Great start to this excellent story in New Zealand, apparently one of the largest consumers of animal protein:
Twenty-five years after Anna Mumford got a job in a slaughterhouse, it's not the smell or the blood that she remembers. It's the fear. She's haunted by the look in the eyes of petrified cows being herded into sheds to be shot in the head.
It's an image that changed her life. Overnight she stopped eating meat, and soon after became a strict vegan, masticating nothing derived from animals and using no animal-based products.
Mumford's story is typical of many who choose to adopt a vegan or vegetarian life-style. It could be described as a "lightbulb" moment - a defining event from which there is no turning back.
Mumford grew up in a typical English farming community and was an unquestioning meat-eater when she made the change.
The article includes this photo:
I thought this was legitimate, though the comparison might bother some:
Like born-again Christians who want to spread the word after they've been "saved", there's a risk that Mumford and her peers could alienate the public they're trying to reach. It's a pitfall she's all too aware of, but insists that no holier-than-thou preaching or shock tactics are being employed in conveying the cruelty-free message.The difference is great between Christianity and veganism, obviously, and the point is well made in the second paragraph. I do believe one problem veg*nism has as a movement is helping people interested in veg*nism do it well, so as to reduce "recidivism" and annoying articles from ex-so-called-vegetarians. It's not any one vegetarians fault, but rather the fault of a society that does not yet fully embrace vegetarianism as a legitimate option. It is growing, but there's still a lot of ignorance out there, and it can indeed be daunting for new veggies to make the lifestyle work on their own. I personally recommend massive Internet time in the first few months -- message boards, vegweb.com for recipes, etc. -- to help you get past the learning curve quicker.
"I'm not telling people what to do. We believe that the more information someone has, the better their ability to make a decision. They might think they'd like to stop eating meat, but they don't know what to eat, so they just go and buy the meat again.
Similar to how businesses respond to the marketplace, I believe the marketplace responds to external pressures that eventually force them to face a need for change that they might have been trying to ignore. Myself and many of my readers came to vegetarianism at our own time and pace, and for varous reasons, but at some point, vegetarianism will become less of a "light bulb" moment, and more of a necessity. It already has for some people, and the pressures seem to be growing:
"It seems we're really on the cusp of something at the moment," Blake says. "The news is appalling with bird flu and everything that's happening with global warming, and people are slowly starting to see the cost of the massive destruction we're causing to the earth.
"We don't have time to sit back and wonder what we're going to do about it. Heart disease, cancer and the obesity epidemic are all linked to a meat-based diet. As people get sicker and fatter, the information about a plant-based diet will gradually get out there."
