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Really, I don't hug trees

Mar. 30, 2000 | I'm an average, single, American woman. I dress well, have decent taste in music, I date, vote, read the New Yorker, watch sitcoms and hold down a good job. People like me and respect me -- until it's time to eat.

When I tell people I'm vegan, every good quality about me is tossed to the side. Suddenly I am a tree-hugging hippie with radical ideas and a penchant to burn my bra and pass out communist literature to schoolchildren. I brace myself for the barrage of questions and comments one usually reserves for criminal suspects and prisoners of war. I ignore snide remarks from carnivores. ("Well, you can have the salad -- I'm ordering the porterhouse!") I wince at well-meaning people telling me they are vegetarian because they only eat chicken. I smile at the folks who have never met a vegan before. ("What do you eat? Grass?") Through it all, I quickly answer their questions (usually it's just one: "But why?") without being preachy and pray the subject will be dropped so I can eat in peace. But it never is. I am an outcast who will never again fit in socially until I eat a Whopper.

The simple definition of a vegan is one who doesn't eat anything that comes from an animal. Not just the meat, but the byproducts. Eggs, milk and cheese are all out. Forget honey, glycerin, gelatin and casein (a milk-derived protein). Most vegans also shun leather, wool and other clothing made from animals.

I've been a vegetarian for three years and a vegan for two. My reason is simple. I am opposed to factory farming, which is where most meat and dairy in America come from. The meat, egg and dairy industries want us to forget where our dinner comes from. They've sanitized the husbandry and slaughtering process by giving us clean, neat packages of boneless chicken, bacon and steak. They've used a wide-eyed, thick-lashed, talking cow to pitch cheese and made us believe that eggs come from a carton, not a sickly chicken whose back end looks as if it has been turned inside out from overlaying. When I try to explain what goes on at a chicken "farm" to people who press me, they tell me, "Stop! I don't want to hear this ... I may not ever eat chicken again." That's the point. People put their gut feelings and moral convictions aside when it comes to eating.

I'm not opposed to eating animals or their byproducts and I am probably the only vegan in America who respects and admires musician/hunter Ted Nugent. Nugent has put some respect into hunting and taught people that hunting, if done properly, is an honorable act. Feeding one's family off the land is honorable. There's no dignity in buying one's meat from a huge conglomeration that tortures, then slaughters, its "product."

I'm not about to go hunt and kill my dinner (who has time these days?), so I simply choose not to eat animals. Thanks to the megacorporations that have pushed the individual farmer out of business, or gobbled up his or her farm operation, finding a small farm that sells humanely extracted dairy products and eggs at a reasonable cost is nearly impossible. So I do without. I certainly don't expect people to take to the woods to gun down their dinner. Nor do I expect anyone to raise chickens in their garage for omelets at Sunday brunch. I wish people would take a minute and think about exactly where their food is coming from before they inhale that pork chop. And stop giving veg-heads such a hard time!

Sure, meat and other animal products were delicious to me when I ate them. But no craving I have is worth the suffering animals go through to fill my stomach. It's just food. There are plenty of other things to eat that don't involve animals. Maybe if enough people raise a big enough stink, the meat and dairy industries will give the animals they raise and slaughter a little more respect. Until then, pass the veggies.

-- By Molly A. Scoles