Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
We are all at a place where we must choose what we take away from this unprecedented experience and going back to what we’ve normalized is simply not an option.... We eat animals during a pandemic that was caused by eating animals. We do everything but go vegan, despite how destructive we know our animal-swallowing habits are to literally everything on the planet.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying we should all be happy this happened. My
mother is 75 years old, not in great health, and my best friend. If I lost
her, I’d feel like an orphan—even at my current age of 49. COVID-19 could
kill her. It could kill me. There is no part of me that’s not aware of the
gravitas of the corona situation. But we are all at a place where we must
choose what we take away from this unprecedented experience, and as feminist
writer Sonya Renee Taylor points out, going back to what we’ve normalized is
simply not an option.
Nor should we want it to be.
Heart Disease. The Rainforest. Dairy videos. Joaquin’s Oscar speech. And
now this. I mean what, exactly, do we need before we all go vegan? The
pandemic of human’s consumption of meat and dairy is killing the planet.
It’s killing animals—including human animals. It’s killing our souls and our
sensitivity. It’s disconnecting us from our authentic, loving selves. And
yet we still resist. In the U.S., we wait in long drive-thru lines to get a
winged-animal sandwich, which we’ve normalized, but we think it’s disgusting
that other countries normalize eating other winged-animals. We eat
animals during a pandemic that was caused by eating animals. We do
everything but go vegan, despite how destructive we know our
animal-swallowing habits are to literally everything on the planet.
Just like the Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and Mad Cow disease before it, the
zoonotic coronavirus came from animal exploitation , and it may—if our
collective conscience can still function holistically on this polarized ball
of granite—it may be the wake-up call we finally cannot ignore. We
all need to go vegan, and we know it.
Well, OK, not all of us. I respect that the Inuit and other
important cultural groups can’t just ‘go vegan,’ nor am I advocating they
try. So let’s not digress. But for those of us who are already vegan, the
silence around the animal slaughter/COVID-19 connection can be maddening.
Many of us want to shout from our rooftops. In Italy, people are singing
from their rooftops for humans who have died as a result of animal
exploitation. After all, animal exploitation is what allowed this virus to
jump from animals to humans in the first place. Even if conspiracy theorists
who say the virus was leaked from The Wuhan Institute of Virology turned out
to be correct, wouldn’t that serve as an even more urgent reason to
let this experience serve as compunction to our interconnectedness and our
fundamental need for compassion and humanity?
Willful Ignorance
With the leader of the supposedly-free world seemingly incapable of cogent
reasoning and leadership, Asian-Americans are now living in a culture of
violent threats. However, since we don’t call herpes the ‘ancient Greek
virus’ or AIDS ‘the African virus,’ let’s not call COVID-19 ‘the Chinese
virus.’ COVID-19 is but another animal-exploitation virus, and all of
us—carnists, flexitarians, and vegans alike the world over—are experiencing
its consequences. It’s time we appreciate our undeniable interconnectedness
and shared vulnerability.
There’s Hope for Us Yet
Ford, GM, Tesla, Chrysler, Carnival Cruise Lines, and even the RV
industry have all offered to contribute by making ventilators and face masks
and offering hospital beds and mobile health care units. In India, the
Mahindra Group is figuring out how their manufacturing facilities can make
ventilators. Even the most conservative of conservatives are eyeballing
Universal Basic Income with a twinkle, and many are suddenly supporting
things they’ve been voting against for years—like economic stimulus and
unemployment benefits.
So yes, the coronavirus started with animal slaughter and taught us
unassailably that it’s time to end animal slaughter. But it’s also taught us
that we humans work best when we work to protect and care for one another.
It’s teaching us how good it feels to see governments, corporations,
healers, artists, educators, and individuals working together to take care
of us—all of us. Because here’s what we all are on this
still-beautiful earth: vulnerable living beings who belong to each other.
Michelle Schaefer is a freelance writer with a BA in Writing, MA in Psychology, and certification as a Vegan Lifestyle Coach & Educator (graduate of the Main Street Vegan Academy). She’s been published in USA Today, VegNews, bUneke magazine, Spirit of Change, American Vegan, and more. She travels the world in search of great vegan food and is based in Indiana with her two cats and one rescue cow. You can find her at VeggieChel.com.
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