"Why
Did You Go Vegetarian?" - Her Story
by Jennifer Cohen,
Plantation Florida
It all started with a kiss. When I was 10 years old,
I went to a farm with my fifth-grade class. I can still
remember this beautiful calf with watery brown eyes.
He was only a few days old and had long, feathery eyelashes
and the softest pale-pink nose. I remember reaching
my hand out to rub his nose, when the calf extended
his long, pink, muscular tongue out of the side of his
mouth, curled it around my fingers, and guided them
into his mouth instead. He sucked on three of my fingers,
now forced into a pyramid shape, and I just thought
it was incredible. My classmates chased each other around
on the grass, but I just stood there and looked deep
into the calf’s eyes for a long time. Years have
gone by, and I have never forgotten him. He was so peaceful
and gentle, and that day, I felt like I made a connection
with him. Like I saw his soul in his big, glassy marble
eyes. All pretty deep for a 10-year-old, but something
inside of me was stirred ... something that never left
me.
That night, my mother made hamburgers for dinner. For
some reason, I asked my parents what I was eating and
where it came from. I remember their eyes meeting. I
remember them glancing nervously over at each other,
trying to decide how they were going to handle this.
My sister was “the dancer” and I was “the
animal lover,” so they knew I would not take this
information well. I had been an extremely emotional
child, so my parents would do everything they could
to make sure I never saw any dead animals we passed
on the road, and they shielded me from any stories of
animals’ being hurt or killed. My parents always
tried to protect me from what they knew would upset
me. But they would also never lie to me. So very gently
and cautiously, they told me that I was eating a cow.
But then they quickly emphasized that it was OK because
that was what cows were here for, for us to eat them.
They spoke very fast, trying to distract me, trying
to gloss over it all, hoping that I would quickly forget
about this, hoping that I would move on to a new topic.
But I can remember sitting there in our teal dining
room chairs, feeling stunned. Feeling shocked. Feeling
this incredible sick feeling in my stomach, in my whole
body. I was numb. I couldn’t believe that all
those years I had been eating animals and I never knew.
I wondered if other people in the world knew they were
eating animals and quickly decided that no, they must
not have known either, because no one could knowingly
eat animals. I thought of the calf and of his beautiful
brown eyes and of all the hamburgers I had eaten in
my life, and I felt so horrified. I sat at the table
with silent tears in my eyes, in my throat, in my nose.
Up until that night, anything my parents told me was
law. I believed them totally. Trusted them completely.
If mom and dad said it, it must be true. But that night
was different. No, I thought, this is not OK. It is
not OK to eat animals. I felt this overwhelming sense
of guilt. I was mad that no one told me I was eating
animals, and I felt incredulous that I had done so.
I felt as though I had betrayed my friends. But most
of all, I felt as though I needed to do something. I
needed to tell people. This feeling never left me; it
only grew stronger and stronger. I went vegetarian that
night. I could no longer eat animals. My parents thought
it was a phase—no one in our Jewish family was
vegetarian—my grandmother used to feed us tongue!
But that was 23 years ago, and I am vegan now, so it
is pretty safe to say [that] it was not a phase. My
family is vegetarian, too, and the day they stopped
eating animals was one of the happiest days of my life.
I once worked for a wildlife rehabilitation hospital.
Animals who were injured or abandoned were brought to
us, and the staff would do everything they could to
help them. Raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and every
other kind of wild animal were all treated, with the
goal of one day being released. The staff cared for
pelicans, blue jays, turtles, nighthawks, blue front
herons, ducks, and other wild animals. One employee
loved the pigs so much. She would rub lotion on the
backs of the sunburned pigs involved in cruelty cases.
She tried to keep them content while she looked for
loving adoptive homes. I worked with these people for
months, and I could never understand how they could
care so much for certain animals—the animals they
called “patients”—while they would
turn around and feast on the bodies of other animals
of the exact species and call them “lunch.”
One day we were all sitting outside at lunch, and I
said (half sarcastically, I admit), “If we can’t
find homes for the pigs and chickens, I suppose you
guys could always eat them.” Everyone immediately
turned to me with a look of horror and disgust and a
how-dare-you-say-such-a-thing look in their eyes. I
had offended them by simply pointing out the obvious.
