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A vegan eschews anything that involves the exploitation, torturing or killing of animals. The use of animals is akin to slavery and must be abolished; this abolitionism starts at home.
Resources:
| vegetarian | vegan | source |
|---|---|---|
| .3% - 1% | 1994 Roper Poll | |
| 1.2% | 1977-1978 USDA Survey | |
| 7% | Vegetarian Times | |
| 2.5% | 0.9% | 2000 Zogby Poll |
| 4% | 0.2% | 2002 Time/CNN poll |
| 2.8% | 1.8% | 2003 Harris Poll |
| 2.3% | 1.4% | 2006 Harris Poll |
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/faq.htm#poll http://www.imaner.net/panel/index.htm http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020715/poll/ http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=706957
Moved to BodyCounts
In September of 2000 I made the decision to become vegan. After I made that decision I began thinking about what had gotten me to this point. For the most part, this had been a slow, gradual process over many years. But, by analyzing how this process took place, it is my hope that I (and others) may help others through this process, hopefully at a faster pace than it took me.
A natural way for me to approach this is chronologically, so starting from the top...
I spent the first 10 or so years of my life on a small farm in Scappoose, Oregon. On the 10 acre tract of land, we had a couple dozen head of Black Angus cattle, and a bunch of chickens plus other typical farm denizens: horses, geese, goats, &c. I can remember hauling young calves to the butcher or to the stock yards, but I never saw (or do not recall) seeing anything that happened until we hauled home a load of small packages wrapped in butcher paper. We had two huge freezers which stored all this meat. I can recall connecting those packages of meat with the steer that I had named, but experiencing no remorse.
At the age of seven I was given the task of taking care of the chickens. I had to feed them and gather the eggs. A few years later I started selling the eggs... often to my grade school teachers. I do not remember ever butchering chickens, I am pretty sure we never did so after I was about 6 years old. I have a vague memory of plucking chickens; I was probably 5, or so. My father has told me he would chop the chickens' heads off and then let their bodies go, which would then run around reflexively for a short time, spurting blood from their necks. He tells me that I was quite amused by this. I am glad I do not remember it.
The word "vegetarian" was rarely heard around the farm or around town. I cannot recall anybody in town, for the 20 years I lived there, who was vegetarian. I suspect that anybody who was could not be very open about it without experiencing some social isolation. It is fair to say, that around this town, the word "vegetarian" would have been uttered with the same tone as one would use for "lunatic" or "crackpot." Meat was an implicit part of every meal.
This conditioning was very thorough, as I held these views for a number of years after going to University and moving into Portland. I don't think I ever actually saw tofu until I was about 22... and I was repulsed by it and didn't eat any. (Ironically enough, the friend of mine that attempted to share his tofu, has since become a carnivore)
One of the last classes I took while at PSU was the Health and Physical Education requirement, HPE 298. I had avoided this for most of my time in school due to my experiences in middle and high school: these classes pretty much amounted to an hour of school-sanctioned ridicule and abuse of the smaller kids by the bigger ones (I was in the former group). However, I found that the college class was completely different: for the first time, I learned about cardiovascular fitness, nutrition and other health issues. The heretofore radical ideas of exercise and a healthy diet had chipped away at my conditioning.
During the Gulf War, I became involved with some of the protests, and met some vegetarians. I remember silently ridiculing them: "humans are omnivores, not herbivores. Where do they get their protein, vitamins, &c."
I was 23 when my father-in-law died at the age of 54 of a massive heart attack. He was a large man who ate a very carnivorous diet. He often ate SPAM and other canned meat "products" (he once chided me for looking at the ingredients of one of them). On his green salads, he always asked for brown gravy (the waitress' expressions were always amusing). He would eat pork chops by putting them between two slices of bread (with the bone and fat still on the meat) and eat the sandwich such that he was left holding the bone when he was done. This is the way he had eaten all his life.
The sudden shock of his death brought all those HPE lectures back into my mind. The lectures about the dangers of a high cholesterol/high fat diet, which had seemed so academic and distant before, gained an immediacy and relevance that they did not have at the time. My wife thought I was crazy (and likely still does), but I started reducing the amount of fat and cholesterol I was eating. I started meticulously trimming fat from meat, buying leaner meat, buying low-fat milk, avoiding eggs, &c. I knew that these sort of things build up slowly, and doing a little bit when young would prevent or postpone many problem later in life.
