Earthlings – Laboratory Mouse & Rat
Tell us about your own vegan journey.
I gave up dairy nearly 30 years ago because of allergy rather than ethics. I had been vegetarian for many years but, while still avoiding dairy, eventually lapsed to pescatarian to occasional meat eater. Some Buddhist friends had told me about the abuse rife in the egg industry, which I ignored until I had a light-bulb moment when buying eggs in a supermarket and realized that it is impossible to supply the millions of so-called free-range eggs without the entire country being knee-deep in hens. But my real enlightenment to the horrors of animal agriculture came through social media. I saw a photograph of line upon line of calves in veal crates, and my impulse was to look away, but it gave me a feeling of nagging unease. Shortly after this I came across the Earthlings page on Facebook and wondered what the documentary film was about, so I found it on YouTube and watched it from a totally naive perspective, unprepared for its content. Seeing that film changed my life — I became vegan overnight. That was nearly three years ago, and since then I’ve watched a lot of undercover footage of farming practices and vivisection atrocities, and have read widely about animal rights and also the health benefits to humans of a plantbased diet.