An Unfortunate Series of Ethics

The environmental data got me to a 95% plant-based baseline.

The last 5% was reserved for eating meat, but only at restaurants, holidays, and large family gatherings.

Then I was introduced to all the ethical stuff…

Here are some of the facts:

1. Animals are without a doubt capable of suffering and feeling pain
2. We can be perfectly healthy on a plant-based diet

These two facts lead to the conclusion:

If I ate any animal products when plant-based alternatives were available, I was responsible for causing unnecessary suffering to animals.

To justify eating meat, I had to accept that my temporary pleasure, cultural traditions, and convenience were worth more than an animal’s life. More specifically, I had to be okay with being a part of their unnecessary suffering.

The thing is, they were just animals and I didn’t really care, so I was okay with it.

I acknowledged that animals could suffer, but they were just distant statistics to me. When I had mum’s lamb keema, a biscuit containing milk powder, a baked good with a little egg, or a margherita pizza, I just saw the delicious and convenient end products. There were so many layers of abstraction between them and my plate that the value of their suffering was essentially zero. It was easy for me to just accept it as a part of life.

Even when I saw some short clip of factory farming or animals being slaughtered, it barely registered because, again, they were just animals. They had no value to me aside from being delicious ingredients. Why should I care about how they felt?

I would have stayed a comfortable “social flexitarian”

That all changed when I met Aloo 🐱

Still at social flexitarian level.