In Argentina, a culturally carnivorous country, my approach
to the vegetarian, vegan, and fruitarian ideas had to
wait many years because there was nothing in the surrounding
world able to provoke in me this kind of preference. For
people of these latitudes daily ingestion of meat is a
fact as natural as the sight of snow is for a Nordic inhabitant.
Why did I eat meat? Because my ancestors had been doing
so century after century and they received identical cultural
transmission from their ancestors.
When in a culture a determined bias has got such a
complete approval, this means that those who put it
in practice dont even need its acceptance at all. In
the same way, it is not a controversial subject the
language one is going to speak through life. So, being
carnivorous in the country where I was born is not an
idea or a matter of convictions, but only a nutritional
way, just as Spanish is my idiomatic mean.
It is all about something that greatly exceeds the
border between Good and Evil, for in order to speak
in that terms, there must exist previously the option
of choice. And as we see, nobody can choose that which
he/she doesnt know. In fact, I will never forget the
impression that produced me the first readings about
the subject. They used to enfatically state that as
far as the scientist knowledge comprove meat is not
necessary to survive when our teachers at school proclaimed
its use drilling my ears since I was a child, praising
the advantage of animal proteins over vegetal ones.
How could it be possible that meat was unnecesary to
get a healthy life, when I was told that meat and dairy
procucts where the basic bricks in my diet? Could it
be really factible to avoid the animal slaughter without
putting in danger my health, taking in mind that at
elementary school the only official accepted teaching
had convinced me that, inside the Food Chain, each link
is where it has to be. That animals are not in the world
to satisfy our stomachs caprice or to dress our naked
bodies, when the prevailing teaching doesn't give up
proclaiming from birth to death that all what is over
the earth is for the human being to make use of it.
Because as we all know our paternal God allows it and
so he/she has wanted always and forever.
With such an adverse atmosphere, does anybody believe
possible that a child, thoughtful as it can be, may
even suspect the possibility of a different nutritional
way from the previousely described one? The problem
is that someday childhood ends. As one grows up, one
has the chance to face a searing process of step by
step individualization which consists on confirming
the validity of a lot of principles we have learned
and to remove (how painfully!) many of them.
There is no greater paradox in human behavior than
the following: to want (and have to be) at the same
time oneself and oneselfs tribe. As far as I am concerned,
this process of spiritual tearing began with the suspicion
that there is no valid excuse to inflict suffering to
a living being which I see capable of love, courage,
loyalty and sometimes to give me such a perfect and
radiant beauty that can bewitch my mind. After all,
wasnt I an animated living being that would suffer as
they suffer if someone hurts me, tortures me and removes
me away from my habitat and my beloved ones, and at
last they kill me, quarter and sell me to others to
boil, roast and flavore me?
As soon as I became aware of all this burning matter
thing were the same no longer. In fact, it changed so
completely my point of view about animal rights, that
it became gradually for me much more a conviction than
a perplex complaining in my heart. The moment to act
had arrived, to put in practice my new ideas and to
create arguments capable to incite others to walk the
same path. This meant for me the need to study subjects
related to vegetarianism and veganism (nutrition, laws
that protect the meat industries and others, experts
opinions, alternative medicines) and over all the complete
and rampant evidence of the health and longevity showed
off by many renowned vegetarians like my admired Irish
dramatist George Bernard Shaw. Or to talk about the
effort that cost me learning about the possibility that
cosmetic and beauty personal products dont take the
life or the suffering of an animal whose little body
has ended as a mere experiment object penned up in a
cold and dark laboratorys cell.
By Luciano.
