This is an updated and greatly expanded version of an older article I wrote years ago on my Mutanthouse blog. I feel it is as relevant as ever considering the state of our planet and society as a whole.
Me angry
I am often called an angry Vegan. I am not the fluffy "lets all be friends and hug type"; that went out the window years ago if it ever even was a thing. I am not rabid. I am not waiting in the shadows to pounce on everyone who still consumes corpse and cow excretions but it does repulse me and I have to work hard to not make it a constant discussion point with the few non vegan people I care about.
In a world where enslaving other species is normal and compassion is at best ridiculed it is often not easy to navigate daily life situations. Knowing the things I know about animal agriculture somedays can be really challenging. while most people just see a fast food and I have constant images of cows and pigs begging for their lives in terror screaming in my head. when people eat their egg burrito I see the endless line of male baby chicks that are ground up alive in the hatcheries that supply 99% of farm eco or otherwise. the suffering egglayers. The children that are starving and who could have eaten had people made different choices.
I have perfected the art of looking away. When ads pop up and I have no way to avoid them I look at something anything my floor, my wall one of my furkids. I avoid, as much as humanly possible to be in situations where non vegans eat because it literally makes me wretch. While they are gleefully stuffing that chicken sandwich I see it for what it is pieces of dead bird slathered in body fluids with a bit of green on the top. It's pretty much like a horror movie people you love are laughing and smiling while they stuff copses into their mouthes. One lives in a constant state of cognitive dissonance as Vegan in a non vegan world. How can these people that we love, who are in so many ways good decent people, joyfully engage in these practises and be the cause for so much destruction and suffering. It is immensely hard to walk that tightrope and both mentally and emotionally draining.
There is so many things you learn to avoid, and you become very familiar with the ways your shoes or the sky looks in the daily avoidance tour. Some things are harder to blend out. When you haven't eaten meat in decades your sense of smell heightens. Going to the grocery store or restaurants can be a challenge for some. I literally can smell the decaying meat and blood isles away which makes it hard to stay in those stores for very long. Nowadays I just have stuff delivered it is just easier not to have to face our society's norms on a daily basis or the smell.
Inevitably though, being someone who is not silent about the things she believes there will always be the inevitable discussions. Because animal rights, ending world hunger and saving our planet are so important to me I will bring up these points time and time and time again with those close to me; and up where ever it makes sense in daily life outside of my social circle. I write a lot publicly and make the occasional youtube video or/and art piece. such as the following video that includes an original song:
In normal situations, I in most cases try to educate in discussion. But given the circumstance my Russian temper can get the better of me; turning me into Ivan the terrible if people make callous stupid comments such as "who cares how they die they taste good", Or "global warming who cares fire up the grill"-YOLO! I would be a very rich woman if I got a penny for each time people tell me eating meat, dairy and eggs is a personal choice and I should mind my own business. the truth is it is my business because those actions not only affect the people engaging in these practises, but also their victims and every single one of us on this planet. We share this planet together it is all connected not only in an esoteric sense but a very factual scientific one as well.
And I have become death the destroyer of worlds
We as a species have killed and eradicated more other lifeforms than any other in history. If I remember the numbers correctly it was something like 60% of all known species in the last forty years. Gone forever and sadly most out of greed and total carelessness. Fact, at this current point in time our planet is in really bad shape and we are to blame. So much damage in so many ways and Animal agriculture has a great hand in it and shockingly enough at this point even more that the fossil fuel industry.
Sitting back and doing nothing might be fine in the minds of most, but it isn't an answer and it is definitely not something I am willing to do. I have grandchildren I want them to have a liveable future and if we as a species do not clean up our act they wont. This is the reality we face today, no matter what corporate propaganda tells us otherwise. For them it is simple, most corporate CEOs will be dead when the real damage starts. So they don't care what happens as long as it is profitable. they just need us to believe and disseminate their lies long enough for them to keep on living the good life until they drop dead or run away to mars. It baffles me how people keep parroting the lies they are fed never questioning and in many cases becoming rabidly aggressive when the reality of things are pointed out. Fore example climate change denial, first fed to us by the fossil fuel industry, is a huge thing in a large part of the population; and even amongst those who acknowledge it, the reluctance to let go of comfortable and profitable practises is equally devastating.
