I'm Not A Vegan. Deal With It.

Sorry, guys; I'm one of those nasty heathens who eat dead cows.

Folks, veganism seems to be the new fast-growing religion and/or lifestyle, especially in western societies. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There are nutritional deficiency issues associated with it, but those can be dealt with. It's a documented fact that eliminating or reducing one's consumption of animal products reduces the overall burden on the environment and natural resources, including land and water use. Some people cut meat and dairy products out of their lives as a form of protest against the well-documented abuses in factory farming, and that's totally legitimate. Farmed animals, after all, are living creatures, not machines; and if they are not raised in natural, healthy conditions, they themselves are not healthy; and people who consume them are not getting healthy food in turn. What's not okay, however, is vilifying or preaching at people who don't want to give up consuming meat, dairy, eggs, seafood and other animal products entirely. As I wrote to someone a few years back, "Nothing drives me into the oily embrace of McDonald's faster than food fundamentalists." And Lord have mercy, but there are a small minority of vegans who are crazy-ass fanatics, right up there with street preachers and people in MAGA hats. If you are an omnivore, like me, you are dead to them; you are evil incarnate; you probably eat people's pets and take part in child sex trafficking. I'm not exaggerating, folks; I've been labeled all of the above by total strangers who know nothing about me except that I'm one of those Depraved Omnivorous Heathens™ (DOH's) who are killing the earth, and ought to be imprisoned in a human-sized battery cage.

Mind you, I have nothing against vegans or vegetarians, per se, or their preferred paths in life; to you your path, and to me mine. In fact, I probably eat a lot less meat than I did growing up, at least partly because I've been on a very limited income for some time now, and I can't afford to buy the stuff all that often. I'm quite sure that I eat way more peanut butter than red meat or fish on any given week. I sometimes eat vegan or vegetarian dishes and other food items, and I enjoy them (though that coconut-milk yogurt I had recently was rather thin and watery for my tastes). I just don't want to go full-on plant-based right now; it simply doesn't appeal to me to give up meat, dairy, eggs and seafood altogether. If you want to follow that path, go for it; it's a free country, where we have plenty of dietary options. Shoot, you can subsist on insects or phytoplankton, for all I care. Just don't preach at me or send me hate mail because I still munch out on gutted cow corpses; that sort of treatment and rhetoric are NOT going to win me over. Why not? Because I'm also a Stubborn Omnivorous Heathen™; and when people pressure and preach at me, I tend to dig in my heels like an obstinate mule, and rebel against whatever message they're pushing. Not to mention heading for the nearest burger joint.

All that said, some MAJOR changes are definitely and desperately needed in animal agriculture, if it aims to continue; it is demonstrably unsustainable, as currently practiced. So-called "Big Ag" needs to be broken up as soon as possible, like Ma Bell back in the 80's; and so-called "factory farming" is an abomination that is befouling our food supply in the name of cutting costs and maximizing product output. All of this and more will be discussed in near-future posts; entire books can and are being written on these issues as I type.