A Child's Nature

Lately I've been thinking about something that happened when I was a young child. I had a friend who lived on a farm, who I would often go over to play with. We loved to go exploring in the small forest his family had on their property. One day, his mother came up to us while we were playing in the living room. And she told him that the next day, his cow was going to be butchered.

His cow. The individual he'd raised from a calf, who he'd loved and taken care of, was going to be killed tomorrow. They'd close the curtains, his mother said, so that he didn't have to watch it happen. I could tell he was upset, although he tried to hide it. I felt sorry for both him and the cow. But that's the way things had to be, I thought. I tried to block out my sadness, and even made an awful joke a few days later as my family was having dinner, that the mince we were eating was my friend's cow. It was my way of shoving away the guilt, trying to be like a 'normal' person who doesn't care about the animals we enslave and murder for our meals.

Children are not born to be killers. They naturally love and care about nonhuman animals. Raising them to accept the exploitation of innocent sentient beings goes against their very nature. If you gave them a choice, telling them truthfully what happens to farmed animals, I'm sure that most *if not all* children would choose to be vegan.

Sadly, my friend has probably now completely disconnected himself from the horrors of animal exploitation. Perhaps he's a farmer himself now. But as for me, I'm very glad that I decided to break apart from the status quo and go vegan. I no longer feel guilty about what I eat, and I'm finally living true to my nature. It is such a joy to be vegan!

PS - Not vegan? Start here!