My pathway to veganism

I grew up on a sheep and cattle farm in beautiful limestone country in the Waikato, one of four children who willingly provided free farm labour – mustering, drafting, docking, feeding pet lambs and calves and, as we got older helping out in the shearing shed. We had long summer days of freedom to roam and if we had thought about it would have considered ourselves very lucky.

Our father was a lovely gentle man who left school at 13 and without anything remotely close to family support ultimately achieved his lifelong dream to be a farmer. His passion was for the land but he also had an eye for good breeding stock and was that peculiar breed of farmer who loved his animals but could also have them killed for meat.

I remember feelings of sympathy for lambs separated from their mums, the gruesome spectacle of a pig wandering happily around the paddock as my father and brother prepared for it’s slaughter, comforting lambs crying with pain from the rings on their tails and testicles and the horror and urge to liberate lambs who had been selected as ‘fat lambs’ and were to be ‘sent away’ – was there ever such a euphemistic term. Despite this nascent sense of injustice and a delight in the pet lambs I helped rear I could also and did many times enjoy the roast mutton that was cooking, stand by my father and pick at bits as he carved it and my conditioning was such I didn’t even think to rationalise the dissonance between how I felt and what I did.

I dabbled with vegetarianism in my teenage years but suspect now that had more to do with diet than ethics and I didn’t consciously persist with it into adulthood although my food choices naturally tended more towards plants than animals . It was only when I got my first dog, and formed a close bond with this beautiful and intelligent border collie that I started actively thinking about the sentience of animals – if he displayed love and emotions, why would that not be a trait shared throughout the animal kingdom. A stint of house sitting and introduction to my brothers chickens brought an immediate end to eating chicken and the sight of lambs playing and taking turns jumping down a clay bank with such evident deliberation and delight added lamb to my banned list and ultimately a proper commitment to vegetarianism. My pathway to veganism took a few more years of discovery of the horrors of oppression and exploitation in the dairy and egg industry - and despite this knowledge I STILL felt I could never give up milk in my coffee. In the end I was like a smoker deciding after the last cigarette, that is enough – and now I am sure I would detest the taste of milk.

It worries me that I discovered what happens in the dairy and egg industry because I actively sought this information, not because it is widely available or disseminated; in fact to the contrary it is a truth not widely told. How are consumers meant to make informed decisions about anything if they are not presented with the facts or encouraged to ask questions about the provenance of their food. We all championed the drive to end battery hens but the truth is colony cages and free range aren’t much better (not to mention the hell that chickens raised for meat exist in) and the reality is that any animal that while not directly in the food chain will ultimately end up killed at the end of it's productive life.

I am somewhat in the minority among people I know but it was actually my son who finally pushed me over the line, not through persuasion but rather by example and the delicious meals he cooked made it impossible to imagine that veganism was a deprivation of any sort.

There are so many options available that don’t involve animal exploitation and it is impossible to find a moral or ethical argument for continuing to do so.