Why I am a Vegan

Think of the worst injustice you know of.  Now try to recall how you felt when you learned of it.  Assuming your mother didn’t tell you bedtime stories about genocide, you were probably old enough to experience the incredulity and disgust that accompanies any such discovery.  This memory should aptly reflect how I felt when struggling with my decision to become vegan, and though I can no longer be classified a ‘recent convert’, I’ve found my fervor has only increased as time has passed.  This doesn’t mean I relentlessly fume at friends or strangers about their eating habits (the majority of people I know aren’t even aware I’m vegan).  I am, however, capable of making a case for it when asked to elaborate.

First off, I don’t want to lie.  The intelligent, fuzzy, cute, or otherwise likeable nature of animals and the cruelty of factory farms definitely contributed to my lifestyle change.  However, I’d imagine you already know as much as you want to about all that and I can leave the grotesque images off this page (hell, I don’t like looking at them either).  Moreover, I was aware of that argument long before I became vegan, and because I was fairly anaesthetized to the idea it wasn't enough to make me change my routine.  The argument that really tipped the scales for me was one of socio-economics and the inequality of distribution.  In the US, nearly half our water and 80 percent of agricultural land are used to raise animals for food 1.  We feed more than 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains that we grow to farmed animals 2, which is to be expected if you consider that it requires 10 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of meat 3.  If Americans reduced their meat consumption by just ten percent it would free 12 million tons of grain annually - hypothetically enough to feed 60 million people (twice the number that die every year from starvation) 4. 

My second reason, closely tied to the first, was ecological concern.  The waste and destruction of animal husbandry affects not only humans, but the environment itself.  My sentimental love of the outdoors and mountain sports not withstanding, I am skeptical of treating the world as though it were a limitless cornucopia.  One-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S. go to raising animals for food 5.  Every minute the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed to create more room for farmed animals - animals that produce about 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the United States2.  And since factory farms don't have urban sewage treatment systems, this concentrated slop ends up polluting our water, destroying our topsoil and contaminating our air. 

Finally, while the motive of physical health is for some the primary reason for adhering to a vegan lifestyle, it came in last with me.  This doesn’t mean that it isn’t a valid motivation; just that it wasn’t my first concern.  Nevertheless, I must admit it’s quite a perk that my sometimes-inconvenient moral decision will drastically decrease my risk for strokes, osteoporosis, arthritis, obesity, Alzheimer's, most allergies, diabetes and food poisoning 6.  And it’s pretty nice that as an adult my chance of getting cancer will be only 40 percent that of non-vegans 7 (provided I quit smoking, of course).

So those are the motivations that prevent me from piling on the cheese in the dining hall (dairy happens to be the one taboo food group I occasionally crave) and in truth, I don’t feel that this choice controls my life any more than any other preference.  As with other personal decisions I’ve made, it certainly can cause social tension.  I’ve found people are generally made more uncomfortable by the revelation of my veganism than my sexual orientation or political bent.  But those problems stem from the misconception that I’m an evangelical zealot - a judgment that’s completely incorrect.  I am full of ideas about how I can change the world for the better, but convincing everyone I meet to forgo animal products is not one of them.  Not only would that be fruitless (as many strangers have hastened to inform me) but I also wouldn’t find it satisfying. 

For me, veganism isn’t about proselytizing and criticism.  It’s about not wanting the way I change the world to be by taking up too much of it.