Rens Huisman
My name is Rens Huisman, 28 years old and male. I've been
a vegetarian for about six years now, without one moment's
regret by the way.
As a child I loved furry animals. My puppy was my most
precious possession. So far that's nothing special;
half of Holland after all loves furry animals such as
dogs, cats, rabbits, etc. But I also had an eye for
animals that were not so cuddly; I was always looking
out for buckets to save flies from drowning, I threw
my mother's fly swatters and mouse traps into the dustbin
(where they belong), etc..
That's a little stranger,
but the strangest thing is that at the same time I loved
meat. I watched closely that my piece of meat was bigger
than my brother's, and in the football cafeteria I shoveled
down many a hot dog or meatball. Some way I was able
to ignore this contradiction in my life. The most striking
example of this, I think, is that one moment I gave
the driver of a cattle truck false directions when he
was on his way to our local butcher shop, while a day
later I went shopping at that same butcher shop.
Some
way I didn't want to (or couldn't) make the connection
between meat and where meat came from.
There are a lot more people in Holland who live as unconsciously
as I did then. That's why the meat sector is doing so
much to hide all their wrongs and daily practices (too
little space, no daylight, lonely and boring surroundings, antibiotics, food that is bad for animal welfare, slaughtering
young animals, worthless transports, suffering during
slaughter, diseases such as swine fever, fraudulent
cattle farmers, growth hormones, etc.).
At a certain point in time, I 'saw the light'. At school
I encountered vegetarianism and I had a chance to look
around a mink farm, an intensive pig farm and a battery
cage shed. I decided that I didn't want to be responsible
for all this animal suffering any longer, and I couldn't
think what would give me the right to eat animals when
there are so many alternatives.
I hope that people will think more on the daily suffering
connected to meat, and that they will stop eating meat,
eat less meat or start eating free-range meat. Taking
meat out of my diet has given me hardly any trouble
at all and if I can do it (as an ex-meat-lover), anyone
can.
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