Opening my eyes...

It's funny how you can think you know a lot about something and then you *really* look into it and then only begin to realise how much you don't know. I'm starting to feel a little naive for falling for a lot of the crap spouted by the big organisations like PETA and also in Australia, the RSPCA. RSPCA approved eggs for example. And the fact that PETA's web site endorsed the veggie burgers at Burger King. I naively thought that PETA wouldn't endorse *anything* that wasn't absolutely in the best interests of animals, but I am learning more and more that is not the case at all. It's so disappointing to me, but I guess that's life. Shake yourself off and move forwards. I am not even going to try to explain the intricacies of all that stuff here. I'm not the most articulate writer when it comes to these things and many others have done such a fantastic job I couldn't even attempt to match, so I'll just stick to my personal feelings as I go through this huge learning journey.

I've been slowly working my way through the back podcasts of Vegan Freak Radio and have listened to the interviews with Gary Francione over this past weekend. Gary is a staunch advocator of the abolitionist approach to animal rights and the more I learn the more I realise that abolition is the only way to move towards removing all mistreatment and misuse of non-human animals by people. Have a look at Gary's web site here. As you will see there (and many other places too at the moment) PETA are now in bed with KFC. Sorry guys, People for the *Ethical* Treatment of Animals and KFC just does not compute. How can any organisation that is responsible for the death of millions of chickens, who have lived "humanely" or not (and frankly I can't see how that would even be possible in those number) just cannot possibly have any connection whatsoever with *Ethical* treatment of animals. Blah...

For anyone who doesn't know, Gary Francione's approach is one that: (1) requires the abolition of animal exploitation; (2) is based only on sentience and no other cognitive characteristic, and (3) regards veganism as the moral baseline of the abolitionist approach.

One thing I can say for absolutely sure is that there is no way on earth I will EVER knowingly eat an animal-derived product again. It's just the very least I can do. And knowing what I know now, I look at it this way. For me, being vegan is no longer a choice. There is no choice, there is simply no other way I could wake up in the morning and live with myself. And then when it comes to choosing what to eat on a daily basis, I will always get to eat exactly what I want. Because I will never again *want* to eat the products of cruelty. How could I? How could I even contemplate it, the thought of it simply makes me ill.

One month and ten days of being vegan and there's no turning back. It's funny I was thinking today about one of the things that was actually a turning point for me in realising I had to go vegan for once and for all and had to do whatever research or whatever I had to to make sure it would stick. There was a story on one of the crappy current affairs shows. It wasn't even about cruelty, it was about the price of milk, which, as we all know is more important than the lives of any cows out there. But for a second they showed a row of cows in a milking shed, all lined up with metal suction cups attached to their udders. They looked so sad and the whole thing just made me want to cry and I knew then that I couldn't drink milk (or eat cheese, etc) any more without seeing that picture in my mind. And that's not even thinking about them being slaughtered once their milking days are over or their baby boy calves being taken away and killed for veal. Just too tragic.

That's my thoughts for today, I'm sure this blog is and probably will remain a bit of a jumbled hodge podge, but hey, that's me and if you are reading it, I hope it's interesting to you. If nobody is reading it, well it's still helpful to me to try and get my thoughts straight on all this stuff and I'm sure that reading back over it in times to come will be useful to me in other ways too.