Personally I am vegan for Multiple reasons ,firstly for the animals. This is why I have been a fat junkfood vegan, although I am working on finally going to the healthy side of things at this point. But the second and third leg are rooted in environmentalism and humanism. A plant based diet holds great potential promise for the survival of our race and this planet. But for a moment let's take a look at the non human victims in this.
Dairy is scary
The industry and advertising would like to make us believe that most cows live their life peacefully out on pasture skipping along and munching flowers util it is time to come home be milked and fed. This is far from the truth … 80% of meat consumed in the U.S is raised on industrial feeding lots in South America and China, that number rises to a whopping 98% when we count in government surplus and school lunch meals.
Of the remaining percentage of young bovines raised for meat in the U.S only 30% are raised in an industrial farm environment and that is why most Americans still believe the fairytale of the happy family farm. They are not aware that most of their meat comes from foreign countries and what it costs, the planet or the impoverished struggling nations we exploit to feed our lust for flesh. People often argument that it is not under our control what these nations do, sadly people always find a way of shifting blame. The bitter truth is however, that more and more of those so called family farms are using factory farm practices; and that almost 80% of dairy cows raised in this country are raised in an industrial setting and never see the light of day or feel the wind or sun on their face.
My life as Cow
Let us take a deeper look into the life of the average dairy cow and her children. If you are born in an average dairy farm they rip you away from your mother as soon as you are licked clean, sometimes even before that. You are either carted away in a wheelbarrow or by your leg while you scream for your mother and she screams for you; you never see her again. If you are lucky and are a girl you are sent to an industrial feeding lot where you live in one of these plastic enclosures that look a lot like the cheap plastic doghouses you see at Walmart. You get fed 2 meals a day by people who are in best case indifferent to your loneliness but often are abusive and cruel. You live like this until you are old enough to have your own babies.
If you are unlucky and are a boy you are in many cases bludgeoned to death, or auctioned off as veal or sent off to be raised as someone dinner. Some farms just pile the male babies in a ditch and leave them to die, no i am not making this up this happens in the u.s and it's horrifying. If you are a bovine to most humans your life has no value.
So what is your life like as mature female cow? If you are a female cow, compared to your brother, you might think you are lucky and for the first year, or so, of your existence that might be so. Even though you are denied running free you have a clean place to sleep and food everyday, but soon things will change. The first thing they do to you is what they call de-horning. You are locked in a mechanical device as your sensitive horns are cut off your head with pliers without pain killers. You scream yet no one comes to your rescue, no one cares.
Later when you are about 15 months old a human comes and “inseminates” you so you can have a baby and they can have your milk. Or they strap you in a rape rack and lead a bull to you to seal the deal, no matter how you resist you have no say in it. Basically they are violating your body, if you were a human they would call it sexual assault or rape but you are a cow you don’t matter to them. After an average 285 days you give birth, you are happy you love your baby. Then they come and take him or her from you. You scream and struggle but there is nothing you can do, you will never see your baby again. This process is repeated every year until you produce less milk as they expect and you are sent to slaughter.
As for your living situation, where you before at least had fresh air in your little doghouse you more than likely will never see the light of day again. If you are lucky your facility is clean but more than likely it is not. The farmer or staff will impregnate you every year and they will take your baby every time. You will be fed some disgusting pallet food but you’re hungry and because producing milk takes a lot out of a body. They bread you to produce an obscene amount of milk but it comes with a cost. A cost to you of course not them , they just profit off your suffering. you live with painful udder infections and fever so they pump you full of antibiotics and medicine. You are often depressed and when you are pregnant you become very agitated because you know they are going to take your child and you have nowhere to run. If you struggle they beat and torture you, you learn to remain as passive as possible but it does not always help. If you are strong you live like this for an average of 7 years, if you are frail you don’t make it past your second birthing. If you stumble if you can’t get up they label you a downed cow it’s a death sentence and no matter how scared you are no one is coming to save you.
