bodies fresh. Often there are so many fish in a tank that the ones at the bottom are crushed to death and the ones at the top drown from not being in the water.
As a specific example I will outline tuna. Some tuna species have been fished so extensively that they are about 80% of what they once were. Tuna are an apex predator in the ocean, a predator much like a shark, whale or dolphin, that is needed to weed out the sick and dying while keeping populations healthy. Tuna are fast becoming an endangered species as there is no means to farm these ocean going wanderers currently available. There is a huge demand for their flesh and they are being fished to extinction because we can't say no to their wonderful taste. It could be only a number of years before this valuable fish stock collapses and we have no tuna at all ever again.
There are many many fish species facing this fate. Sharks for instance are facing slow deaths after being hauled out the water to have their fins cut off then being tossed back, still alive. A shark cannot swim without its fins and if a shark cannot swim it cannot breath. It is doomed to drown in a horrible manor for a soup that needs chicken stock to flavour it because shark fins have no flavour.
Now let us look at chickens. Most chicks are packed three to a cage where they spend their whole lives unable to move. If they are lucky they might be "cage free" where they are packed tightly in a high stress environment that sees several chickens per square foot of barn space. Cage free doesn't mean cruelty free. It just means instead of three to a cage, there is thousands in a small space in a warehouse. They have to be feed antibiotics to prevent infection because they are so packed in. Free range chooks can be in a better situation but most laws do not enforce the ideal chickens running around a barn yard view a lot of people would take.
So a high and mighty vegetarian sitting opposite me who claims that they are looking out for the welfare of animals by not eating meat is really a hypocrite when they drink their latte, when they eat any animal product really. I have lived on farms, I have seen what happens to animals raised to feed the masses. I have heard the farmers talk about how sad they feel having to take a calf away from its mother, how they dislike disposing of the unwanted male calves. Farmers are human too and often in countries like Australia and New Zealand they take the utmost care of the animals in their charges. But it doesn't mean that there aren't things we wish we could change.
Animals like sheep, cattle and pigs in Australia and New Zealand largely have good lives. I have seen the meat sheep on a station in Australia living out happy lives. I have seen the dairy cows in New Zealand and I have seen the affection the farmer looking after them gives them. One farmer I knew in New Zealand had a name for all 200 of his dairy cows in his herd and knew each one's personality and each one was more than just a cow, it was a friend. I have seen pig farms in these countries where pigs are free to root around and I have watched the little piglets galloping around playing with each other, even going under fences to play with other litters of piglets.
In Australia and New Zealand I have seen that the welfare of these animals comes first and foremost for any farmer. The last couple of days at the end of their lives is the most stressful. I don't think you could make it less stressful. But they are treated with a great amount of care and dignity in these countries. Yes an animal has to die so we can eat but for most of their lives they live a very happy carefree life.
Humans are meant to have an diet containing protein. If you delete this from your diet you need to replace it. Did you know that if you happen to need surgery you need to have a high amount of protein in your blood to help you recover. My mother in law almost died twice because she was on a largely vegetarian diet before having surgery (she had to cut fat out an forgot to replace the protein she wasn't eating because to avoid fat she wasn't eating meat). After the surgery she wasn't able to recover properly and it almost cost her her life. Doctors told her that they fear doing surgery on vegetarians because they often don't replace the protein in their diets and it causes complications with the surgery.
All I ask is that those of you out there who are a vegetarian, please do you research before cutting meat from your diet. And those of you who do choose to not eat meat because you don't want to harm an animal ... think about how hypocritical that sounds when you are drinking your next coffee. Or eating fish. And I ask that you don't judge those of us who just love our steak or bacon for doing so.
If you think about it vegetarianism could be replaced with other belief system words in this article ... And get the same result. Unless you practice what you preach, don't get on your high horse and look down your nose at the rest of us.
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