40 Days of Vegan (small thoughts, bigger reflection)

Here are some thoughts on my time of not eating any animal products, which I attempted to do for Lent this year (with a few lapses along the way).

I repeated to many people, including myself, that after Lent ended I would go straaaight back to how I was and that would be the end of everything.

However, choosing a vegan diet over Lent was not just an arbitrary sacrifice of not eating food that I really liked for a while. Rather my intention was that, just as the  sacrifice of giving up would contribute to being able to think + reflect more about the nature of sacrifice in terms of what Jesus did for me when he died, it would also focus my thinking about how my life can become more in accordance with what my belief in Jesus entails. Examining my relationship with food and reflecting on that is part of this - which is why I decided to spend time, especially in Holy Week (the run up to Easter Sunday) researching the food industry and how different people consider that to impact their faith.

This has lead to the following 5 premises and conclusion....

1. Modern Animal Agriculture harms the environment

• Water waste - It takes 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk. Water Footprint Network

• Energy waste - 90% energy is lost as you move up each stage of the food chain, meaning that it is considerably more energy efficient to eat plant-based food.

• Greenhouse Gases - Livestock are responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming  (more than cars, planes + all other forms of transport together)

• Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia (one of the main causes of acid rain) and a third of methane (which warms the world 20x faster than C02).

• Deforestation -  ranching is "the major driver of deforestation"

Unless otherwise stated statistics+quotes are sourced from Livestock's Long Shadow

2. Modern Animal Agriculture harms humans

3. Modern Animal Agriculture harms animals

4. Changing my diet would make a difference

5. Scripture is all too relevant

= A decision...

Whereas previously I have been mostly-ish vegetarian during uni terms (avoiding meat from an environmental and cost perspective) I am now going to become full-time vegetarian - and vegan in the way that I spend my own money. This means that whilst I won't buy for myself any animal products, I will still partake in social occasions and celebrations and eat what I'm cooked as before, because I'm viewing this a personal decision. So if you're reading this as someone who knows me in real life, there's no need to be panicked, you can still bake me cake ;)

On the basis that modern animal agriculture harms both animals and humans, and on the basis that I can live healthily in a way that does not contribute to this harm, I see this decision as a way of seeking justice in a practical way.  Any sacrifice involved to live more simply will always be worthwhile if it allows others to simply live.