More About the Fish

To all you fish-eating "vegetarians" out there:

How It All Vegan

Now that the first basic steps have been taken, I think it's time to explain a bit why the hell I'm writing all this, in a word - how it all vegan... So today I did this little something in order to celebrate my two-month "veganiversary". And who knows, maybe this story about a new beginning also marks a startingpoint for a long tradition of more talking and less writing... you never know ;)

HERE you have the possibility to subscribe for the upcoming "podcasts" (just click on the RSS icon) or download the audio source directly to your computer.

The links to pretty much everything I talk about here are available on the sidebar and in my older posts (steps 1 & 2).

Step Five (Death in Dairy)

The ethical problems behind dairy are probably of the least obvious ones in the consideration of an average omnivorous or vegetarian consumer. Especially for those who - like me - were used to seeing cows happily munching away the grass and lying in the sun on the green pastures when they were kids. Drinking milk and consuming milk products is encrusted in our cultural mind as something so very natural that we don't give it any thought at all, nor do we question the ways that this stuff gets onto our table. But is it not a least bit troubling that humans are the only animals who drink the milk of another species and do so far beyond infancy..?
That being said, it is even more troubling to realize how little we actually know or care about milk production (and I'm speaking from my personal experience here).

The fact is that cows (or goats, sheep or any other animal we use for their milk) do not naturally produce milk non-stop throughout their whole life just because their stomachs turns grass into the white liquid and because people "help and alleviate the burden" by milking them.* Milk is not nature's or animals' gift to humans. (Is anything?)

As all the other mammals on earth (including us), they naturally produce milk for a period of time after giving birth in order to feed their young. Thus, to maximize milk production and the farm’s profits, cows are artificially re-inseminated shortly after giving birth over and over again. Dairy cows are deliberately bred to produce ten times more milk than a calf would naturally drink. This and the continuous pregnancies put an enormous strain on the young cows’ bodies, often resulting in udder tumors, infections and breakdown. As soon as their milk production declines – at about 4-5 years of age – dairy cows are sent to slaughter, even though they would normally live for over 20 years. Their bodies are so bruised and exhausted by the time they arrive to slaughter that the meat can only be ground up for use in burgers.

Most cows never get to nurse their little ones – calves are separated from their mothers at only few days of age. Female calves are added to the dairy herd or slaughtered for the rennet in their stomachs that is used to make cheese. Male calves are either slaughtered at birth, raised for beef or sold to veal farms, where they will spend the remaining few months of their fleetingly brief lives in confinement (in tiny individual cradles where they can never turn around nor lie down) and darkness, fed an iron-deficient diet in order to keep their flesh pale. That is why, even after refusing to eat any meat, but by continuing to consume dairy, we are directly supporting the cruelty of the meat industry.

The processes are roughly the same whether it is an industrial farm or an organic (bio) farm. I deeply encourage you to read this beautiful letter posted by the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary to take a little glimpse at the faces of organic and free-range farming.

*This may sound exaggeratingly stupid to many, but it was more or less the image I had before I started digging into those questions.

Step Four (What's Wrong With Eggs?)

Besides the obvious fact that eggs are chicken-embryos? Well, let's see...

Battery eggs:

A huge majority of eggs come from factory farms. Egg laying hens are packed by 5 to 11 into small battery cages of about 40cm (the wing range of an adult chicken is twice this size). Their wings and legs atrophy from disuse, and their legs and feet become deformed from standing on wire cage bottoms. The tip of their beak, full of sensitive nerve endings, is seared off in order to prevent them from injuring each other and thereby obliterating the farmer's financial investment.

When their egg production drops, hens are deprived of water and food for up to 14 days at a time in order to shock their bodies into a period of increased laying. This extremely cruel practice, called “forced molting,” causes birds to lose their feathers and a significant percentage of their body weight, many birds die from hunger and dehydration.

After a year or two of being treated as egg producing machines, their output decreases and hens are sent for slaughter. They are so battered and emaciated by then that their meat can only be used in companion-animal food, instant soups or pasties and pies where the pathetic condition of their bodies will not put consumers off their meal.

Male chicks are worthless to the egg industry - they do not lay eggs nor grow fast enough to be raised profitably for flesh. Thus the egg industry kills millions of newborn male chicks every year by suffocating them to death in trash bags or by dropping them alive into high-speed grinders and then feeding them to the chicken.

Now you might say "yeah well that's just in the US, but the situation is much better in Europe!". Think again. Eggs = food = profit anywhere in the world. It is true that the European Union is planning to ban all the battery cages by 2012, but we are not there just yet. The Estonian company TallEgg has "battery eggs" written all over it. Indeed - the problem is not abstractly "elsewhere", it is right here inside our omlets and our mousse au chocolat.

Free-range eggs:

Free-range is not a legal industry term; therefore it basically means nothing. It is used by farmers to imply a more humane way of production, but in reality there is no regulation regarding how the word is interpreted. Thus, to most producers this merely means a bigger cage.

Free-range farming is still about business where profit surpasses concern for the animals' welfare and comfort. And even if free-range hens were treated with kindness and given all the grass and sun and space, they will still be killed for meat as soon as their egg production drops, even though a hen could live about fifteen years in a natural environment. And like all the other animals raised for food - they will be subjected to the horrors and abuses of transportation, handling and slaughter.

