I am finally becoming a full-fledged vegetarian. I keep making these excuses like “well I would be a vegetarian, but I’ve been raised all my life eating meat and that wouldn’t be an easy transfer and I hate vegetables anyway” blah blah blah. Enough of this. Last night I did more research and realized the problems are worse than I could have imagined. Yeah, KFC is an outstandingly bad case. But the norm in the ENTIRE slaughter industry is disgusting mistreatment of the animals. They figure, “hey, we’re going to kill them anyway, so who cares if they’re suffering fates worse than death until that point?” It makes me sick.
I understand that me not eating meat anymore won’t suddenly bring the slaughter industry to its knees. One person has no effect on the supply and demand curves that dictate how many animals are killed. I’ll be realistic about this. But as for me personally, I have always felt uncomfortable eating animals. I’ve justified that I’m higher up on the food chain and that it’s natural to eat animals, but I forget that indigenous peoples hunting buffalo and whatnot didn’t waste any of the animals, nor did they horribly mistreat them before killing them.
Now a solution might just be to only consume free range animals. But that comes back to my other point. Despite my personal decision not to support the slaughter industry myself by not consuming animal products, I also feel a moral compulsion not to eat meat. Some people try to argue that if we’re going to justify not eating animals, we shouldn’t eat plants either or really anything alive. But I’ll draw the line there. I’ll consume plants, sure. It’s the animal kingdom I won’t touch. Just the feeling of looking into an animal’s eyes and then imagining eating it… It’s rather horrifying. It feels like I’m eating some helpless baby or something. (All dead baby jokes aside.)
But in all seriousness, I’ve made the decision to gradually switch to complete vegetarianism over the next month or so. I think it’ll do my diet good, and I’ll finally be able to sleep soundly at night. So laugh all you want. I’m finally doing something I’ve always wanted to do, but never stepped up to the plate. No more excuses, now.
Come the end of the month, when my body’s finally weaned from reliance on meat, I hope to never eat another animal again.
