Column | Vegetarian nonsense – NRC

Tuesday I went to the Lux cinema in Nijmegen for the documentary Food for Profit To be seen, there are abuses in European livestock farming. According to my mental coach, I can better avoid livestock documentaries. From the first I looked, I immediately became vegan. Two documents later I had to sublim my anger by working for four years on a novel in which the characters draw a trail of destruction through livestock farming: slaughterhouses are laid in the ashes, animal transports hijacked – that work. It was fiction, but still. According to the Hagenees, I could only be a livestock documentary removed from visiting a slaughterhouse on the luggage rack with a crate of Molotov cocktails on the luggage rack. « Then you slide out over a puddle of self -spilled gasoline and break your hip. »

Food for Profit It turned out that a good part with hidden cameras turned by undercover staff. Suffering animals, suffering workers, suffering local residents, deserts around dumped manure, antibiotics resistance, viruses, unscrupulous lobbyists: they all pass in this indictment against an industry for which European laws seem to be optional, but which are dragging billions to European subsidies. Anyone who thinks that in Europe is fine with livestock farming, Food for Profit get a healthy portion of sobering

After the screening a conversation was held with the public according to what was announced as the ‘active-hop method’. Apparently we had to become hopeful. The discussion leaders were members of Extinction Rebellion. We were allowed to share positive intentions, anger and frustration with each other. A bun wire went through the room. Those who had spoken could pass it on. This would create a web that connected us together. My intention was not to participate in that nonsense to a discussion leader, as if that was positive, reported that he was a vegetarian.

I have been a vegetarian for eight years on the assumption that I did not cause any animal suffering. The dairy industry could manipulate me for eight years, to my shame. In Nijmegen I received a re -experience. Even in a room where everyone had just seen dairy cows crushed in their own shit on a large screen with inflamed udders, those present, until climate activist discussion leaders, lay down the atrocities of dairy.

Thanks to my minimal front and a relvegan in the rear row, the room conversation derailed in screaming about animal rights.

« A calf misses his mother more than you your cheese! » She cried.

« And you have to show more compassion! » This meant compassion with people, not with cows. The vegan in the back was right. Dairy and meat are the same industry. Dairy cows and beef cows end in the same slaughterhouses. Dairy cows are only on the road for longer because they are first exploited for their milk for a few years. As a vegetarian you still subsidize that industry. Climate activists should know this. Certainly if they organize conversations after livestock documentaries. The discussion was smothered in hope and commitment. We had to talk about small positive changes again.

The hard -working documentary makers do not ask for hopeful talks. They ask citizens to organize screenings and to stimulate discussions about stopping livestock farming subsidies. They want to organize Burgerbreaden about this. I prefer to see the entire trade forbidden and a Europe where those who consume animal products must register for this and only touch animals without supervision, but I respond a little violently to livestock documentaries. Especially when they are concluded with chatter that is out the rightful and carefully built up by the filmmakers.

Carolina Trujillo Is a writer.

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