The waffle iron is nice and hot for this one, so apologies in advance.
I was a carnivore for the first 35/36 years of my life, even used the idiotic line "for every animal you don't eat I'll eat three" with a vegan acquaintance, so I'd like to think I have some insight. For me it's neither the taste, nor the shape that is offensive, although the smell of meat being cooked is pretty objectionable and persistent once you have a certain sensibility.
A few dalliances with vegetarianism never really stuck, until I saw this ostensibly humorous video:
Nothing that lives and breathes and feels should ever end its days like that - an abominable perversion of nature.
Another epiphany came when walking through a supermarket aisle and I realised that surrounding me, wrapped in plastic and clingfilm was thousands of bits of corpses - like a horror film, except real and wholly normalised.
Personally, I now find the rearing of sentient animals to slaughter them for mass-produced meat morally repugnant and wholly indefensible - the reason it happens behind closed doors is to deliberately obfuscate and sever the link in people's minds between cute farm animals and the stuff they shove in their gub.
Wild game is less objectionable (proper wild game, not managed stuff on estates - f*** those guys) - those animals have a chance to live free and while they may be terrified for the last moments of their life, it's nothing compared to what happens in factory farms and abbatoirs. And with game there's not the disconnect between killing and consuming that there is with mass-produced stuff. Although I would add that I would not shed one solitary tear for a game hunter killed by their quarry.
I still consume dairy because I'm a massive hypocrite, but I can't countenance eating battery or free-range eggs, having learned what goes on in hatcheries. (Free-range is another marketing ploy designed to obfuscate the link between process and end product)
Finally, Linda McCartney chorizo and red pepper sausages are delicious but most meat substitutes are terrible when compared to properly prepared vegan food.
I was a carnivore for the first 35/36 years of my life, even used the idiotic line "for every animal you don't eat I'll eat three" with a vegan acquaintance, so I'd like to think I have some insight. For me it's neither the taste, nor the shape that is offensive, although the smell of meat being cooked is pretty objectionable and persistent once you have a certain sensibility.
A few dalliances with vegetarianism never really stuck, until I saw this ostensibly humorous video:
Nothing that lives and breathes and feels should ever end its days like that - an abominable perversion of nature.
Another epiphany came when walking through a supermarket aisle and I realised that surrounding me, wrapped in plastic and clingfilm was thousands of bits of corpses - like a horror film, except real and wholly normalised.
Personally, I now find the rearing of sentient animals to slaughter them for mass-produced meat morally repugnant and wholly indefensible - the reason it happens behind closed doors is to deliberately obfuscate and sever the link in people's minds between cute farm animals and the stuff they shove in their gub.
Wild game is less objectionable (proper wild game, not managed stuff on estates - f*** those guys) - those animals have a chance to live free and while they may be terrified for the last moments of their life, it's nothing compared to what happens in factory farms and abbatoirs. And with game there's not the disconnect between killing and consuming that there is with mass-produced stuff. Although I would add that I would not shed one solitary tear for a game hunter killed by their quarry.
I still consume dairy because I'm a massive hypocrite, but I can't countenance eating battery or free-range eggs, having learned what goes on in hatcheries. (Free-range is another marketing ploy designed to obfuscate the link between process and end product)
Finally, Linda McCartney chorizo and red pepper sausages are delicious but most meat substitutes are terrible when compared to properly prepared vegan food.