In retrospect, my approach to this was crazy. I still could not conceive of a meatless diet, but yet I was trying to avoid all the natural consequences of eating meat.
A few years later, my wife was diagnosed with a number of food allergies: chicken, lettuce, corn, mushrooms and all legumes. The latter, of course, virtually eliminated a vegetarian diet from consideration.
Around 1993 by way of my interest in chinese medicine and philosophy I found the book Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford. As I read it, my resistance to vegetarianism was gradually whittled away. I realized that many of my deeply inculcated prejudices were wrong. Over the next several years, I began dropping meat from my diet. Due to my wife's dietary restrictions, eliminating meat was not possible, but even then I would take smaller portions of meat and larger portions of veggies and starches. When I was at restaurants (with or without her), I gradually stopped ordering red meat, then pork, then chicken and turkey. By the late '90s about the only meat I ate outside of the home was fish.
In the workplace, I started working closely with a vegetarian: Rob. While we had a few conversations about vegetarianism, his influence on me was more subtle than that. When we went to lunch I would usually order vegetarian food. Seeing the way he and his family lived convinced me that this was the right thing to do. As a team building event our team went on a sailing trip and picnic. We did have some meat on the picnic, and I ate some. I remember Rob's daughter asking me if I was a carnivore. I was stunned, and stammered out some feeble excuse. But, deep down, I felt like a hypocrite and I had been exposed by a 7 year old! I was now ready to become fully vegetarian.
Early in 1998 I joined a the Alberta Cooperative Grocery, a local buying club working towards becoming a retail store. The membership of this organization seemed a reversal of most of society: most people were openly vegetarian and the meat eaters were pretty quiet and seemed to be in the minority. Over the years, I gradually moved from the latter to the former group. This was the first time I had much exposure to vegans. However, my prejudice about drinking milk and eating cheese was not going to yield. I thought veganism was excessive and unnecessary: dairy products were important for calcium and protein.
In mid 1999 my wife and I decided to break up. When she moved out late in the year, I decided that there was no longer any excuse; it was time to drop the meat from my diet entirely. My reasons for this were still primarily nutritional: I felt that meat was a concentrated fuel which most people do not need, it's like putting rocket fuel into your lawnmower. I had some inklings about the environmental and animal rights issues, but that wasn't what was moving me at the time. This transition had been very gradual, and it is hard to say exactly when I became vegetarian. I do remember being a guest at a friend's house in Feb 2000 and she gave me some beef casserole, and I ate it, mostly to be polite, but I remember thinking that this would be the last time I would taste beef and I was right. In May, my girlfriend cooked some fish (red snapper, I think) and I ate it mostly to be polite, but again, I said to myself that this would be the last time I would taste flesh. And it was.
While becoming vegetarian was very gradual, my switch to veganism was very sudden. The last milk I had was on my granola on the morning of 8-Sep-2000. That day I flew to the east coast and spent over a week with a vegan. Before I left I decided that I would be vegan while I was there, but I was still not seriously thinking about switching. However, I very quickly changed my mind. It became clear that it wasn't very hard to be vegan, and that there were some very deep reasons for doing so (though I was not fully aware of them). By the end of the trip, I was thinking about staying vegan. When I got home, I dumped the milk into the sink, and started using soy milk.
I started reading a variety of articles on vegan web sites, and the one that convinced me was the one that showed the connection between dairy product consumption and prostate cancer (on [PCRM]). All remaining doubt about veganism withered away. I have been vegan (other than a few transgressions) ever since.
In December I read "Diet for a New America" and became fully aware of all the other reasons for being vegan. At this point my eyes were opened and there was no way I could go back without jettisoning my conscience.
I have since been listening to a number of interviews with [Gary Francione], who I leared of as my wife became vegan in 2001 after hearing an interview with him. His razor sharp reasoning has clarified my own beliefs and made me more certain that being vegan is the single most important thing you can do to make this world a better place.
