Questions & answers and how I took a step towards veganism

My sister called me on Sunday: "I would like to give you some communication advice." I shut down my iPod and tried to concentrate while the three babies in front of me in the tram started all crying at once. I had an uncomfortable feeling, this didn't sound like she was prepping me to become a great orator just for fun. And indeed, my sister was thinking of me defending my vegetarian stance at my niece's 5th birthday party the day before. I had apparently justified so badly my position that she was still troubled and felt compelled to become my personal communication adviser as if I was running for some political post or was the head of the Vegan Association.

Obviously, I had myself noted that I hadn't defended my position in a very eloquent way, but, at the same time, I felt bored with a coversation about vegetarianism with people who try to accuse me of doing something at all. "But you do eat cheese and other dairy products? And what about those leather shoes???" The general prosecutor asked me when I had refused to eat some organic Swedish sausages (which, by the way, wasn't any kind of problem for me, there was plenty of delicious veggie food available).

Here we go again, and I wished I had been playing with the air balloons. This reminded me of the excellent "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer (mentioned already in this blog for a few times). He writes: "I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out the inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made." I couldn't agree more with the author. Here I am, trying to do my best to contribute to the saving of the world and I'm accused of not going all the way to living in a forest like the radical ecologist Pentti Linkola, while the people around the table eating their little sausages can smirk at my inconsistency. People are not consistent with their life; who hasn't lied while being otherwise a morally considerate person, who hasn't said at some point in the wee hours "let's have tequilas" while knowing it's the worst idea?

So, I just got annoyed by the comment, said something about hating comments like that and went to play with the air balloons. Indeed, a PhD gives me a plethora of ways to back my opinions but when pushed in a corner by a person who doesn't seem to care what I respond, I think it's better to leave the situation. In a best case scenario this should happen a bit before I get upset and raise my voice (which might have happened before turning to the balloons).

In any case, my personal coach of PR issues suggested that I should prepare a battery of FAQs so I could give witty and persuasive answers to my harasser. I had't thought of this that much before because usually I spend my time with people who more or less agree with me on the vegetarianism issue or are at least intelligent enough to understand all the arguments presented, so they don't say: "But if we were all vegetarians, would there be enough food for everyone?" (Argh, information hasn't apparently reached every one after all; this is precisely the original reason why I even became vegetarian before the ethics kicked in.) Honestly, this misinformation reminds me of the Helsinki city hall discussion on adding one veggie day to the school weekly menus. One council member said: "If the kids eat beans, they will fart more, and we need to keep the windows open and thus lose energy by heating more - is this what the vegetarians want, to increase our energy consumption?" (Sad but true, this is a real citation!) Considering that factory farming is the biggest source of co2 emissions in the world this argument is not only ridiciulous but ill-founded, instead think of this: if all Americans had a meat-free day once a week, 1.4 billion animals would be saved annually!

So the Q & A session, I have to think of it. I should probably do something similar with my PhD thesis, what's my relationship with my ex boyfriend, why do I travel alone, why I think Christina Aguilera's video is demeaning to women and why I don't like toilet paper coming from the side of the wall.

But it's not healthy!
Vegetarians are more rarely obese or over-weight than others (look at my slender shape). In addition, I'm basically never ill. (Mum says: "But your skin looks terrible." Indeed, I think that's the combination of chocolate, stress and this conversation). And most importantly: do you think that farm factories or animals pumped full of antibiotics are healthy (remember swine flu...)?

Why do you eat cheese?
Well, first of all, we would need to go through the reasons why I am or anybody is vegetarian. There are plenty of those reasons; ethical, environmental, economic, health, political. Some of these are more important than others for me or for other vegetarians. If I think that killing animals is the problem, cheese would be ok. If I think that the food production system in general is the problem, I could probably still eat organic cheese (as I do with most food I buy in any case). Obviously, I should stop eating cheese and using other dairy products, I should be vegan. I am not, but I try to compensate this with other eco-friendly action. How about you, dear general prosecutor, why do you eat pork and beef and not dog? In Vietnam, I heard that puppy meat is really tasty. What's the difference between a puppy and a baby lamb? (JSF writes on this last issue very nicely.)

