then and now - Blue & White Online

one issue,two viewsI was a full-blown three-year-old vegetarian.My parents thought it was just a phase... I’m21 years old now and I still don’t eat meat.—ciarra watkinsCiarra Watkins is a senior from Baltimore, MD.She can be reached atciarrajw@email.unc.edu.VEGGIE TALESI tell the story of how I became a vegetarian all the time, because it’s one ofthose stories you might not believe.It all started one day in preschool when I realized that the chicken on the dinner table and the chickenson Old MacDonald’s farm were the same thing. On this particular day, my classmates and I werereading a book about animals and the sounds they make.The book went something like: “The cow says ‘moo moo,’ the pig squeals ‘oink, oink,’ the chicken says‘bawk, bawk.’”When my mom picked me up and took me home for dinner that night, something happened.Chicken was on my plate. Yes, the same chicken that went ‘bawk, bawk’ just an hour before at preschool.I did what any sensible three-year-old would and refused to eat. So while most kids my age were refusingto eat their fruits and veggies, I was refusing to eat my chicken fingers and cheeseburgers.At such a young age, I didn’t know what ‘being a vegetarian’ meant, but I knew what pigs and cowswere, and I knew I was not going to eat them. In the months that followed, I was a full-blown threeyear-oldvegetarian. My parents thought this was just a phase—something I’d quickly grow out of—sothey put up with me.I’m 21 years old now and I still don’t eat meat. I guess it wasn’t just a temporary phase. Either that orI’m just stubborn.Obviously, for me, vegetarianism was an ethical decision. When I was young, I simply couldn’t standthe idea of eating an animal that mooed or oinked. Eighteen years later, I still feel the same way.Let me make it clear: I do not think people who eat meat are bad people. I do, however, think thatthey should consider where their meat came from, how the animals are raised and how they are killed,before eating any animal. Yes, I think killing animals for mass produced food is wrong, but what I reallythink is wrong is torturing the animals before killing them. You might be surprised to learn how manyrestaurants contribute to this type of unnecessary torture (Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer is agreat place to start).People always ask me if I crave meat or if I ever want to try it. But the truth is I never crave meat, becauseI don’t remember what it tastes like. In fact, the smell of meat is the opposite of appetizing to me.At this point, being a vegetarian is not something I regularly think about, it’s just a part of who I am.&A vegetarian and a vegan share their reasons forsaying goodbye to meat.Each month Two Views writers take differing views on a new topic.The process of becoming vegan has taken almost my entire life. When I wasa young child, probably 4 years old, I became concerned about the food my parents were feeding me.Like most children, I had come to love animals through both instruction and natural inclination. Thediscovery that my food was animals disconcerted me. My parents assured me that eating meat was necessaryfor human survival, so my concern dissipated for many years.When I was an undergraduate in the ‘70s, I came across a small group discussing Peter Singer’s bookAnimal Liberation. Singer wrote that most animals raised to become food suffer a great deal and thatthis needs to be taken into consideration in our treatment of them. I majored in philosophy, so Singer’sphilosophical arguments were important to me. But the really important thing was the facts.Back then, I think most people had no idea whatsoever that most food animals led lives of miseryand torture in factory farms instead of frolicking on small family farms. And most people would probablyalso have agreed with my parents that consuming meat, certainly every day and preferably atevery meal, was necessary for minimally good health. Equipped with the new knowledge that I couldbe healthier without meat, I came to the personal decision that any additional increment of pleasure Imight get from eating meat was not worth the suffering of the animals whose meat it was.Today, the facts about how food is produced are much easier to find because of the Internet. I fullyappreciate, however, how easy it is to overlook them. After my experience in college, I was very comfortablewith a meatless diet for more than 30 years. It was then made clear to me (mostly by my wife,Linda) that I had been overlooking some further important facts for all those years.Virtually all commercially available dairy products and chicken eggs are also factory farmed in conditionsthat are often just as shockingly cruel as those faced by animals that are eaten. To get this information,one need not visit websites of anti-cruelty organizations like PETA (though it is there). With justa little digging, the facts can be found in publications sponsored by the corporations that own factoryfarms.Once I had finally taken this additional information into account, it was easy for me to forgo anyadditional pleasure I derived from cows’ milk and chickens’ eggs. Factory farming is environmentallyunsound and it is an inefficient system for delivering good nutrition to our country and the rest of theworld. These are things that I care about, but my own decision to become vegan was not shaped bythem. I hope that my story helps a few others to begin thinking about this subject.&...most people had no idea whatsoeverthat most food animals led lives of miseryand torture in factory farms insteadof frolicking on small family farms.—Dr. alan nelsonDr. Alan Nelson is a professor in philosophyat UNC-CH who focuses on early modernphilosophy. He can be reached atanelson@unc.edu.WHATWASTHEBESTPARTOFYOURSUMMER?Olivia Mahony, junior“I taught psychology to youth, and it was coolusing stuff I’d been learning for something otherthan class.”Brandon Rafalson, sophomore“Traveling to Seattle and getting to explore thecity… the culture is fantastic, and there is so muchvariety there.”Amberly Nadro, sophomore“I had an internship with Best BuddiesInternational, which provides friendships and jobopportunities for people with developmental andintellectual disabilities.”Michael Lau, junior“Participating in Breakthrough Collaborative—settinghigh expectations for my students and seeingthem rise to the occasion.”