Ch-ch-ch-changes

I spent last weekend in Beechworth, a town in rural Victoria, for the Oaktree Foundation National Conference. The Oaktree Foundation is a youth run NGO that I volunteer for who fight to end extreme poverty. Courtesy of university exams, very very long hours of work and my Grandad spending a week in hospital, I’ve struggled to stay motivated to researching and writing about this whole vegan thing. However, after this weekend, I feel as though I can take on the world.

While the work that Oaktree does centres on ending extreme poverty, throughout the weekend speakers discussed taking on social issues in general. How to run successful campaigns, how to take action. Senator Di Natale of the Greens described in depth how to best approach politicians, and how to engage them to become interested and involved in your projects. Callum Forbes, director of Engage Education, spoke to us on how to turn your ideas into action to bring about social change. This doesn’t just have to be about ending extreme poverty (however, that is another one of my passions. There are a lot of things I find wrong with the world).

As I have now (successfully) completed the Vegan Easy Challenge, I am in a position to choose what I want to eat. I’m still in limbo over a few things, like honey and eggs from my Grandparents chickens. To put it mildly, their eggs are amazing. If you would like proof, check them out:

Pick the odd one out.

I legitimately don’t know whether to eat them or not. I’m not really missing eggs all that much, and can cook without them, but my personal issue with eggs is the treatment of layer hens and the uncertainty around the whole “free range” labelling debate (for more info, this article covers it pretty darn well). My Oma’s hens are taken care of pretty darn well, and despite having the rather dark names Stuffing and Seasoning they will not be killed once they stop laying (yes, I did name them). On the one hand I don’t need to eat them, then on the other I personally see nothing wrong with eating them. If anyone has any suggestions or comments to help me make up my mind, please give them to me. Also, if I only eat my grandparent’s eggs, do I have legitimacy to call myself a Vegan?

In order to change the world, it is important to change your thoughts. Getting caught up on dietary definitions isn’t a way forward. Any efforts to cut down the consumption of animal products, in particular factory farmed and mass produced animal products, should be applauded. Changing our obsessions with these terms is a step in the right direction, and changing our conception of normal dietary habits. During the National Conference last weekend, I had the pleasure of listening to the inspiring words of Michael Kirby, of whom I’m a long term fan, and he made the stunning observation that “often, the majority is just wrong”. Just because everyone does something, it doesn’t mean it’s right.

I’ll leave you will a couple of delicious meat, dairy, egg and honey free food to deconstruct the conception that vegan food is boring. Trust me, I love food.

Delicious homemade cookies from cute as pie cookbook Rabbit Food

Delicious vegan pasta from the Lilydale Herb Farm.

Fishy Business

Pescetarianism

To me, it sounds like a word that doesn’t really exist. Kind of similar to when people put “ism” on the end of something they enjoy to turn it into a social theory, such as (Kate) Bushism, or the much less popular (George) Bushism. However, Pescetarianism is something legitimate, and is used to describe somebody that excludes all animal flesh from their diet except fish. Last week I spoke to somebody who was explaining to me that he was a vegetarian, except he ate fish “because that’s different.”

How is it different? Why should we separate one species of animal from another? And, in our exploitation of animals for food, clothing and entertainment, are we not ourselves separating one species of animal (humans) from the rest?

Because, despite the fact that fish are not subjected to the same kind of factory farming that our dear feathered friends are, the fishing industry is not pretty. When we eat Orange Roughy, or even the common fish and chip shop Flake, we are eating endangered animals. A report by the ABC systematically breaks down the Australian fishing industry, showing that “many of Australia’s commercially caught fish are fully or over exploited, and more marine species become threatened every year”. So, if we are ok with eating endangered fish, would that make it ok to eat Tasmanian Devils, African Elephants and (non-chocolate) Bilbys?

While eating lunch today with a friend over beetroot and walnut salad (hers with goats cheese, mine without), I was talking to her about industrial fishing. I described that more than one hundred animals species were killed as “bycatch”, and that twenty out of thirty-five classified species of seahorse is threatened with extinction because they are killed through seafood production (all of this information is from Eating Animals by Johnathan Safran Foer, which is a brilliant book and not at all preachy). She asked me of my opinion on fishing itself, in the old sense of word. Think father and son on a boat with a rod. Personally, as I really have never really eaten fish, and the only time I have ever been fishing was at a trout farm (where I, believe it or not, struggled to catch a fish), I actually don’t have an opinion on it. I don’t feel that I have enough of a connection to the issue to understand recreational fishing. However, yet again Johnathan Safran Foer has an answer for those searching for them. I shall now quote at length

“Looking past these bizarre ritualism, my mind kept returning to the fish in these videos, to the moment when the gaff is between the fisher’s hand and the creature’s eye…

No reader of this book would tolerate someone swinging a pickaxe at a dog’s face. Nothing could be more obvious or less in need of explanation. Is such concern morally out of place when applied to fish, or are we silly to have such unquestioning concern about dogs? Is the suffering of a drawn-out death something that is cruel to inflict on any animal that can experience it, or just some animals?”

