I stopped eating beef about 8 years ago. The catalyst for change was a particular documentary on PBS
in which they showed how cows were being dunked, almost drowned, in these chemical baths to keep them disease-free. I don't think it was the same show, but also around that time I saw another program on PBS in which a calf was separated from her mother who was put in the back of a truck to be taken to the slaughterhouse. The calf cried and cried and chased the truck, trying desperately to keep up with it, as the mother returned the calls. It made me cry. The combination of these two scenes were my last straw. And I knew then that my life as an omnivore would forever be a tenuous thing: I knew it was only a matter of time and documentaries until I stopped eating meat altogether.
So there I was tonight, innocently catching up with episode 6 of This American Life, having no idea w
what it would be about. But from the first few moments in which they were filming a mouse being used in an experiment using electric shocks, I sensed this would not be one of my more favorite episodes. Memorable, yes. I believe the first part of this program which showed us viewers what a modern pig farm is like, has just gotten me off pork for life.
It's not like what I saw was any big revelation. Being concerned about animal rights has always been a part of my character and I do my little activist things to make a statement about it. I stopped eating at McDonald's when PETA did a campaign about all the inhumane practices in the factory farms from which they bought their chickens several years ago. I always look for the "not tested on animals" labels when I buy products and regularly gripe to myself that you just can't get away from companies like Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, which still do animal testing, when I'm shopping at Target or my local Fry's. I carry my little pocket guide from NAVS with me to help me make informed purchases. I'm dying to get to Best Friends someday to volunteer. It goes on and on. I support a bunch of animal rights non-profits, particularly those related to helping primates. Their newsletters keep me in the know about current animal rights issues and supplement the reading I do at the library.
But it's one thing to read the stories and another, at least for me, to see the visuals. That's what really gets me. And seeing those pigs tonight, in pens so small that they can't even turn around, these genetically-altered pigs that could never even survive outdoors - that was enough. Like Eddie, the sound guy on this episode who gave up all meat altogether after this shoot, I am altered, and I don't say this lightly, permanently by what I've seen.
It's funny to me how "the last straw" happens, that culminating effect of having your buttons pushed over and over until you just can't take it anymore. It seems somehow fitting that this should happen in the year of the fire pig.
I just know it's going to be poultry next.