Today is my first day dedicated to being completely vegetarian. After thinking about my project ideas, I realized I have been disturbed by eating meat for a while, but usually I block out the hidden stories from my mind. I try not to think about the animals being raised in poor conditions just to be slaughtered. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to learn more about the way animals are treated so that I can share the information with others and possibly create some change. I will be working on avoiding meat at all meals, reading articles about being vegetarian and connecting with people on campus and other places to discuss the lifestyle . I will be spreading the word about being vegetarian as a moral practice. Some people eat vegetarian because they believe it is good for their health, it is part of their religion, economically meat is more expensive, or they are influenced by their families (Harvard Health 2017). Although these are all fair reasons to be vegetarian, I am eating vegetarian because ethically I find it disturbing to raise animals in poor living conditions and then kill them in slaughterhouses.

             Currently, I am in the initiation stage of my project. I began my process of reaching out by sending an email to the president of VETS club which is a club that meets once a month to organize animal-oriented events including visits to the local animal shelter and guest speakers. Additionally, I began researching the treatment of animals in factory farms. I confirmed that many of the animals are packed into small spaces where they can not even turn around.  However, I also learned much about maltreatment including that often turkeys that are not fully killed by a slit to the neck are boiled alive in slaughterhouses (Haas 2001, 15). From what I gathered, researching the mistreatment of animals will make it much easier to stick to eating vegetarian.

Sources:

Harvard Health Publishing. “Becoming a Vegetarian – Harvard Health.” Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Publishing, 4 Dec. 2017, www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-vegetarian.

Haas, Samantha J. “How We Mistreat the Animals We Eat.” Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication, 2001.