"Vegucated"

A few years ago, I had gone vegan with my fiancee for about a year. I only did it to support him and admittedly- but I cheated with cheese and chocolate when he wasn't looking. With little to no support, our vegan diet fizzled out. Lately though, his increased weight gain was taking a serious toll on his asthma- and his health in general. This was especially a concern as his father, who was obese, recently passed away of a heart attack. While my weight gain was causing low self esteem and depression. We'd been talking about going vegan for a few months now, but were only taking baby steps like eating more fruit and buying vegan snacks.
One night we were settling in to watch Netflix and lazeon the couch when my fiancee came across a documentary call "Vegucated". Since we were approaching the idea of going vegan, we thought it would be a good watch.

It was full of great information and I was very excited to learn Teddy Grahams were vegan! Then the movie started to get into the treatment of farm animals. Though this was a small part of the film- it had the most devastating impact. I was shocked to watch baby chicks being moved around on conveyor belts- often falling off and dying or getting caught in the mechanisms. That did not prepare me for the next frame where the mail baby chicks flew off the conveyor belt into a grinder to be ground alive. Those that weren't ground up, were put in plastic bags with hundreds of other baby chicks and tossed in a garbage bin- still cheeping...

It sounds awful, but seeing the video footage of it was terrifying. 

The female chicks go on to have most of their beak seared of and to be stuffed into a cage with lots of other (and often dead) chickens. They not fed or watered. Those facing the fate of being food are pumped full of hormones so that their breasts grow so big and heavy that they are completely immobilized.

This was followed by the horrors of dairy farming. I watched as immediately after a baby cow was pulled out of it's mother, it was dragged away. The mother confused and pain tried to follow, but instead was artificially inseminated and put back into the milking line. This story would repeat for all the female cows every year. 

Oddly I found this especially disgusting as a woman and a mother. I was shocked to find myself empathizing with a cow.

Before I had a chance to process that I watched pigs being bolted and slaughtered in front of each other. Bolting is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. They shoot a metal bolt into the pigs head and the pig goes stiff- which was awful - but then it goes into these terrible seizures- all while the other pigs look on. It is well known that pigs are intelligent and I can only imagine their terror. I come to find out this often doesn't kill them and they are still alive while being strung up by their leg and dropped into boiling water.  

All the while these processes are destroying the planet with pollution. I was appalled and felt like my eyes were wide open. I was angry, but felt like I could actually make a difference by going vegan. I was surprised by my anger surrounding the abuse and slaughter to those animals. That wasn't me- I was never even really an animal person and always thought those people were crazy. Yet there I sat, empathizing with a mother cow. Right then I knew I had to be a vegan- for life. I also wanted to share what I'd learned with the world. How could people not know about this? How did I not know about this? 

Again, all this was a small portion of the movie and I highly recommend people watch it. If not only to get insight into the many reasons why I've chosen to become vegan. And as tempting as it is to close your eyes during the footage of violence toward the animals- DON'T!