Yet again, we witness parallels between different species of animals in order to question they ways in which we treat them. This appears to be a common occurrence. The cute and cuddly, the domesticated and dopey, are more likely to gain our sympathy than the slimey, googley eyed and slightly absurd.

To claim that eating fish “is different” is, from what I have observed, wrong. Fish and sea animals are suffering just as much as factory farms animals through the advancing of human technology and the increased demand of our population. In fact, in some ways it is different because it is much worse. Factory farming of land animals does not reduce the diversity of animals species that aquaculture does to ocean life. A percentage of farm animals are slaughtered humanely, with speed and care, but every fish suffers. Common practices of placing fish on ice (which occurs in both farmed and wild fish) prolongs the death of a fish, thus prolonging its suffering. Recent studies have shown that fish take up to fourteen minutes to die after being tossed fully conscious onto an ice slurry. Fourteen minutes of pain and suffering, where fish slowly suffocate.

While I am not condemning the choices of the Pescetarian I was speaking to, as any action against factory farming and our excessive consumption of animals is fantastic, and he is free to eat whatever he wants. But fish are not “different” in a moral or ecological sense.

Now, on to my Vegan Weekend.

It was one of my best friend’s birthdays. We went to a Greek restaurant. This would be my first challenge eating out as a vegan.

When I think Greek, I think calamari, feta cheese and moussaka. I do not think vegan. One friend, after hearing my issue, told me to just get a greek salad without the feta. I then explained that I didn’t like olives, and would thus be left with lettuce, cucumber and tomato on a plate. Healthy? Yes. Tasty? No.

The end result was a dish called Gemista, which is roasted capsicum and tomato stuffed with rice. After much deliberation with the waitress over what had egg or dairy in it (their chickpea balls were held together with egg, their bread had dairy in it), that was what I ended up with. They then proceeded to bring out my dish with feta sprinkled on top. Awesome. They took it back, scrapped the feta off, most likely spat in my dish, and then brought it back to me. All this after claiming to me they catered for vegans.

The night wasn’t a total disaster. I had fun with close friends, plus the vegan birthday cake I baked went down a treat, despite being a diabetic’s worse nightmare. The recipe for the cake can be found here, and the icing I took from this cake on my favourite vegan cooking blog (under peanut butter frosting).

Food For Thought: But What Will You Eat?

I’ve decided to take the deep, dark, difficult plunge and have signed up for the Vegan Easy Challenge that is taking place throughout November. Participants go without meat, dairy, eggs and honey (honey… really?) for the whole of November, and if they make it and write about it they could win money, which is really good for someone who has vague plans for a 2012 Europe trip and a terrible lack of ability to save.

In order to ensure that I succeed, I’ve begun to wean myself into a vegan diet already. To be honest, I haven’t found it all that difficult; in saying that, when I first came to the realisation that chocolate had dairy in it I may have had a “WHAT HAVE I DONE?!” moment. Rest assured that was quickly solved by the discovery of brilliant vegan baking recipes and the fact that vegan chocolate isn’t as bad as I predicted.

Vegan Double Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins. Baked by Yours Truly.

Despite concerns that removing animal products from my diet could be unhealthy and result in lack of nutrients, I am learning quite the opposite. Vegan websites are providing anecdotes about how switching to a meat-free diet helped to cure their cancer. While almost everything is labeled carcinogenic these days, meaning I am skeptic of almost all those claims (I am one of those people who live “on the edge” by using my mobile phone without hands free), this article is a plus for those who sit on the vegie side of the fence. Not only that, but health websites are also publicising the effects dairy (in particular too much dairy) has on obesity levels and again reiterates the increased risk of cancer. So, to all those people who were worrying about me, don’t. If I become a little B12 deficient, at least I won’t get cancer.

Something that inspired me to dip my toes in the vegan pool is the documentary Earthlings. I’d encourage everyone to watch it, it made me cry, and I am in general a pretty heartless creature when watching films. Also, while Animals Australia is meant to influence and not inform, meaning you should take everything they say with a grain of salt, they do have an interesting video on dairy farming (and then there is PETA, because they have something to say about everything).

So, while I am currently flirting with veganism, and will enter a committed relationship with it during November, I definitely have not finished looking into this. So far, the only information I can find as to what actually goes on in a dairy farm is sourced from activist websites, which isn’t the basis for an informed decision. This youtube video did show the dairy farming industry in a positive light, but was focused on sustainability and the steps the industry was taking to become more environmentally friendly, rather than how the dairy cows were treated.

Is Meat. Is Good.

I have recently discovered that it is “un-Australian” not to eat meat. The “wise” words of Sam Kekovich not only explained that meat eating is essential for our nationalist psyche, but also blamed the problems and conflicts of the world on lack of lamb consumption.

