AR-News: (CA) Shannon Larratt Q&A

[animalconcerns at fastmail.us]

Erica: I remember that when you first did your modcode, you marked “I
happily kill what I eat”. When and why did you become vegan?

I became vegan first for environmental reasons, kept with it for health
reasons, and then stayed vegan long term for spiritual reasons. At the
point I wrote that I was just transitioning to a fully vegan diet.
Ethically, my primary problem was with factory farming and the truly
brutal (and environmentally foolhardy) practices they employ, and
morally I had real concerns that people were “hiding” the fact that a
sentient living creature was giving up its life for our pleasure. I
believe that if someone is going to eat meat that they need to embrace
the death of that animal and on some level thank it for what it has
given them. In the modern context, I don’t believe we can gain that
awareness unless we are either raising our own animals for consumption
and slaughtering them, or by hunting our own food. While I would not do
it myself, I believe that by understanding the life-death-life cycles
and taking an active and compassionate role in them one can perhaps
justify eating meat, but at this point in my life I would not be able to
bring myself to do so.

full story:
http://www.bmezine.com/news/pubring/20040705.html

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Shannon Larratt Q&A - BME

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