The Goat in the Machine … (08/27/16)
“Almost 30 years ago I was 15 years old in Eastern Europe visiting relatives. Like the goat in this picture, I watched my cousins slaughter a goat for my cousin’s birthday party meal that night. Even the walls of the house in the picture were the same, it’s uncanny.
I forced myself to watch because I had known for some years I did not want to eat animals, but, as a young child — despite my protests, I was not given a choice.
I watched its throat slit and I watched it be gutted and dismembered. I forced myself to watch the horror in order to find the resolve to tell my parents thereafter that I would no longer be a part of such barbarism …
I haven’t eaten an animal body part since that day, and upon my return to Australia I went to the library and borrowed and read all the animal rights books I could find — which back then was all of two books. At that point I understood the horrors of dairy and egg production, and went vegan.
It was a simple and easy decision to make — not so easy considering the opposition and the ostracism I received from my family, and yet how could I not be vegan? Everything I had been taught was insane, and being vegan was simply right.
I never looked back … I became an animal rights activist after joining an animal rights group, and I’ve been fighting for and rescuing animals ever since. I even got a nutrition degree when I was almost 30 years old — and I was never very good at science.
So, if a 15 year old kid, with very little information, zero support, and much opposition can become a vegan in 1989, nobody has any excuses in the year 2016.
Evolve or evaporate … It’s time. The goat in this picture knows what’s going on. Now you can no longer pretend that YOU don’t.”
~ with great gratitude to Romeo Gadze
;