I can tell you now, Mr. Kekovich, that if you submitted that in an essay in a number of the subjects I study at uni, you would probably not only fail but be torched alive by my normally harmless vegetarian tutor.

(SIDE NOTE: On the youtube page of this video, one young gentleman declared “whoever dislikes this needs to piss off back where they came from!”… I kid you not.)

Ok, so I will admit that if my 13 years of public school science education taught me anything, it would be that Year 12 Chemistry pracs could be fun if you were inventive with tongs and Bunsen burners, and that there is something called a food chain. As described on uber-cool, super fun learning website ecokids.ca, “most people eat lots of different meat and vegetables. People are called “Omnivores”.”

It’s relatively common knowledge that humans are generally described as omnivores in the science world, and our bodies ARE able to process meat  (clearly, because we eat it). If we are to believe the wonders of American fast food advertising, meat eating is a manly activity that includes protests, songs and tipping cars of bridges:

Yet I can say with unparalleled certainty that when humans began eating meat, they didn’t take a casual stroll to Safeway to pick up mass-produced, factory farmed meat. They went out there and acted like the rest of the meat eaters that make up the food chain and hunted down wild, free roaming animals.

I was shocked to discover that “almost all the pork, chicken and egg products sold in this country comes from animals raised on factory farms”. While I already don’t eat store-bought eggs (it’s a lot cheaper to get them for free from your grandparents or the chickens at the house I am currently house sitting) I will be honest in saying that if there was any meat I could say I eat a lot, it would be chicken. Chickens are the most commonly publicised in terms of mistreatment, and recently the industry has been under fire for what it terms as “free to roam”, which looks a little something like this:

Kind of makes me want to throw up my chicken-based lunch.

But there are some places out there where factory farms are frowned upon (after typing that phrase I felt the need to say it 20 times really quickly). After a good ol’ google search on ethical meat farming, I discovered Mountain Creek Farm, a farm located just outside Canberra with firm beliefs on the sustainable (farming meat has a MASSIVE carbon footprint by the way, which would probably make a decent discussion topic), ethical production of meat. I feel that as soon as possible I will need to take a road trip to this farm to see their work in action for myself, but let’s face it the trip could be a long long way away.
I’m still searching for similar farms in Victoria, but so far all their definitions are pretty vague and without the substantial detail provided by Mountain Creek. In my solo plight against the meat industry, ethical farming may be an alley I could take.

 

p.s. I’m attempting vegetarian sausage for dinner tonight. Mildly concerned as they have a slightly disturbing colour. But hey, I’ll give it a go.

Also, this video is a bit of fun:

A meat and greet.

I’ve never been a huge meat eater. While occasionally craving a big hunk of steak or a juicy, dripping beef burger, I’ve always been quite happy to opt for the vegetarian options on menus. When cooking for myself I’m more inclined to cook vegetarian, but this has always been more about the fact that meat is expensive and I am a poor uni student, rather than a moral plight against the archaic meat industry.

To be completely and shamelessly honest, I’ve never really thought about the connection between animals and meat. It’s very easy to remain ignorant when food is so readily delivered to us in neat containers, looking like pinkish slabs rather than a part of a dead carcass. The only time in living memory that I have really acknowledged the bleak origins of our protein was when I was young. It was just my mother and I, and we were living with my grandparents in the Dandenongs. My grandparents were living on acreage at the time; they had a few horses and a couple of cows. One cow, a beef cow, I had the honour of naming. Kayley was my cow, and as the life of a beef cow generally goes, she ended up in my grandparents’ freezer. One day she was gloriously roaming around the lush green mountainous paddocks of my grandparents land, her long eyelashes and soft fur appealing to my young self, the next her body had been hacked and all that was edible was taken away. Resolutely, I refused to eat any form of cow meat for about three or four months to ensure that my beloved cow was not travelling down my digestive system.

Fast forward to my late teens, and while innocently listening to the radio while driving, triple j presenters Tom & Alex were interviewing Johnathan Safran Foer, who was recently in Australia for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. His book, Eating Animals, was the main topic of discussion, and since listening to it I haven’t been able to get the idea of consuming animals out of my head. He wasn’t saying we shouldn’t be eating meat, rather we should be looking at the way in which we consume meat. I have ordered the book and am excitedly waiting its delivery in my letterbox so I can devour his literary brilliance.

Unlike most decisions I make, such as piercings, hair cuts and university degrees, I want to really research this decision before I swear off meat entirely. There are a lot of factors to think about. What are alternative sources of protein? Should I be eating eggs and dairy as well? Is ethically farmed meat ok? How does the meat industry work in Australia?

So far, these questions remain unanswered. I hope that by writing this down I will be able to make an informed, researched and educated decision on my dietary habits and perhaps get a few other people thinking too.

Some things worth taking a look at;

ABC Chicken Industry Report on 7:30

PETA video (narrated by super-cool Alec Baldwin)

Article by columnist Miranda Devine