I'm a vegetarian. My girlfriend calls me Vegatrain. Well, that explains the title, here's the rest.
I became a vegetarian about three years ago, just after my 19th birthday. 2007 that makes it. I'd been considering it in a very offhand way for quite a while, maybe six months or more. I'd several times spied a book by Peter Singer and Jim Mason at Borders (sidenote: I really love Borders for their great range, although they have about halved the size of the philosophy section and that is really where i spend most of my time in there. What i dislike about them is their prices. They're not gouging per se, but they're not so good.) called "The Ethics of What We Eat". It looked really interesting and I had seen from the subjects of several of his other books that Peter Singer published material that was relevant to my interests. This is probably the closest thing I've had to a religious experience (although it was only similar in that they're both sudden snaps into a different point of view). I bought it and read it over about three days. By the time I'd finished I think I had pretty much decided that I was going to be a vegetarian.
I remember, the day I'd finished it, I was having fish for dinner. I had two pieces on my plate. I ate one, and gave the other to my house-mate, and I haven't eaten any meat since that. No fish, no any remotely animal. I have on occasion eaten things with byproducts, because by the time it gets down to 1% chicken extract powder in gravy or something, the presence of the byproducts is more of an inconvenience. But the idea behind vegetarianism is usually one of two, depending on the individual. It can be a personal conviction that you do not wish to participate in the unfair standards and cruelty of the meat industry, or a more general view that killing animals for food is morally wrong. There's also a growing third bullet point, that of environment issues stemming from the carbon dioxide emissions factory farming produces in a very major way (live stock accounts for "28% of global methane emissions from human-related activities"*). I fall into the first group, but I also agree with the third. However, there are multiple causes of Global Warming to reduce, and there are also other ways to restrict cows methane emissions.
When I became a vegetarian though, I did so out of simplicity, knowing that it did not quite line up with exactly what I thought, but so easy to explain, and adopt, with clear cut rules. I was lacto-ovo, meaning I ate both dairy and eggs. Here are some of the discrepancies between pure vegetarianism and my position:
1 Probably the most major point is although I have mixed feelings about how okay I am killing certain animals so I can eat them, I do not care even a bit about fish. They show rudimentary signs of knowing what is going on, but they spend most of their life in the water and are reasonable routine based, not-too-complex creatures. Some fish are amazing, but you'll find them mostly in the tropics, and we don't eat them. The reason I declined to eat fish was because mass fish farming really fucks up the environment in a big way. If I were to eat fish, I would have to go the route of seafood from sustainable fisheries. And to be honest, I couldn't be fucked.
2 As I'm not against the killing of animals in principle; I think there's a way it can be done humanely, so the animal gets a reasonable and healthy life and then in return after a set time gives up it's meat. If it was done right I would probably still be eating meat. The closest I come to ruling out an animal for my plate forever is pigs. They're really quite smart, one of the smartest animals there is. And they are really for the most part living a fucked up life in this world. I'm not sure I can reconcile that totally. Sheep... I've had a sheep, and they're stupid.
But now I am starting to get into cooking lots at home, I really enjoy it, I want to branch out a little and use some of the stuff I used to, like animals. At the moment I am stuck a little in the mindset that to eat any animal now would be like a kick in the pants to those three years. A broken streak. But that's stupid, surely. My position was out of convenience and there are conditions under which I would buy at least fish and seafood: if I could find a sustainable fishery, or a supplier who carries their produce.
One last note on vegetarianism - I'm not one of those people who scowls whenever anyone takes a contrary position, but I really dislike it when people disparage vegetarians as being soft or effeminate. It's totally ridiculous to even draw that conclusion and being a dick to people just because they made a decision about what they do and do not want to take part in does not license you to be a shit.
I will tell you if I end up buying a tasty fish.
-Saxon
*http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html
