I've been vegetarian almost my whole life. My brother was always a sensitive kid and he used to watch National Geographic videos. One day he was sitting at the dinner table and asked my parents if the animals on the table were the same ones that he had seen on the TV. Josh was five at the time and said he wasn't going to eat meat anymore. I was three and said "me too." My parents were not huge meat-eaters and after seeing my brother's persistence, they too gave up meat.
Growing up, I would constantly be asked about why I didn't eat meat. Many of my friends' parents would tease me about it or even go on the offensive. And as a child, I was not in much of a position to defend my stance against adults. In my high school years, influenced by religious surroundings that stressed the idea that animals were created for man's use, I considered starting to eat meat. And until college I continued to consider it without taking the effort to research out the issue.
My father, who has been extremely health conscious for years, recommended that I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The book introduced many issues that I had never given much thought to and other issues that I never would have imagined existed. The book really sparked my interests and I decided to do some more related reading.
After I read Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, I was fully committed to remaining vegetarian. Moreover, I wanted to reduce the amount of suffering that was caused by choices that most of us make in our daily lives. I boycotted leather products, which was quite easy since I don't care much for fashion and I think other materials are just as good for almost anything leather is used for. Something much more difficult was further altering my diet. I decided that I would only eat cheeses that I was certain were made with a non-animal rennet (rennet is an enzyme used in the making of cheeses that is often animal-derived), which ended my eating of cheese almost everywhere outside my home. I decided that I would not eat any foods prepared on the same cookware that meat was concurrently being prepared on e.g. pancakes on a griddle or veggie burgers on a grill.
I am convinced that it is impossible to live in this world without causing a certain degree of suffering, but I am continually trying to distance myself from whatever causes of suffering I see as avoidable. I've been asked if I think that some of the choices I've made make any difference. Practically, I do not know that there will be significantly less suffering due to not eating veggie burgers off a grill with meat on it, but philisophically I do not believe that the outcome is always at the heart of the matter (although I do think it is in many cases). Food is something that is extremely integral to all of our daily lives. I think that by being mindful of what one eats and where it comes from, people can become more mindful about their impact in the world in general and on those around them.
It is easy for us to criticize the prejudice of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves... It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.
Peter Singer
Princeton University Professor of Bioethics
Practical Ethics, 1993
