Zoe is a blogger for Psychology Today (PT), and twice a month we share her blog posts here. Enjoy!
Thirty years ago I became vegan.
I’d long since stopped eating meat, which was challenging enough as a lover of steak, chicken, bacon, and lamb chops, but what would I put in my tea if not dairy products? Could I really give up pizza and baked goods made with eggs? What would I do when I was invited to someone’s home for dinner?
I would learn to negotiate these challenges because, after discovering how cruelly animals were treated in industrial farming systems, I knew I couldn’t keep harming them for no better reason than because I liked the taste of their flesh, milk, and eggs.
I learned that cows were branded; pigs were castrated and tail-docked; and chickens had half their beaks sliced off, all without anesthesia.
I learned that “breeding sows” were confined so tightly they couldn’t move while gestating and nursing their young, and that egg-laying hens were packed into cages for the duration of their lives.
