Identification Please

Totes relevant... read on.

For some reason, I started thinking about who I am today. I had this rather profound thought while waiting for a burger at The Northside Convenience and Take Away shop (home of Dalby’s best burger). Who am I? Or more specifically, how do I identify? With what groups am I most strongly linked?

Some people first and foremost identify with their nationality. Which I understand; being Australian is great, and I really love living in this country. But I don’t think I’m particularly patriotic, I don’t think we’re *better* than others or that we should keep our stuff and our culture all for ourselves. I’m certainly not opposed to our culture changing or becoming “less Australian” and I couldn’t give a shit about any of our sporting teams.

Others feel strongly about their gender. Men are real men, women are real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (with compliments to Mr Adams). Whereas I see my femaleness as a fact, not a lifestyle. It’s just a thing. A thing that I’m ambivalent towards. I don’t particularly love being a lady or doing “lady’s things” but I have no desire to grow an extra appendage and start loving aforementioned sports teams and other such “man things”. I’m a girl, but it doesn’t define me.

I think probably I most strongly identify with being Gen Y, which is a weird thing to say I guess, given that it’s often thrown about like a dirty word. But I like being young and I like being into technology and I like knowing about new things and trying new things pretty much just because they are new. I am not ashamed by my addiction to social media or my inability to do anything without telling as many people as possible about it. These are things I am, actually, proud of.

I also identify strongly as a nerd. I like things (books, movies, shows etc), and lots of those things are considered nerdy. But more than that my like of those things isn’t a passing, “oh yes I saw that it was good”, it’s more like “OMG DID YOU GUYS SEE THE NEW EPISODE SEND HELP IT WAS THE BEST THING OF MY LIFE I’M GOING TO WATCH IT AGAIN”. So yeah, I’m a nerd. It’s a good thing to be.

I guess I feel like I’m floundering a bit at the moment, because while it’s great to be a Gen Y nerd, I feel like I have a lot more in me; a lot more things I could be.

I care about the fact that our world is still filled with bad things like slavery, poverty and disease. I don’t like how we farm animals, or how we treat our environment. I’d like to do things about these things, I’d like to identify as the kind of person who takes action in the face of such things.

I’d like to identify as a writer, I’d like to be brave and stop making excuses and discipline myself to write.

I’d like it if the job I did was something I could identify as, and be proud of. And I’m hoping that as I embark on a new adventure of studying next year that “primary school teacher” can be a thing that skyrockets itself to somewhere near the top of the “things I identify as” list.

I want to be the kind of person who gardens, who keeps animals, who writes, who eats healthily, whose actions make a difference, who is conscious of the environment and the world, who has fun, who makes people laugh, who loves.

I did some gardening today. So I’m on my way. 

A Rant about Food

We interrupt your regularly scheduled reminiscence about Lizzy’s past to bring you this entirely unprecedented and largely unexpected rant about farming.

A very strange thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I suddenly started caring about animals. This isn’t to say that I didn’t care beforehand, but I went from answering the question “are you a vegetarian?” with *scoff scoff scoff* “NO. I love eating dead animals” to “um, sort of” in literally a matter of days.

And this strange behaviour is compounded further and made even stranger by the fact that I live in the country now. I work with pig farmers. I see trucks full of cattle every day. There are people around me whose livelihoods depend on people eating meat, and eating it daily.

But here’s what happened. I watched a video. I watched a ten-minute video about how meat animals are farmed, and I suddenly couldn’t ignore it anymore. I’m not about to start throwing red paint on people, I’m not even going to give up meat entirely, but knowing what I know now, and realising that it was knowledge that changed my mind, I’m going to impart some knowledge onto you, my readers. I do this not because I want to create an army of vegetarians, but because I think you are all clever people, you are all people who enjoy words, who enjoy knowledge, and who are capable of making good choices with the power of FACTS.

Warning: what follows is pretty effing graphic.

Chickens:

Chickens taste delicious. Their meat is relatively cheap and versatile, and they poop out an ovum once a day that can be used in really important things like cakes.

If they are lucky enough to be born male, chickens will be killed instantly, either by being gassed to death or crunched up alive in a big machine. If they are unlucky, and are born female, they will spend their short lives in a giant shed. Sometimes they have their beaks chopped off, they have no room to move, and stand in their own excrement all day. They are bred and fed to grow to full, very large size, very quickly. So they often can’t support their own weight. When it’s time for them to be eaten, they are caught by the fistful and shoved into cages, often breaking bones on the way in. They will see the outside world just once, on their way to the abattoir. In the abattoir, they will be electrocuted into unconsciousness and then have their necks cut. It’s probably the kindest thing that happens to them.