Pointing out the truth. “Look at what, who, you
are eating for lunch,” I simply said. Kentucky
Fried Chicken buckets and the remains of homemade ham
sandwiches in wax paper littered the table. Everyone
was silent. My bluntness had offended them. “Oh,
I get it, you don’t eat animals you personally
know. Oh, I didn’t know that. OK, I understand
now,” I said. Everyone just looked at me, and
no one said much of anything after that. I had offended
them into a state of silence. But I made my point, unpopular
as it was.
I just wish that everyone had the opportunity to get
to know a pig and a chicken and a cow and a turkey and
every other animal that most people call “lunch”
or “dinner.” Upon hearing [that] I am vegetarian,
many times people will tell me they stopped eating veal.
“That’s great!” I tell them, yet immediately
I can’t help but wonder why they only have compassion
for veal [calves]. I don’t want to knock people
for anything they are doing because then they would
say, “Well, I gave up veal, and that’s not
enough. Nothing is going to be good enough until I’m
exactly like her, so why not eat the damn veal?!”
But I just don’t understand why the people who
have chosen to give up veal continue to eat other animals
who suffer just as much. It is something I call “selective
compassion.” I just wish that one day people could
extend their compassion for dogs and cats to all other
animals. Why do some people call some animals “pets”
and others “dinner”? I wish I could get
people to understand that the same way women are not
here for men and one race is not here for another, animals
are not here for human beings.
While an intern for People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PETA), I lived at Aspin Hill, [the organization’s]
sanctuary for animals. Pigs, chickens, goats, sheep,
chinchillas, birds, rabbits, and other animals who had
all been rescued lived their lives in peace here. All
the animals had been on their way to the slaughterhouse
for their flesh or fur or had been abused. I got to
know these animals and their wonderfully individual
personalities. I spent a lot of time with them and took
care of them. I wrote to my friends and family about
Esmerelda the goat and Elvis the sheep. I took pictures
of Red the rooster and gave volcanic dust to the chinchillas.
I cleaned the bunny area and mucked out the duck pond.
I cleaned up after parrots and parakeets and watched
Bill E. Goat sneak apples off the trees. These animals
became my friends, in every sense of that word.
I remember one day I was cleaning out the chickens’
barn. It had been a hot afternoon, and I was sweaty
and sticky, shoveling hay around with a pitchfork, making
it nice for the chickens. The sun was just starting
to go down, and the sky had a beautiful orange glow.
I had one week left of my stay at the sanctuary, and
I was sad thinking about leaving PETA and my new friends,
human and non-. Tracy Chapman was on the radio, talking
about a revolution. I hummed along. I stopped spreading
the hay out and bent down. I looked into the eye of
one of the chickens, who was scratching around right
near my feet. She became perfectly still and looked
back at me. She was a beautiful chicken, with pure white
feathers. The upper portion of her beak had been cut
off when she had been in a factory farm. The first joint
of her toes had also been removed. I thought about all
of the millions of chickens on factory farms, how they
are crowded in wire cages, how they are debeaked with
a hot knife. I thought about how every day millions
of chickens are roasted, barbecued, and put between
two pieces of bread, and I was ashamed to be a human
being. The same way that I had seen myself in the calf’s
eye so many years before, I saw myself in the eye of
this chicken. Tiny particles of sawdust were spiraling
down in the sun’s last rays of the day. I could
see them falling from the wooden slats of the roof of
the barn. I looked at the chicken, beautiful downy feathers,
small round red eye—a being so full of life—and
I saw her soul. I didn’t see the wing or dark
meat or the breast. I saw a whole individual. I bent
down slowly so as not to startle her, and I whispered,
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what humans
have done, but it’s not all of us, and I didn’t
know I was eating animals when I was a little girl,
and I’m sorry.” I thought somehow I could
apologize to this one chicken and she could then tell
all the other chickens that there were people who cared.
I stayed in the hay for a long time, just sitting with
her. And I wished I could make people understand. I
looked back on my life, and it was as though I had come
full circle. What I used to be afraid of has made me
a stronger person. It has made me not walk away from
what is hard to deal with. And I thought about factory
farms and veal crates and battery cages, and as I hummed
along, I thought, “Yeah, you’d better believe
I’m talking about a revolution.” And I will
never give up. 
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