November is world vegan month and it has me thinking about my journey with veganism. It’s been over four years for me as a vegan. It was the first real, conscious choice I made for myself as an adult, one that involved looking at my values and morals and having my actions be in line with them. That’s what adulthood meant to me, breaking away from your parent’s lifestyles and deciding what was good for yourself. I had gone vegetarian at 16 solely for health reasons. There are tons of scientific papers explaining that red meat and other meats are detrimental to consume over time; there’s no disputing that. So, I stuck with my reasoning for not eating meat as a health thing. When I became vegetarian, I was actually adamant to tell people I wasn’t this tree-hugging, animal-loving hippie. It was a logical decision based on my health. Then around 18, I started reading into the treatment of dairy cows and chickens. I didn’t eat meat, so I assumed I was in the clear, since I wasn’t eating animals, and therefore not contributing to that blatant sort of cruelty i.e. them being killed. Little did I know of the horrible treatment dairy cows experienced. Being forcibly impregnated over and over, having their babies taken away from them so they can be milked until they’re spent, and then their exhausted bodies being slaughtered for us to eat. I learned about how most baby male chicks are dropped into grinders basically after birth, since they can’t reproduce. Even though I didn’t eat pork or beef, learning about how pigs and cows cry in fear before they’re killed was traumatizing for me. I watched countless slaughterhouse videos. I watched cows walk to their death, their entire bodies trembling and pure fear in their eyes. I watched pigs be crammed into trucks, transported to be killed. I looked into their eyes, and they know they’re being taken to their death. Realizing the sentience of these animals we deem as food is what instantly converted me to veganism. It was outside of myself. I had gone vegetarian for my own good, deeming it healthier for myself, but I went vegan because it was the greater good to be done for the animals.