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Okay so someone I know keeps telling me veganism is a privilege. I keep forgetting about the member’s card we were given when we joined and allow us to go into special parts of the supermarket and restaurants the rest are not allowed in.
Let’s say it as it is, it is a privilege, but so is eating, eating anything at all, when there are more people starving than fed on this planet.
But I want to be direct: meat is a privilege. And what do we think about privileges? They are the cancer of society. They establish that given your condition at birth, you may be seen as "better" than other people, you may have access to things that the rest of the world can’t even dream of. A privilege is something you get that you didn’t do anything at all to earn and puts in evidence the inequality gap in every society. It denies the idea that we are all born equal and free.
So why is meat a privilege? Can I give you my Argentinian input? I grew up in a privileged starving country. I never realized the connection but it is so clear now how meat and dairy only exacerbated that inequality within our culture. See my father was a farmer and I grew up listening to the market on TV, the price of oat, barley, wheat, soy… but we never ate this...I also grew up listening about children with no drinking water in Chaco or sniffing glue in Buenos Aires capital to calm the hunger. I’ve seen them, little kids without shoes, or with just one shoe, lying on the ground, going to waste. But our animals are the best, are the best fed, the biggest, the juiciest, the tastiest, the top of the top. We let our children die while we feed their part of the planet resources to animals to be slaughtered and gorged down our throats. Now that I’m a vegan I realize how much we could do for those children just with those grains listed above, I want to cry thinking how many died in pain to have the primmest beef in the world. It is truly sickening.
Someone also said, if those people can’t eat why are they selling their harvest to feed animals? Well, I can answer that, first of all, they do not own the land, because the land doesn’t belong in this planet to the people that have always occupied it, but rather to whoever can steal it with money, giving away by a government without claim of it in the first place. For the most part, Argentina belongs to Monsanto and Bayer and other big names. In Africa they take the food at a gunpoint, in Asia they have strict governments that control everything. Literally stealing food can get you killed.
Another way meat is a privilege. Intensive grain production and animal agriculture leaves devastating effects on the environment, so we push the mass production as far away as we can from us. Maybe there are climate change deniers because we haven’t see the full effect in our tiny box called our neighbourhood, but trust me, the rest of the world has. If you want to learn about it, I recommend you watch Before the Flood by National Geographic and Leonardo Di Caprio. Maybe the bubble will burst, but we need to move forward.
How can we as a species ask for world peace and no understand the intrinsic relation between war and inequality with the notion that some lives matter more than others? And we are not talking just about animals lives here, we are denying children the opportunity to eat a balance diet and strive, grow strong and smart knowing we care, we all care, so they can bring harmony and peace to the next generations? How we can be so collectively cruel? It is not about telling people how to live their lives or being preachy, is about standing up on unison and ending the fucking world crisis, every crisis, once and for all. We are all privileged just eating, but you can still eat, eat as much as you want, and make you eating a stand of justice and awareness so everyone can eat, so we don’t feed everyday 58 billion cows that eat and drink eight times what an adult human does, so 18000 kids don’t die every hour of starvation and illness. So we can all finally and permanently come together and pass the page. This is why I can’t help myself, I can’t keep it down. You may think is preachy and hypocritical, but true is, I don’t care what you think. I really care about those kids we can save, the planet we can reclaim, those animals we can set free. I care also for you, I care that you find purpose in your life helping others, understanding we all need each other, we need you too. You are not selfish, you are not heartless, you've just been lied to. If today you try, even if is just a little, today you brought justice, you brought future. Meat is murder; it kills the innocent, the vulnerable, the pure, the weak… Don’t let your body be a graveyard, let it be a garden, where you do no harm.
“The idea that some lives matter more than others is the root of all evil” said a beautiful mind. If that thought makes you uncomfortable, makes you desperate, it’s time to deconstruct and construct yourself again.
In the meantime, I remain hopeful.
Thank you for reading.
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