Empathy for animals...food consciousness in general...ethics etc

Photo by Me-Lisa Davis

I love this time of year. It's all about birth and new beginnings. Everything is fresh and new and beautiful. I look at the fields of new born lambs around me and I can't help but smile, there is such a happiness and joy in those lambs that it is infectious.
 But in some fields where the lambs were born earlier and they are harder to spot in amongst the adults, I feel a sense of forboding. The time will soon arrive when they will need to be seperated from their mums, same as the calves and living where I do and being surrounded by both cows and sheep I dread that time. The sounds that both mother and baby make when seperated is a sound you want to wipe from your memory but I can't. I hear it day and night during that time.It goes on for what seems like forever and it is heartbreaking.
 It's different for people who are brought up on farms, many many of my ancestors were farmers and I respect the job that they did/do but they end up not noticing the sound and in a way I envy them that. I wish I could block it from mine but it's impossible.

Artwork by Aleksandr Uglanov

 I have always been an animal lover and I have always felt their pain and suffering. I never wanted to eat meat when I was a child and would refuse to eat it at primary school, so they would give me fish. Of course I wouldn't eat that either so they gave me egg, well the thought of egg would make me gag so they gave me cheese which I hated so my parents were asked to send me to school with a packed lunch. But you see when I was little my parents weren't very honest with me. They would give me things like luncheon meat or sausages and tell me they werent meat, because of course as a child to me it didn't look like meat and well you never think your parents are going to lie to you over something so important to me...I learned, the hard way.

 Eventually I was old enough to control what I put into my mouth and even though my eating habits have been pretty screwed up over the years I refused to eat animals and I was much happier. I did at one point eat cheese and egg if I didn't think about it but then I decided that I couldn't ethically eat anything that came from the dairy industry either so I became vegan and I am sooooo much happier.
 I no longer feel that pain, or their suffering each time I ate any of that stuff. I can eat with a clear conscience now and it's awesome.
 I respect if you are a meateater, that is your choice and I doubt anything that I say would change your mind anyway, but I do wish people would eat consciously, whatever they eat. Look into how your food is produced and where it comes from. What has been injected into it or sprayed onto it. Eat by the seasons rather than say strawberries in the middle of winter. Eat sensibly and when you can grow your own or support roadside and/or local businesses. learn about wild foods and what is good to eat and what's not and forage for your food.
 Reduce your packaging and reliance on packaged food when you can. Eat fresh and cook fresh!