I think the general prosecutor feels some kind of shame of eating meat, why would it otherwise be so important for him/her that I don't eat it? Why do I feel that meat eaters try to convince me to become a carnivore and not the other way around? They must acknowledge the moral superiority of my action even if it's spiced with some camembert or chevre. It's funny because I would be immensely happy if even the idea of Meatless Monday would expand to be a standard for carnivore life (see also the short Meatless Monday video). I don't believe in fundamentalism in anything, even if above-mentioned reactions push me towards it. If the general prosecutor initiates Meatless Monday in his/her life, I will take the challenge and have a vegan Sunday. In fact, all I want is that people acknowledge what they are eating and where their food comes from. Not like my other sister who hushed me when I said to her daughter that "I don't eat pigs" when she was having bacon and offered me some. That's an attitude I don't accept!

By the way, today is the international vegan day. Did you know that Bill Clinton is a vegan? I take the challenge, I'll reduce the amount of dairy products in my life and have a vegan Sunday! How about that? I'll stick to Italian leather shoes and bags but I will stop using milk products (well, the reduction of 5 dl per week is not likely to change the world, but if you'd do it as well...).

As you might notice, I am a bit annoyed while writing all this down and I'm done with the FAQs - bloody hell, can't we have some respect for the choices we make and for our principles in life if they don't harm anybody, quite the contrary. This makes me think of this video:



By the way, if you're interested in starting a life with less meat or knowing how eating/producing meat impacts on your health and nature or on the animals themselves, here's a good spot to start: PETA's vegetarian starter kit. Interesting videos, facts, etc. I just calculated my "meat footprint": during my four years of vegetarianism I have already saved more than 1120 animals!

Eating Animals

Being vegetarian is not impossible in Vietnam but it is slightly challenging. A couple of times in Hanoi, I ate in a veggie restaurant for tourists but also tried the classic pho (noodle soup) with beef from a street stall. While I've abandoned sea food to great extent in Europe and I'm very conscious of the sad truth about over-fishing, by-catch that is thrown back to seas dead and extinction of many species, I allowed myself the culinary experience of sea food in Hanoi and Halong Bay where it was indeed an amazingly delicious experience: various types of fish, squids, crabs, other shell fish and prawns.

Moving ahead to the mountainous Northern Vietnam, I have started to refer to myself as an chai, which is a Vietnamese term for vegetarians (for religious reasons). I think I haven't missed out of anything, even the cabbage can taste wonderful here and tofu is sold in the market like loaves of bread. Markets are interesting for meat eaters as well. When in Europe you can perfectly well eat and buy meat without even noticing that the nicely packaged chicken breasts belonged actually to a living creature before satisfying your overly meaty diet, here you can't avoid to understand that eating meat means eating an animal. At the market in Sapa, you could see parts of cow still with hairy skin on it, pig's head next to its paws, and various unrecognizable intestines served for lunch to the locals (not many tourists eating those things). Seeing this outdoor butchery, I however considered it much more human compared to the factory farming practiced in the 'developed' West. When it comes to food production, development and progress do not seem to mean anything positive.

The scene also reminded me of the young Finnish girl scouts with whom I visited Senegal one year ago. They were shocked how the Senegalese bought their food, a living goat, from the markets and were dragging it along the roads to their dinner table. The Finnish girls were naive enough to think that this was cruel. It only highlighted the fact how the Western people are so alienated from the reality of food production that they believe it's inhuman to forcefully drag a goat by the road, while a factory farmed animal would be hardly able to stand by its own legs.

Close to Sapa, I stayed over night in a home stay with a local village family. They had dogs and four cute puppies of 1,5 months old. They would be later sold for their meat, price around 1,5 dollars per kg. I also learn that puppy meat is tastier than older dog meat. Though the puppies were adorable (not any more adorable than baby sheep, rabbits, cows or goats however!), I hoped that all tourists would take the opportunity of reconsidering their attitudes toward eating animals when seeing Vietnamese eating puppies. In his inspiring book "Eating Animals", Jonathan Safran Foer makes a good point about eating dogs. He doesn't promote eating dogs but with this analogy tries to make people understand what it means to eat animals. Why not eating dogs? There are plenty of dogs in the USA that are fed to livestock that is later eaten by humans. Why have this step, why not eat dogs directly, he asks. What's the difference between a dog and a pig after all (the latter is even smarter)? It's all socially constructed and cultural, so how do you justify eating pigs or any other animals that are kept in horrible conditions and fed with massive amounts of antibiotics to survive and hormones to make their bodies grow in unnatural ways so that they die under their own body weight? Next door in the village, they killed a cat in the morning. It was stealing meat from the kitchen so it was now its time to get into the dinner table... An chai!