In regards to eating meat

[Monica]

i am a vegetarian by your definition monica. while i have toyed with a vegan diet at times, and in terms of foodstuffs eat mainly vegan meals, i do have regular dairy and on and off eat eggs

Same here! I don't have an aversion to dairy and eggs, as I do to meat.

however, vegetarianism was never a choice for me - eating flesh always felt inherrently alien,

Again, me too! I never ate any meat until age 11. None. My mom used to try to cram it down my throat and I'd throw it right back up. I can't say I was a vegetarian, though, because I wouldn't eat any veggies either.

My dad raised chickens, pigeons, ducks and geese. I had to hold the legs of the chickens when he chopped their heads off with a hatchet.

Not a good experience for a child.

the most appropriate path for each entity can only be found within. i can remember a conversation with one of my parents when i was very small about the differences between cannibalism and eating meat - i personally saw no difference and i can remember the confusion of the conversation well because the distinctions didn't make sense to me.

You were more aware as a child than I was. I just knew that meat grossed me out.

making the choice for my child to be vegetarian has taken more careful consideration. when contemplating whether or not to offer him meat i came to the realisation that 'normal' within my home was veggie, even if normal in my wider society was omniverous. therefore he already made the decision to be a veggie child before incarnating by chosing me as his mother.

That's exactly the same conclusion I came to! Whenever anyone challenged me about my choice to not feed him meat, I asked them if they gave their children cigarettes.

My son is now 21 and has never had a bite of meat in his life, except for when a bit of meat got in his food at a restaurant, in which case he promptly spit it out and rejected the whole dish. He's had plenty of opportunities to eat meat but is repulsed by it. When he was little, I simply told him that animals were our friends, and why would we want to eat our friends?

Whereas many children naturally step on bugs, he never did.

as i've posted before, there are many, many wonderful people working in the farming and meat industries and it seems, in the uk at least, that there is a quiet revolution going on regarding food production that is putting ethical and sustainable farming high on the agenda. i know a few poineers in this field who are lightening the darkness of the meat industry who are very much enlightened souls

That's wonderful!!! I'm so glad to hear that!

when i was finding out all about what he was doing last year he said 'the world consumes more beef and dairy than the world can sustain. beef and milk should be much more expensive than it is, they should be a luxury products'

Agreed!

rather than feel distress at such clearly enlightened individuals continuing to work in and participate in the meat industries, i would far rather celebrate those who are inspiring the industry to change for the better

Agreed!