How I did it: I didn't go vegan; rather, veganism happened to me.

I credit three things to my quick transformation: reading "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair; reading "Fast Food Nation" (and watching the movie); watching undercover slaughterhouse videos on YouTube.

The slaughterhouse videos put me over the edge. The cruelty was unimaginable, and the inhumanity of the workers was like something out of A Clockwork Orange. One particular scene sticks in my memory: a worker was about to shoot a pig, but instead of just shooting it and ending its misery quickly, the worker knocked it over and stood on it. The pig struggled to breathe, making very human-like gasping noises. I couldn't see its eyes or face; all I heard was the raggedy coughing like an old man's cough. After about 10 seconds of torture, the man put a bullet in the pig's head.

I thought I could get away with vegetarianism - just drinking milk, eating eggs - until I found out that cows and chickens are tortured in much the same way. I watched chickens being debeaked, cows being pumped full of hormones, pigs stuck in tiny cells and going mad with boredom, gnawing the bars of their cage.

Really, I can't say I "did it" when it comes to veganism. All I really did was open my eyes to the horror, and veganism came to me. I became completely vegan on July 4, 2007 - my Independence Day :)

Lessons & tips: Best advice I can give is to go to YouTube and search for slaughterhouse videos. If you can watch them and still eat meat, you're made of sterner stuff than I.

You may also want to do some reading: check out Fast Food Nation; Becoming Vegan: Complete Guide to a Plant-Based Diet; and Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating.

---

Sep 11, 2009, 07:13PM PDT | 0 comments | 1 cheer