Wednesday 11 January 2012

I won’t have a cow, man.

Humans are meant to eat meat - Sam Neil and a bicycle riding orang-utan have taught me that much. It’s just that I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t need to devour a cow to get my share of iron, zinc, “added hormones” or mad cow disease.



When I’m outed as a vegetarian I usually face a barrage of questions, "Is it for moral reasons? Health? Are you taking a strand on behalf of the environment?" To be honest, like a Lemony Snicket story, my life has consisted of a series of unfortunate events that left me little choice but to relinquish meat and embrace lentils, beans, tofu and chickpeas.

I grew up in a typical 80s meat and three veg family. Pork chops, sausages, mince or corn beef, rinse and repeat, week after week. The revolving meat choice was always accompanied by a selection of bland steamed vegies. Tuesdays were the worst, sausage night. I couldn’t stand sausages, the ambiguous meat of the carnivorous world.

Dinner time at my house looked a lot like it does on The Simpsons, with my dad starring as Homer. In complete contrast to me, my father loves meat, and not in a gourmand way either. He can wolf down steak sandwiches, sausage rolls and mince pies at breakneck speed. The number of times I have seen him “cooking” bacon in the microwave, so he can get it into his stomach quicker, is frightening.

I, on the other hand, am the hippie daughter who turned vegetarian at 15. There were constant threats of sending me to some mythical camp for fussy eaters as well as taunts like, “you’ll never stick to it” which he double dared, even physical challenged me with. My mother believed I was going through a phase and refused to accommodate my behaviour. This meant a few years of potatoes and steamed-from-frozen vegies. Much like my potato-loving Irish ancestors, I persevered in the face of adversity.

I never really liked meat and then, when I was four years old, I visited Farmer Fenton, a friend of my dads. The good farmer had a living room full of stuffed animals, including an entire baby deer. He reasoned that Bambi would have died without its mother - whom he had, I later realised, also hunted down and killed.

Then there was Wally. “Hey Wally!” I would shout and wave at my cow friend as I pushed my bike up the driveway of my neighbour’s farm. He would raise his head, mouth full of grass, big brown eyes staring at me. Wally and I shared this cordial relationship for years until one day Wally was not in his paddock. "Where's Wally?" I asked my neighbour's dad. "Half of Wally’s in the freezer and the other half is at McDonald's." I never ate a Big Mac again.

I thought of Wally often after that, hurtling down the highway towards the meatworks. How did it all end for him? Thankfully, my young imagination was a lot kinder than what adult facts have taught me. The killing of animals by torturous means in industrialised abattoirs is something I am not able to get past.

The final straw came after years of dad’s animal noises at dinner time. Long drawn-out mooooooooooos, baaas and oinks, conducted between chuckles pushed me over the edge. He didn’t do it every night, just when he felt like eating my animal share of the evening meal.

So, at age 15, I drew a line and adopted the label “vegetarian”. It was official. Through my best friend Rina I was introduced to the wonders of Indian spices, pulses and veggie curries. I had never eaten such food in all my life! Soon I was trying out other ethnic foods - Lebanese falafel, hummus, baba ganoush - foods far removed from my mother’s culinary comfort zone.

When I finally travelled to India a few years ago, I found vegetarian nirvana. In a country where the cow is king, I was no longer fussy, I was the norm. I could order practically anything on a restaurant’s menu. No more, “oh look, you can have the salad” from my dining companions. And while I’m far from the tie-dye, hessian bag carrying hippie that usually frequents Goa, I finally felt like I’d found my people.

I don’t crave meat, I don’t like the taste of it. I think if most people had to kill their own meat rather than choose a plastic-wrapped portion from the supermarket, they would think twice. But, being a non-preachy type of vegetarian I will never question people’s dietary choices. I believe, however, that we have a long way to go before the industrial way we farm and kill animals can be called truly humane.

Those of the pro-omnivore persuasion get quite excited, ready to disprove the reasons behind my choice when they hear I am a non-meat eating freak. Cries of “foreign soy is more destructive than Australian beef” or “plants feel pain too” usually ensue.

As for my father, half my lifetime later, he seems to have accepted the ways of his hippie daughter. I’ve beaten him at his physical challenge. Whenever I go home, he jumps at the chance to host a barbecue in my honour, knowing full well his joking question of “how many snags do you want?” will only mean more meat for him.