Ire Viride
Oh how I would absolutely kill for a slaughtered cow, topped with slices of crispy burnt pig squeezed into a loaf of bread..you know that craving right? The way your mouth just fills with salivia and starts watering when you see a juicy cow ruminate?
Not that I've ever heard anyone ever express themselves in that way, one would simply say "I'd kill for a hamburger right now", but when it comes down to it, it's practically the same thing. It's living creatures who have been killed, and for a simple reason - greed. Do we need meat to survive? Do we need to consume meat on a daily basis in order not to become sick? No,we don't. Consuming animals is simply for pleasure, it's not a necessity.
We were all raised in a society where consuming animals was normal. We were taught that you have to eat meat to get protein and drink milk to get strong bones. What we weren't taught was the cuelty behind it, and how unnatural it really is. We didn't even hesitate. As a kid, I was painted the picture of a farm, a happy farm, filled with pigs and piglets and cows happily jumping around in large fields eating luminous green grass. It was only once when I decided to educate myself that this picture disintegrated into small pieces. I remember when Anna, Clara and I travelled to Morocco. Clara had decided to become vegetarian. I remember we were all very intrigued by the vegan lifestyle, We investigated all its aspects related to the environment, your health, and the moral of it
When we got home from Morocco we decided to watch Earthlings - a documentary film about humanity's use of animals as pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and for scientific research. We never got through the entire film, we instead ended up dolorous. We bawled our eyes out for hours. In that significant moment, our interpretations changed completely.
As I mentioned Clara had just gone vegetarian before that Morocco trip. She inspired me to also do something, to somehow make a change. Both me and Anna stopped eating red meat, and we all did our best to eat as much vegetarian food as possible. As a bunch of 13 year olds, this wasn't the easiest thing to do, especially if your family consumes a lot of meat, but somehow we managed. When me, Anna and Hanna were all around 14, we went vegetarian, and to this day we have all been vegetarian.
When we were all together last week, we watched a movie called Okja, an inspiring Vegan Activist film which once again made us all tear up. It's really an amazing movie that everyone should see.
It scares me though, how far humans can go for money, profit and meat, with absolutely no boundaries. Now there are millions of things to say about this. The way we treat animals, how both agriculture and aquaculture has gone to complete shit, how the fuck it's even legal in the first place to do the things we do with animals? Why aren't there more laws protecting the rights of other living creatures? It's not humane.
