Me: Vegan

It has been a while since my last post.  I suffered some “technical difficulties” which lead to me not being in a writing mood for a few weeks.

This past weekend was the annual Animal Law Conference at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR.  Lewis & Clark is a wonderful school of Law, specialising in Environmental and Animal Law.  The conference features several panels per day each with two expert speakers on a wide variety of topics from dog fighting, factory farming and street level activism, to a Holocaust Survivor’s views on Animal issues, global warming, media relations, and criminal prosecutions.  Virtually everyone in attendance is either a lawyer or law student.   Anyone would benefit from attending, however the majority of the subject matter is quite “wordy” and industry related, thus it is recommended to have some amount of legal education.

This year crowd favorite author Steven Wise spoke about factory farming issues and his new book informally titled “The 3 holocausts of Bladen County”  though formally titled:  “An American Trilogy.”  He spoke about the minascule town of Tar Heel, North Carolina which, according to the 2000 census has a population of 70 people.  Tar Heel is also home to the world’s largest slaughterhouse owned by Smithfield Foods.   The plant is nearly 1,000,000 square feet, has approx 5000 employees, and murders nearly 40,000 pigs EVERY GOD FORSAKEN DAY!

Former and current prosecutors Scott Heiser and Heidi Moawad spoke about recent or landmark animal cruelty cases and some of the challenged of convincing prosecutors to proceed with charging the offenders.

This year’s conference was a great success!  I had the priviledge to attend even though I am not a lawyer or law student.  Each session is 1 1/2 hours long with 15 minute breaks between, and 100% VEGAN breakfasts and lunchs are served each day.  It is a two full day conference that runs from 9am-5pm.  I found this to be the ideal set-up having gone to other conferences during the summer where each session was much too short given the wonderful speakers, and the talks often ran very late into the night, up to 11pm!

Conferences are best enjoyed when the speakers and attendees are well rested, well fed, well informed, and given enough time to fully appreciate each set of speakers with time for questions.

This section will be an ongoing set of articles  following my journey into and through the Vegan world.  I am starting off with my personal experience with stopping eating meat, and transitioning to being a vegetarian.  I hope you are able to relate to some of it, and maybe learn something.  Please ask questions, leave comments, and ENJOY!

When I became Vegetarian for the first time, I was 14 years old.  It was the summer and I was working in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley sorting cherries on an organic orchard.  At the time the ideas of organic, ecological, natural, global warming, animal cruelty all had never crossed my mind.  I was very in tune with nature in that I understood her well, but in truth, I knew nothing of her needs, wants, desires and hopes for her beautiful planet.  I ate meat, not so much unapologetically, as much as ignorantly.  I wasn’t wilfully ignorant, I had simply lived my life free from anyone telling me what goes into one hamburger patty.

I was working several days into cherry season, and during a 10 hour work day the topics of conversation would range from any extreme to another.  So as the topic shifted to family hunting practices, I came to realize the great differences between my “city folk” upbringing, in a wealthy suburb of Vancouver, and their upbringings in the beauty of Okanagan wine country and orchard paradise.  Nearly everyone I was working with had either participated in hunting animals for sport, or else had family members who had.
My limited experience with the idea of hunting was regulated to my family, none of whom had ever hunted, and what I’d seen and heard in my culture, which was entirely of the view that hunting is a terrible, cruel, needless practice that a civilized society must abolish.
I mentioned this belief, as though it were obvious.  My co-workers were amused, and laughed at my ignorant, narrow minded city view of the issue.  They never realized it, but they were the first people in my life who taught me the value of deeply understanding my own beliefs and why I hold them.  They asked me if I ate meat, to which I said ‘yes’ with the air of duh, don’t we all, and your point is…?  One person asked me how I figured hunting was morally reprehensible due to killing an animal, yet I felt fine eating the flesh of an animal someone else had killed for me.  I was stunned.  Someone killed animals so that I could eat meat.  Why hadn’t somebody told me!?  I felt betrayed, lied to, dirty, evil, guilty, and deeply ashamed of my lifetime of ignorance.  In the many years past I have learned to acknowledge that, in a society where eating people who aren’t of the same species as you is the norm, it can be very difficult to hear these difficult truths.

I became vegetarian that instant.  I remained vegetarian until the following summer when I came to the selfish decision that as long as it was well disguised, I could eat a little meat.  Somehow sausages, hamburgers, hot dogs, bacon and anything else that doesn’t look anything like a chunk of animal flesh, was ok with me.  I do dumb things sometimes.  I finally asked myself the hard question after a little while of eating meat again; “could I look this animal in the eyes and kill him or her?”  The answer was no.  The answer is still no, and has been for 9 years.

The new movie The Cove has been both horrifying and inspiring audiences from all around the world for several weeks now.  This is one of the most important documentaries ever released, and certainly the most important documentary about the Taiji dolphin slaughter.  If you have seen it, please collect some friends and see it as an event!  If you haven’t seen it, it is imparative that you make it to the theatre and open your mind to this.  I cannot reccomend this movie highly enough.  It is reminiscent of Sharkwater in that it is brilliantly made, smart, and action-packed (including wicked stake outs, and late night excursions in balaclavas.)  This movie is a thill ride with a fantastic climax featuring some seriously ballsie behavior from cetacean-warrior Ric O’Berry.

For showtimes, and locations, check out www.cinemaclock.com and www.thecovemovie.com