If you do not believe me watch this footage on youtube
So what happens after all this? the end of a cows life is often even worse than her pitiful life. Cows who decrease milk production, or have been milked dry or to exhaustion, we humans cart her off to slaughter. No matter how well a bovines life was, even those what were lucky enough to be raised in family farms and had a relatively friendly upbringing end in the same horrible practices.
Most people think death coms swiftly to a cow right? It's done humanely right ? (although philosophically we can debate how humane it is to kill someone who does not want to die ) A quick shot to the head , they think. But what the public is unaware of is that although the cows are shot in the head with a bolt they are often still alive when their throat is cut and they are skinned. The process is horrid and the workers are often abusive and cruel. The industry would like to make you believe that the animals do not suffer, the truth is they do not only suffer they are terrified every second from arrival to point of death; some fight others shut down emotionally , but they are all very aware of their fate. If you do not believe me go to a slaughter house and watch. Humane slaughter is a myth and the only truly happy cows live in sanctuaries nowhere else! Oh and one more thing a cow's natural lifespan is about 25 years we kill them between 0-7 years of age. How do I know all this? Because I worked on a farm when I was in my twenties. It was not a factory farm it was in fact the best possible farm environment for a cow a European eco farm, still what I saw there and the surrounding factory farms changed me forever.
Pigs, chickens and turkeys suffer similar fates. Hatcheries grind up male bay chicks alive as they are of little use or they are gassed or left I plastic bags to die. Imagine you are a male baby chick you open your eyes and find yourself on a moving conveyer belt. You cheep for your mother and the next thing you know you are falling just to be shredded by blades. Tell me that this is not monstrous? This is the cost of every egg that is consumed bio, free range or not; and even if you have backyard chickens, if your family has not been breeding them and keeping all the boys for generations, that egg on your plate is drenched in babyblood. Many people have little or no idea of this but there are also a ton who just don't give a damn they want their egg Mcmuffin that is all that counts. This s why I try to block most of the world out because I cannot unsee what I know. There is so much cruelty in the whole egggame the fact that we have bread chickens to lay so many eggs that it depletes their bodies and they are prone to painful and often deadly prolapse (stuck eggs in their canals ) to the fact that chicken are also bread to have oversized muscles so we can have more meat. It's all horrific but because this has been traditionally done for so long people can't even see the suffering it becomes part of the scenery and acceptable. Just to highlight what I mean more eggs a wild chicken lays about 17 eggs a year naturally commercial chickens lay 1-2 eggs a day.
As for pigs the mothers are artificially inseminated or raperacked like their bovine counterparts and then locked into pens that are so small they cannot turn around. their babies are castrated and their sensitive tails are cut off without painkillers. Their lives are horrifically sad and considering that pigs are as intelligent as a 3-5 year old child they often go insane without mental stimulation and because of the daily abuse they face. ow sad is it that we are so carless and cruel to beings who are so capable and intelligent. did you know that mother pigs actually sing to their babies it is scientific fact I did not make this up. Another fact is that pigs are often cooked alive in slaughterhouses because like with bovines the bolt guns malfunction or do not kill them. There is so much more i could go into when it comes to humans and animal abuse but you get the gist. either at this point you will research more on your own or you will not care and I am wasting my time. As is these things disgust me , they make me angry and on bad days I feel so helpless and angry by what we do to others that it is hard to see anything good in humanity. Obviously we are not all bad there is a lot of potential in us but the question is is the potential worth the cost to other sentient beings and the planet as a whole? Is it worth waiting until we mature as species or do we deserve to die out for the greater good all things I ponder often.
Well I am human what do I care abut animals ?
We are a selfish species and I am aware that animal rights means little to most people, at least where farm animals are concerned. I am not going to go into the philosophical discussion about speciesism at this point, as this piece will be long enough before I am done. I am also aware of the average attention span, so let us shift the perspective to human health which is a matter that concerns all of us.