Egg chickens live a very similar life, except they get to live longer, about 12 months. Once they no longer produce eggs daily, they are also killed.

What you can do about it: purchase free-range chicken and eggs at your supermarket. Be mindful that there are no regulations for what constitutes “free range” and that all the ones with “RSPCA approved” on them still live indoors without much room. I’m actually not sure why the RSPCA approves them at all. Don’t order chicken or eggs in restaurants and food outlets when you can’t be sure.

Pigs:

Pigs can be turned into bacon. And frankly bacon is the most delicious thing in the whole world. They also make sausages, pork, ham, and really smelly pets.

The thing is, is that I never thought about how pigs are farmed. I kind of always knew about chickens, and was pretty happy to ignore it as best as possible. When I was in New Zealand I saw pigs in fields, and it was really strange, as I never had before. It’s actually kind of adorable, in NZ they have little tarps up in each field for the pigs to hang out under so they don’t get sunburnt. Did I mention that New Zealand’s farming industry is amazing and even their McDonald’s serve free range? Have you ever seen a pig in a field? I’m willing to bet not. That’s because in Australia, something like 95% of pigs are factory farmed.

They live inside large sheds with thousands of other pigs; many have their tails and a number of their teeth removed without anaesthetic. Sows are treated like bacon making factories, because that’s what they are. When pregnant or nursing (the majority of their lives), sows are kept in “sow stalls” which keep them on their side, unable to move, so that they can push out babies and those babies can get at their teats easily. Sows are expected to produce as many litters as possible and when they stop, you guessed it, they are killed. It’s actually really difficult to explain just how hideous a sow stall is, so I’m going to suggest you watch the video I watched, even though it is quite troubling and traumatic. Only do this if you are ready and not about to eat. I’ll link to it at the end of this blog.

What can you do about it: Free range pig products practically don’t exist, but times are changing. Coles, of all brands, is actually leading the way on this. You will start to notice that all Coles pork, bacon, ham etc is now starting to come with the label “sow stall free”. BUY THAT SHIT. Reward the giant corporation for actually making this change. Because if the big corporations are pushing for this, they will dominate the industry, and the little guys will have to follow suit, and it will be in farmers’ best interests to get rid of those stalls. And let’s face it; it will be in the sows’ best interests too. Don’t eat pig products in restaurants and food outlets when you can’t be sure.

Climate Change and World Hunger:

If you are able to look at these facts and think, “well, there’s more important things in the world”, well I can’t blame you, you’re right, there are. Human rights should surely come before animal rights, right? Well yes, I agree, and I’m making changes in my life and opinions with regards to humans too – I just happen to be blogging about animals today. But the thing is, this is all relevant to people too. Here’s a disturbing fact: more food is used to feed food animals, than is actually produced by food animals. That is, we feed pigs and chickens and cows etc grains and seeds and those grains and seeds constitute more edible food than actually comes out of factory farms. So we’re losing out twice. Pigs are eating all those delicious grains, then they're not even turning into enough bacon to cover the defecit. Meanwhile, people are literally dying of starvation across the world. Those of us who benefit from factory farms need to start considering other options that lessen the burden on food animal production, so that more people can have access to more food.

Plus the carbon produced by factory farmed animals, the water and power that goes into feeding the animals and growing crops to continue feeding those animals is a significant drain on our environment. Never mind recycling, think how much damage your dinner is doing.

What can you do about it: Consider eating less meat generally, or indeed becoming a vegetarian. I am really struggling with the second option, but I am committing to eating as little factory farmed meat as possible, and less meat generally.

I know this is all a lot to take in, and frankly if you’re still reading, thank you, thank you, thank you. Trust me when I say I understand that it is much nicer and easier to ignore all of this information, because I’ve been doing so for my entire life. I’ve already slipped up once, I wanted to eat Japanese dumplings so bad I just had to put all of this from my mind for an evening. But the world needs us to start caring about this stuff. How much longer can agriculture support the mass consumption of animals? How much longer can the environment sustain our eating habits? How much more bacon can you eat without thinking about where it came from?

TL/DR, what the eff do you want me to do here, Lizzy?: Um, I dunno, why don't you think about eating kangaroo meat once a week, it’s delicious, they produce zero carbon and they need to be culled anyway.

Video:

The video that changed my life (so dramatic)

Disclaimer:

I have actually done further research than this one video, I promise. I am a well-informed ranter. If you have other arguments for or against, please share them in the comments or on facebook or twitter. I encourage you to do your own research also, if this is something that interests you. I don’t want you to just go with what I tell you, or completely reject it because it’s some hippy vego bullshit. There’re good, reliable sources out there.

It's just that the Make it Possible campaign has the cutest pictures...