Years ago, I used to be an avid meat-eater and I was relatively unapologetic about it even when vegetarians and vegans presented cogent arguments on why it's wrong to eat meat. I had cynically accepted the suffering and death animals go through as a fact of life and what they were bred for after all.
Luckily, I ended up asking myself two very simple questions (with a lot of help from others and one specific Gary Yourovsky lecture):
- Is it wrong to cause avoidable harm to conscious living creatures?
- Can I live without eating meat in order to avoid causing said harm?
My answers turned out to be a resounding YES to the former and a relatively confident I think so to the latter. And since I have always tried to live a moral life, I had to give it a shot and check if I was correct with my second answer. I quickly realized that I was and the only thing I miss a tiny bit to this day (more than 5 years later) is fish. My transition was basically instantaneous and it didn't and doesn't feel like a big deal.
Image Source: CC BY-NC 2.0 Carol Moshier
Of course, I realize I'm only halfway there because being a vegetarian does not get rid of the harm you are inflicting on animals because by consuming dairy and eggs, you are still perpetuating animal suffering. That's why I'm determined to finally make the switch to vegan in the very near future as it's taken me embarrassingly long already.
As mentioned in the title, I didn't do it for health reasons and there are plenty of other very good reasons to stop eating meat and/or animal products as well. Those two questions were just what got me to change my mind and accept I was wrong before.
So are any of you guys vegan or vegetarian? What are your answers on my two questions? Do you think being either is a good thing?