I feel bad about eating animals. I’ve been reading some books like “Eating Animals” by the brilliant Jonathan Safran Foer and watching documentaries like “Vegucated”. I love the taste of good meat, goddammit I’m Mongolian. Being Mongolian is like short for bad-ass horse-riding and meat-eating. Who am I without meat? It feels like my citizenship will be revoked if I stop eating meat. There are things I already don’t eat because I was raised Mongolian, and we never, ever eat things that are young. So veal a.k.a. baby cows, and lamb a.k.a. baby sheep are totally off-limits and Mongolians abroad freak out in disgust.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone “It’s kind of a good rule of thumb to not eat something with the word ‘baby’ in front of it”. Full episode of “Fun With Veal” here.
This one time on my greatgrandfathers farm, me and my relative were babysitting the new baby calf and I told her that they serve them on the menu in Europe and she automatically barfed a bit. I also don’t eat rabbits/bunnies because they are tiny mammals and because of my beloved late bunny Tsagaade, I find it abso-fucking-lutely disgusting beyond belief that people even consider eating bunnies. THEY ARE BUNNIES, HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ONE? You can’t possibly eat that in good consciense.
Thus far I’ve only said no to tiny, cute animals. But what about big-ass cows? Well, I remember when we slaughtered one outside of our summer place (we have a summer place in Mongolia because Mongolians are… nomadic). Days before the slaughter, the cows seemed to know that something bad was about to happen. They kept closer to one another and their mood was noticeably lower. I don’t remember the actual slaughter, I think it was so unbearable that I suppressed it and then it popped out of my brain never to be retrieved again. But I do remember that whenever the herd passed the place where the slaughter happened after-the-fact – they moo’d like crazy. They moo’d like they were both grieving and trying to shame us for our horrible action.
I don’t know where I stand at this point. Making a list of pro’s and con’s and getting all the knowledge in the world can’t change the fact that it feels horrendously wrong to eat meat. My gut-feeling tells me to stop trying to find arguments and counter-arguments for staying carnivore. That I should just stop eating them. Even in such a place as Sweden where most slaughter-animals live a decent life – it only changes their quality of life and the quality of the meat. Not the fact that they get brutally murdered after their days eating grass. The Onion made the most brilliant piece about it. Another aspect is that “the nutritional benefits of meat can’t be found anywhere else…” etc. I don’t know about that. Really? REALLY!? In the 21st century we really can’t find other things to eat? I don’t really feel so.
“I am a nice [shark/Mongolian/person/whathaveyou] not a mindless eating machine… Fish are friend, not food.”
