[WARNING: The video above is upsetting and may well stay with you for a few days. It’s called ‘I am scared and I don’t want to die’.]

I usually keep my opinions on eating meat to myself. Lots of my friends and family, who are very nice people, eat meat, and I don’t want to be that pain-in-the-arse friend who makes them feel guilty every time I go to see them.

But this is my blog, and if you’re reading it that’s your choice, right?

It is my hope and belief that one day, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, humanity will look back on today’s meat industry and see it in the same light that we see the Nazi concentration camps. Utterly barbaric, cruel, diabolical, how could one being do that to another being?

We are taught to see farm animals as essentially stupid creatures, barely alive really, who have a pretty good life and are then killed so that we can eat meat, which is only natural, and they are no worse off for it, since they would’ve died anyway. We are distanced from the consequences of our dietary choices in this way, and also by the fact that most of us have never seen an animal killed (let alone millions of animals) and we just see abstract, cello-wrapped portions of something or other in the refrigerator at the supermarket.

Two quick personal stories:

1. My mate’s dad is a Hare Krishna devotee. He looks after a herd of cows, which Hindus consider to be a sacred animal, so he basically just looks after them and lets them enjoy their lives. (He also used to be Eckhart Tolle’s milkman, but that’s another story). My friend grew up around these cows and got to know them. He once commented on how they all had different personalities. As you can see from the video above, cows aren’t as stupid or lacking in personal will as we are taught to believe.
2. I once spent a week in Snowdonia in a little cottage. All week long sheep would wander by the cottage with their lambs. Then they were gone for a day. The next night there was this terrible bleeting and whining all night. I looked out of the window and saw the flock, minus the lambs. The sheep had all been sheared and were running around frantically looking for their kids. They were nothing short of traumatised. Why wouldn’t they be? Their babies had just been murdered.

You can find out the realities of slaughterhouses on the internet easily enough. I won’t bother repeating it here. Just know that the life of a ‘livestock’ animal (even the word shows our view of them) is not much of a life, and the death is not much of a death. They live and die in slavery, as commodities, with no dignity, and our current society considers this to be completely acceptable. The same people who love dogs and cats, eat cows, lambs and pigs, and see no contradiction.

Since the vast majority of us don’t need to eat meat to survive, we do this as a choice. Because it tastes nice, we traumatise and murder innocent creatures by the million. Genocide. Holocaust. Ordinary, decent people are complicit in this every day.

And what’s worse, it’s not just murder, it’s suicide. Livestock farming already occupies 30 per cent of the world’s surface and its environmental impact will double by 2050 unless drastic action is taken, according to a recent United Nations survey.

Methane from livestock (which is a far more potent contributor to climate change than CO2) accounts for up to 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. The combined impact of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide from the meat industry is more significant for climate change than that caused by transportation! Here’s an article.

Not so long ago, ordinary people like you and me considered slavery to be a reasonable practice. Now we look back at that time and wonder how such a thing could happen. If you eat meat, I urge you to think about changing. It’s amazing how quickly you get into the new habit and it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice at all. This one decision could be the one that makes the greatest impact of all the decisions you made in your lifetime.