Meat , Milk and Dairy and health > Despite what the meat and dairy industry would like to tell you Milk and dairy have been linked to the following illness heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer and asthma. A Harvard study points to a direct coloration of high milk consumption and osteoporosis. The study explains that Dairy turns the body acidic and that it has to leach calcium from the bones to balance it out. This also explains why the countries that have the highest dairy consumption also have the highest osteoporosis rates. Still Advertising using Celebrities like “the got milk” campaign still sell us the lie and we literally poison our children and ourselves because we believe what we are told. Other studies point to milk , meat and dairy as cause for cancer one of them is the famous China study. The China Study was conducted by T. Colin Campbell, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, and his son Thomas M. Campbell II, a physician. The China-Cornell-Oxford Project was conducted over 20 years. It began 1983 and ended in 2003. During those 20 years bloodwork and dietary studies were conducted on over 6,500 people from in 65 regions in China. The study concluded that counties with a high consumption of animal products had substantially higher death rates from Cancer, diabetes and heart disease while these diseases were very uncommon for regions on a plant based or extremely limited meat (usually fish) diet.Now that scary isn't it?
A few years ago red meat was classified as a class a carcinogen and while this is now stated in most modern medical literature on the subject the public is really not informed on this. iIt is because our politicians are corporate owned and most people do not do their own research. So while these fats are openly available to those who look no one is making a great effort to make is known to a wider public because that could hurt the economy.
There is so much more to discuss when it comes to plant based diets and health but again it will make this ver long piece even longer so I might bring this up in a future post or several.
I do want to point to two last things before I go which are equally important to us as humans, The industry's impact on climate change and the wold hunger crisis.
What the industry does to the planet and how its fucking YOUR FUTURE TOO!
Most People are not aware that the meat, dairy and fish industry are bringing us to the edge of extinction. It is predicted that if we do not change our fishing practices we will face a total collapse of our oceans marine wildlife by the year 2045 . Now you will more than likely be alive then so what does it mean for you ? The problem is our oceans produce over 60-80% of our breathable oxygen. The balance within our aquatic habitats are a delicate one, the loss of just one species impacts the balance greatly. If the projections are right the loss of all relevant marine life could tip the balance and render the ocean sour and unable to produce the oxygen we need to survive.What fishing is doing in our oceans the Meat and Dairy industry is doing on land. In South and Central America our rainforests are being chopped down to make land for cattle. An area of the approximate size of a football field is decimated every four seconds; that's an area twice the size of Paris gone every day. That in turn equates to 13 million hectares or an area about the size of England, Greece or Nicaragua chopped down every year. ). So the question is what are we going to breath after 2045?
The Meat and Dairy industry are the Number one contributor to global warming, crazy as it sounds cow farts and even worse burps are producing such amounts of methane that it counts for 18% of green house gas causing emissions. You might think 18% does not sound like much, but what if I told you that the entire world transportation industry, this includes all boats, cars , drivable lawnmowers, motorcycles, rockets ships, space shuttles, ships ,tanks, trams, trains, trucks, planes, only hold a 13% stake.). Does this surprise you? That does not conclude all the damage this industry does the meat and Dairy industry is second in line when it comes to soil and water pollution, the Oil industry is in pole position there.
Again I could go deeper into this and will in future posts but the topic is so extensive it deserves a longer breakdown than would fit in this giant post. so we will go to the last point for today world hunger.
World hunger and how meat and dairy consumption makes you personally responsible
The meat and dairy industry and western societies lust for the flesh and body fluids of other species is the number one reason for global hunger (next to political red tape) and ground water depletion. In a world were a child dies from hunger every 2-3 seconds consuming meat and dairy is just not sustainable practice. 70 percent of the world’s agricultural land is used to either grow feed for cattle or as graze land for cattle.More than 50% of U.S. grain and nearly 40 % of the entire world grain yield is fed to livestock .If this grain were fed to humans instead of bovines we could increase the global food supply by nearly 50%!That is an approximate 800 million people who could be fed if we took the gain from America cattle feed alone !Imagine this; the grain it takes to produce an average steak could feed 30 people a hearty meal of gains and veggies. How bitter must it be for these people to watch as the flesh of animals raised and fed with the grain produced on their land is being shipped and consumed in the first world while their children are dying of starvation. Fact is that if humanity does not change their behaviour there will be severe consequences. this future is no longer distant it is in your immediate future. Change starts with the individual politician never bring change we do through our actions.If we refuse to participate in something as individuals change happens there is no other way.
