Half measures

Last night I had dinner with nine of my golfing buddies at lovely Belvoir. I miss golf and I miss my buddies. In good time I hope to get back to both. Many of them are continuing to play at other clubs that don’t have joining fees, unlike Belvoir, where we played as part of a package tied to our lessons. I’m looking forward to trying other courses once shingles are in the rearview mirror.

Today David and I went to a vegan food festival. I’ve been a vegetarian for years but have never taken the next step. I rarely drink milk any more because there are so many alternatives (rice, soy, coconut, almond). But I would eat eggs, butter, cheese, and yoghurt. The fair put on display the many alternatives available to these as well. I don’t think baked items are as good without eggs and butter, but I don’t eat a lot of baked items.

We went to a presentation that showed us the dark side of milk. The calves are taken from their mothers before they get a drop of milk. We watched a cow with a heavy udder chase a van that its calf was thrown into all the way back to the barn. The calves are either killed, sold for veal, or raised for a few years and then killed. The cows are repeatedly artificially bred and repeatedly connected to machines to milk them, causing painful mastitis on their udders. Then they are killed when they are about six. It is a horribly inhumane system and I don’t know how a person who has any compassion can be part of it. I have found ways to justify continuing to eat dairy products, telling myself the system can’t be as bad as the meat industry. I think I avoided knowing the truth, telling myself all the cows I see grazing in Ireland have a happy life until the end. But they are beef cows, not dairy, which are busy being milked twice a day.

We also watched newborn chicks being sorted into male and female and thrown on a conveyor belt. The males either drop into a plastic bag, which is tied so 1000s of them suffocate squished into each bag. Or they fall between two spinning metal drums that crush them. The females, even “free range,” are squished into barns where they each have space approximating half a sheet of paper. Their beaks are cut off and they live in large sheds that are never cleaned of rank litter during their short lives.

I’ve been slow to acknowledge that consuming dairy and eggs isn’t any different from eating steaks or chicken breasts. Either way the animals have horrible lives and deaths. Wilful stupidity. That’s all that was. “Free range” and “organic” are just cons, delivered by con-men to people like me eager to be absolved of complicity in violence. I love all animals and I don’t want them to suffer so I can butter my toast. Of course beef, milk, and cheese are the pride of Ireland. It’s ironic I’m making this decision now, but there you go. My friend Nancy Brownback tried to make me go vegan 20 years ago. I think I felt like being vegetarian was good enough. It isn’t.

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