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Writer's picturePaint the Town Brisbane

Let's Be Real: Why I Went Vegan

Article written be Valeria Lasso


This article might be triggering if you’re sensitive to cruelty and injustice.


If you’re not an open person and you’re not willing to be told the truth, then this article is not for you. If this is the case, kindly click out.


Everything that I talk about in this article is my personal experience and facts I have learned after watching many documentaries and doing lots of research on the matter.


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I first decided that I wanted to be a vegan when I was around the age of sixteen, but I didn’t have the most supporting family when it came to a decision like that. I guess it was mostly because in my house we make the same meal for everyone and, so, me becoming a vegan would have meant that there would have to be a separate meal cooked for me almost every day, and that probably didn’t seem convenient to my family.


So, I did the one thing I could do without making the rest of my family go out of their way. I went dairy free. I decided to stop drinking or eating any dairy products just because I truly believed, and I still do, that out of all animal derived products, dairy is the cruellest of them all.


Cows live some of the most miserable lives out of all the animals in the world. Especially dairy cows. You see, for a cow to produce milk, it needs to have a baby. Since there has to be a mass production of dairy to meet the demand, the industry doesn’t have time to let the cows reproduce naturally. Instead, each and every one of the innocent cows in the facility is raped by a person that shoves practically their entire arm into the cow with a long tube filled with the bull’s semen. If you think that’s bad, imagine what happens a couple of months after when the cow has the calf. Once the cow has given birth, the baby calf is taken from their mother on day one. Cows, just like any other mammal, are incredibly doting mothers. The bond they have with their calf can last a lifetime. However, that is cut short because of us. Dairy farmers that have quit the industry claim that there is no worst scream than that of a mother cow while their baby is taken away. Even days after, she still calls out to it. Every drop of milk you drink is a drop of milk taken from a baby cow.


Photo from Urbanvegan.net

The female babies are taken to a feeding facility where they are overfed in order for them to follow in the miserable footsteps of their mothers, while the male calves are taken to a very different facility where they are shoved into their deaths and disposed of as “waste products”. Cows did nothing to deserve this. I’m sorry, but if that is what I pay for every time I drink milk, I’d rather buy almond milk.


Humans are the only creature on this earth that drink other animal’s milk out of choice. Our bodies are not meant to have any other kind of milk after we stop having our own mother’s milk, and yet we still do. It’s one of the most unnatural things we can eat/drink. If you think about it, cow’s milk is supposed to make a baby calf gain around 150 pounds in maybe 4-5 months. Last time I checked, we do not need to gain that sort of weight.


I also would like to point out the fact that the government allows dairy milk to have 400 million somatic cells per litre. In case you don’t know what somatic cells are: it’s pus. Sure, it’s cleaned while it is processed, nonetheless, it is still pus. GROSS.

I could go on about dairy for the rest of this article, but I have other important things I want to talk about.


Photo from Animalsmatter.wordpress.com

Right now, I want you to try to open your eyes. Stop seeing animals in the categories that society has put them into. Think about why you draw a line with which animals you want to be compassionate with and the ones you want to kill. (Now, you might be thinking that you don’t want to kill any animals, but you still do. Every single time you eat meat from any animal, that animal you’re eating, died because of you. You paid someone to kill that animal for you. It’s on you. You don’t have to do it yourself to be the one responsible.)


We’ve categorised animals as exotic, sport, wild, pets, and food. These are all things we, humans, selfishly decided because it was convenient to us. We are brainwashed into believing it’s okay to be kind to some animals and to kill others. This, however, doesn’t make it right, or fair. All animals, regardless of their species, have feelings, and are self-aware. They want to live as much as you and I do. They feel pleasure and fear.


Photo from Redbubble.com

They truly do not deserve to be enslaved by us. It isn’t fair to them. Especially when most humans can do without any animal products just fine. On average, a vegan lives up to 4 more years than a meat-eating person. Eating meat can have really bad long-term effects on our bodies including cancer, heart disease, obesity, high pressure, acne, high cholesterol, and the list goes on.


I am not saying that the whole world should go vegan. As much as I would like that, some people simply cannot afford it (although chemo is quite expensive sooooo). But for those of us that can, we should at least try to become more aware and conscious of our decisions. We need to stop digging graves with our knives and forks. We are so much better than that. Standing up for what is right isn’t always easy, but we owe it to the innocent animals to at least try to be kind and spare their lives.


They can’t defend themselves, but we can defend them. We’re lucky we were born as humans, but that may as well be one of us. We don’t get to choose our luck, but we get to decide what we do with it. I decided to be kind and compassionate. I decided that my body will no longer be a graveyard; it will be a garden.


If you want to know more about veganism, I really recommend watching documentaries such as:


- Cowspiracy

- Earthlings

- What the Health


I also really recommend watching:


“Best Speech You Will Ever Hear” by Gary Yourofsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6U00LMmC4


Some of these contain very graphic content that might be too much for you to handle. However, if you are going to continue to eat meat, you at least owe it to them to see what YOU put them through, and you might as well know what the sh*t you’re paying for. But, consider that if these are things you would not do yourself, don’t make someone else do it for you.

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