Yes I know society see what we do to animals as normal but my I point to the fact that only 155 years ago slavery was considered normal un U.s America or that it was normal until the 1920's for woman not to be able to vote. As we become more refined as species our practises should evolve. We seem sadly to evolve very slowly but the constant argument it has always been done just does not fly tradition does not make things morally right.
Ok I lied one more mini point I get this question in discussions a lot and while many vegans dismiss it (because being vegan dos not make you perfect as much as we like to pretend it does) it is worth discussing. When discussion animal rights and suffering non vegans often point to plants-
But don't plants feel pain too?
>Plants do not have nervous systems like we do so traditionally they were not believed to be able to feel pain. In the last years research has emerged concluding that they might have an equivalent of an CNS by using electromagnetic fields and that they use their roots as decentralised brain. (the root think is fascinating they found out that some plants actually do complex calculations; but I am going down the rabbit hole here ). They also found out that when they played the sounds of caterpillars munching plants would go into the equivalent of a comatose state, almost like they were scared. It is however unclear if they are just aware of things or if there is pain. they did a lot of test in different gemination stages and found out things such as that unsprouted grains , nuts and seeds seemingly do not show any activity until they are somehow awakened by sprouting- so it might seem that they are most likely not aware in that state.
Other possible signs of plant sentience can bee seen in tree communication One of the articles I read pointed to studies that measured pheromone messaging between trees. It seems that they warn each other from dangers such as fire and parasites like this, it is quite fascinating. Another study stated
that they can not only determine which roots are theirs and tend to treat the roots of others with more courtesy , but that they can distinguish between plants of the same species and strangers.
I am getting away from myself here but in the end if plant life is of real concern to you my argument is the following. If i take all the research I read into account it seems to me that the only thing we would need to exclude from our diet to be kind to plants would be greens and root veggies. As plants make most veggies and all fruit to lure hosts in in hopes to have the seed transported by either poop or the rotting carcass of the poisoned host as I understand. (some even specialise in luring a preferred host to their fruit )like the avocado that outlived its preferred host (a elephant like creature- ok I digress again ) by 10000 or so years.
Also considering that livestock eat the majority of our crops going plant based means we would be killing less of them and if one wants to do more exclude root veggies and greens. Want to do even more plants? Use only recycled wood and paper
In the end though people usually just bring up that argument to deflect from the fact of the horrors they pay and indulge in and that annoys the fuck out of me. If you are misinformed about things I can deal with that, If you are weak and just can't help your addiction to eating body parts and body fluids I might find your lack of backbone repulsive (in light of the suffering it causes) but I also I understand addictions and habits take time to break. But the minute you devalue the life of others while knowing well and good the horror they go through all I want to do is shoot you to mars or some other barren rock you no longer can destroy. Our planet is dying because of all the Idonotgiveafucks and we are trapped on it with them. It is not like we can divide the planet and shove them on one side and be ok and currently only power hungry billionaires are going into space. We are trapped in the consequences of your actions with no way to get away from you and the destruction you cause. So yeah I am angry and all the shit you do that spills into my life and habitat is my business as well. You do don't get to make a choice about the things that you do that effect me. You are not special, you don't get to fuck up things for everyone no matter how many others you point to who are engaging in the same practises.
I am not perfect, by all means, like most I am still evolving step by step , but i get furious when people just have thins non caring attitude to what their actions are causing others. People like to say mind your own business the problem is it is no longer only their business when their actions are impacting the life quality of others. Its not like I can book a rocketship outta here to Beta Centauri I am locked on this planet with you while you actions threaten my survival.
I do not want to spend my old age on a barren planet with extreme food shortages (predicted by the UN in the next 10 years if we don't change) and little air to breath... So yes I am AN ANGRY VEGAN and this soapbox that I stand on is not me being difficult or wanting to make your life hard, or wanting to control you, but just the only way I can voice my frustration that because of people who refuse to do what is needed the future looks bleak and at times hopeless.
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(Image credit Dave Renike and a portrait of the late loved and so very missed jubilee made by myself turned into this here universal truth meme)
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