Besides, the appellation bio- (or organic) and free-range is becoming more and more profitable because more people are starting to become "aware" consumers. Bob and Jenna Torres make very interesting points on this phenomenon in their podcast.

Alternatives:
And last but not least: we don't really need eggs - unless you crave for a dose of cholesterol and salmonella. In fact, they are quite simple to replace in all your cooking:

2 tbs of corn starch or 2 tbs of potato starch = 1 egg

1 tbs of soy flour + 2 tbs of water = 1 egg

1 tbs of soy milk powder + 1 tbs of corn starch + 2 tbs of water = 1 egg

2 ts of corn flour + 2 ts of water = 1 egg

For cakes you can also use some ripe mashed banana or apple sauce. Tapioca powder works well as a binding agent. Obviously there are numerous other alternatives out there like the Ener-G egg replacer for baking or silken tofu for that "scrambled eggs" effect, or even eggless mayonnaise... In the end it's not so much a question of need nor even comfort, as about making concious and responsible choices.

"No matter what words or systems are used to candy-coat animal production, when we treat sentient beings as commodities, we invariably invite abuse." (Joanne Stepaniak)

Step Three (Why Stop Eating Meat?)

Your Health: it has somehow become a general acknowledgement that eating meat is vitally important for a healthy and varied diet. It's what I would call one of the greatest myths of the capitalist society. First of all because we don't need to consume meat, in fact - we're not even physically built for that. Our stomach does not produce enough acid, our intestines are very long (about 10 times our body length compared to 3 times the body length for carnivores). It takes us a very long time to digest meat - it basically stays rotting in our system for several days and all the unnecessary substances like saturated fat and cholesterol get absorbed by the body, whereas a carnivore "ejects" it much faster, having absorbed only the necessary. You can get more information on this subject here.
Factory farms use a lot of antibiotics on the animals, not as much to treat illnesses but to make them grow faster or prevent their death before arriving to the slaughter house. Some of those “growth promoters” are used to treat serious human diseases. Animal products transmit them to humans and lead to the increase of treatment resistant bacteria and thus - more incurable diseases.

Chicken, as “white meat”, has often been considered being healthier and containing less fat. Since chickens are bred and drugged to grow very large, their flesh today contains three times as much fat as it did just 35 years ago. The most toxic form of the poison arsenic is used in chicken feed because it promotes faster growth. This cancer-causing chemical is then ingested by people.

Fish is considered to be health food by many. In fact, the oceans are now so polluted that fish flesh contains a lot of toxins, especially mercury. Eating fish even just once a week can increase your mercury level over 30% above the safe limit. This can lead to many health issues including coordination problems and depression.


The Environment: Livestock grazing transforms fertile land into desert, and thus affects a great number of threatened and endangered species. More than 50% of forests and rainforests has already been cleared to use the land for grazing or animal feed crops. As for the crop – a great majority of it is fed to farm animals, while it could be used to feed hundreds of millions of hungry people. Same thing goes for water: an estimated 15 000 liters of water is needed to produce just one day animal-based food supply (for one average meat-eater), whereas a one day plant-based food supply requires about 13 times less water.
Factory farms produce thousands of tons of manure every day. This often finds its way into the groundwater supply, the lakes, the rivers and the oceans, polluting drinking water and killing aquatic life. Here’s an interesting story for those who want to find out more about factory farm manure “lagoons”.
Livestock rearing also produces gases known to contribute significantly to global warming. See here for more detailed information on this subject.

Seafood consumption is driving many species to extinction. In fact, overfishing is responsible for the depletion of about 70% of fish populations worldwide. Tens of thousands of marine animals (like dolphins, sharks and turtles) get stuck in tremendous fishing nets and are killed and thrown back into the ocean each year.

Even if dolphins aren’t accidentally trapped in nets, they are still killed intentionally by tuna anglers because they prey on tuna.Fish farming, like livestock farming, damages delicate aquatic ecosystems, polluting water with run-off containing potentially hazardous chemicals, drugs and pathogens. Plus, farmed fish is usually fed with wild fish and it takes approximately 2-3 kg of wild fish to grow 1 kg of “farmed” shrimp or salmon.

Shark finning (consists of removing shark fins and discarding of the carcass at sea) annually kills over 100 million sharks and has decreased worldwide shark population by 90% over the last few decades. Experts estimate that within a decade, most species of sharks will be lost because of longlining. This could have devastating impact on marine ecosystems. For more precise information watch the film Sharkwater.

What about protein, iron and fatty acids?
There are numerous great plant-based protein sources. You can get enough protein from legumes like beans, peas and lentils; grains like rice, oatmeal and wheat; vegetables like potato, tomato, cucumber, cabbage, onion, broccoli, spinach; fruit like apple, banana, orange, grape, strawberry, peach and many many more…
Plant-based iron sources are for example ginger, chickpeas (garbanzo beans), lentils, spinach, prunes and raisins. It is best to consume them along with a source of vitamin C for better absorbtion.
Nuts and seeds (for example pumpkin and sunflower seeds, walnuts and almonds) contain good fatty acids, but are also great protein and iron sources.