BERNE, SWITZERLAND — Status symbol? Like cars, houses, and such things, what seems to be at one time quirky is today considered sexy.
The rising number of vegans has increased considerably. At least here in Switzerland, the number has risen from 25,000 in 2011 to 80,000 now, which is around one percent of the total population. (www.vegan.ch).
A lot of businesses in the form of food products, clothes, and cosmetics have come up to supply the needs of this new rising number of consumers.
Hardcore vegans not only do not eat meat, they also refuse fish, milk products, egg, and honey. They also distance themselves from products made of leather. Cosmetic products may not have any animal ingredients like butter fat.
I also believe many aware consumers are checking for Fair Trade labels. (Are the growers and producers being paid fair wages?)
I write about this now because there is a growing number of vegans in the Philippines.
Many of them are from the younger generation. The statistics are varying but the Manila Vegan group started with 60 members in April 2014, and now have more than 8,000 members. Their aim is to “reduce the suffering in the world through their daily choices”.
One of the reasons to turn away from eating meat is the cruel way of some traditional butchering.
If you only knew and witnessed how your delicious spare ribs, or adobo, or fried chicken went through to appear on your dining table, you will need to swallow hard.
One time many years ago, I allowed the butchering of a young cow for a party. I thought nothing of it. That day, I heard the pitiful moaning of an animal. Asking what was happening, I was told it was the young cow, the meat of which I had ordered for the party.
The poor animal was slowly bleeding to death, and I had caused it to happen. In my ignorance, I did not realize that was how one killed a cow for food. It haunted me for a while.
During a fiesta where calderetang kambing (goat meat stew) was served, I asked Basing who accompanied me if they also bleed the goat (to death). She said “no” then went on to explain how the goat is killed for food: to keep it from emitting a particular smell and developing a particular taste that actually spoils the caldereta, its mouth and nose are held together tightly until it suffocates, and finally dies.
When I think about that procedure again, I cannot imagine how I can enjoy lechon baka or caldereta with so much suffering attached to them.
One of the reasons why many are avoiding meat and turning vegetarians is precisely the suffering that the animal has to go through.
There is no single human activity that has a bigger impact on the planet than that of livestock production. (science.time.com) In North America and Europe, a cow consumes about 75 to 300 kilos of dry matter, grass or grain, to produce one kilo of meat. Ranch-induced deforestation is one of the main causes of loss of some unique plant and animal species in tropical rainforests of Latin America. Europe imports significant amounts of feed from Brazil. And so I imagine, also other parts of the world.
Last year, a church organisation in Switzerland called Brot fuer Alle (Bread for All) campaigned to reduce the consumption of meat, including raising awareness against buying meat from animals that were fed with grain from Central and South America where vast forest lands are being razed to grow soya for meat production.
I have seen dressed chickens in the store with the label, “Fed with soya grown in the EU.”
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, livestock production actually generates more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation business.
Livestock production is also a major source of land and water degradation. The livestock business is considered among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly-scarce water resources.
Whether vegan or vegetarian, going towards a more plant-based diet is the healthy choice, so more fruits and vegetables.
Someone I know who used to raise chickens commercially for a well- known chicken brand said, “I know how they are raised; that is why I have stopped eating chicken myself.” He has made a turn-about, and now sells natural body care products and food supplements in Cebu.
The poor who could not afford meat or fish eat vegetables — “the food of the poor” as they term it.
Maybe they did not realize they were actually eating more healthy than their wealthy masters who could afford their daily meat.
We have absorbed a lot of bad eating habits from our colonial masters especially the US, with its fastfood chains.
Let us slow down, eat our vegetables, and be sexy. And we will go a long way in trying to save our planet.
Esther Ceniza-Windler
