Today is my 6th year Veganiversary. I fully went vegan on 1.5.15, yes that date was chosen on purpose. I was vegetarian a few years before that but I always craved Cadbury Fruit and Nuts. So on 1.4.15, I bought my last bar, enjoyed it savoring it’s taste and texture and vowing never to have it again.
Going vegan was not an overnight choice for me. It was a long process. My niece, who was living with me at the time, went vegetarian because she was working for a professor who was writing about animal agriculture and what she had to type up disturbed her enough to swear off meat. At that time, I was completely ignorant and kept buying her seafood, thinking that’s vegetarian. A few months later, my sister insisted I watch Forks Over Knives. After watching it, I wanted to be a patient of some of the doctors in the documentary. It seemed they cared so much more than regular doctors who only pushed pills on you, hoping for a cure or at least get rid of the symptoms. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve met most of them although I no longer need their services.
Then after much deliberation, I finally got a Facebook page. I still wasn’t even vegetarian nor have I ever heard of the word vegan! Somehow FB showed me a page called March for Monsanto. I had to search to see what this company was up to and why so many people hated them that there was a global march against them. Monsanto is a chemical company (mainly Roundup) who has their hands on our food system, genetically modifying seeds in order to make us sick and fund the pharmaceutical companies. A lightbulb moment here!
Marching against Monsanto was my first form of activism.
After watching some Mercy for Animals and PETA videos, I knew my New Year’s Resolution had to become vegetarian. As a vegetarian, my ignorance was still high. I didn’t eat seafood but I did consume a lot of eggs and dairy because protein! Then FB kept asking if I’m still consuming dairy. I got annoyed because “Milk Does The Body Good”, right? What I saw broke my heart. Male day-old chicks being ground up alive because they don’t lay eggs so they were useless in the egg industry. Mother cows forcefully impregnated only to have their babies stolen from them so humans can have their milk meant for their calves. The abuse the dairy cows go through was so horrifying, I literally cried for days. Cows just like humans are pregnant for nine months and they cry whenever their babies are taken away from them. Farmers then do everything from kicking and beating them and even literally putting their udders on fire to stop any infection, all while their hearts are broken over and over again. Then when their bodies are so spent and they can’t produce milk anymore, they get sent to slaughter to become cheap hamburger for fast-food restaurants. What happens to their babies? The males get sent to slaughter for veal (some with their umbilical cord still attached) and the females get to have the same fate as their moms. I’m a mother and if anyone ever tried to take my baby away, I would fight tooth and nail for her.
I went vegan on my own. I had no mentor. Friends and family seemed supportive but found out later on that most weren’t. I was sneered at behind my back. It was a lonely way of life at the beginning until I met new vegan friends. I started hanging out with them and became very involved in activism. I watched more documentaries like Joaquin Phoenix’s Earthlings, which just ingrained my belief that eating animals is wrong on every level.
I thought veganism was a diet just like vegetarianism. It isn’t. It’s an ideology or philosophy of a moral obligation to not hurt any sentient being, including fish because fish feel too and we’re fishing our way out of extinction. If the ocean dies, we die.
This brings me to being an environmentalist. I’ve been one almost all my life. I recycled before recycling was a law. I always conserved water and threw away as little trash for the landfill as possible. Little did I know that eating animals was the second leading cause of Climate Change. Again self-education was key here. We kill about 60 billion land animals every year for consumption. If that’s the number that’s to die, how many are left alive? They need land to graze and be housed in and they need food to fatten them up. Forests like the Amazon are being cleared daily to make room for all these animals and their needs. Did you know that cutting down a tree releases the carbon dioxide that tree absorbed? Yeah, so not only are we eliminating our source of free oxygen, we’re also releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Cows, especially, emit methane into the air because they’re not given the proper food. They’re forced to eat corn and soy to help fatten them up.
My granddaughter was born four months ago. If you love your children or grandchildren, please consider going vegan for them. Our planet will survive our carelessness as it has for billions of years. Humanity may not. We’ll go extinct just like the dinosaurs if we continue in our path of destruction. I urge you to self-educate yourself as well, just like I did. I didn’t become vegan overnight but I have been for six years and I’m still alive to tell you about it. I’m not protein or B12 deficient. I once read The Fall of Atlantis by Marion Zimmer Bradley. She wrote how the Atlanteans sealed their demise with their arrogance; although the signs of their doom were obvious but it’s never going to happen to this technologically advanced race. Let’s not make this come true for the human race.
By the way this pandemic was caused by humans eating animals. More pandemics are just around the corner. If you’re sick of it, then stop eating animals. Look it up.
You don’t have to do it alone like I did. Here’s some help: they’re all free with mentors and nutritionists to guide you. Feel free to reach out to me as well.
www.www.pcrm.org/veganstarterkit
If you have a serious illness, please go to www.goodbyelupus.com.
To calculate your personal carbon footprint, click here:
www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
Happy New Year 2021!
Vegan Noelle 