Hoof and Horn, All that die shall be reborn.

“Hoof and Horn, Hoof and Horn,

 All that die shall be reborn.

 Corn and grain, Corn and grain.

 All that fall shall rise again.”

I used to be vegan. Or more appropriately “plant based” back in the early 2000’s. Not because I was young and hip, but because I had just found out what was ailing me, which was lactose intolerance. It wasn’t the only thing making me sick but it irritated my whole digestive system. I had been vegetarian on and off most of my childhood. The same compassionate compulsion that drives many a vegan and vegetarian. I raised, loved and nurtured the animals around me and when a pig I had been particularly fond of ended up dismembered and turned into food for the table I was devastated. My family laughed. I was called naive and silly. This stung a lot but I look back now and I WAS naïve. I was living on a farm. The lambs I hand reared were going to the slaughter house. They were not pets, no matter how carefully I tended them. These animals had been bred for the table for generations. My step-brother said it plainly. “You not eating meat will not save the life of these animals, they are going to die. Even if everyone stopped eating meat, they would then be killed and thrown away.”

I look back at the food privilege I had and was unaware of. I had real free-range food, wild foods, fish, game and what we grew and raised. I had eaten goose, pheasant and rabbit, eel and snail. Homemade hams hung from our kitchen ceiling and we had our own potatoes, milk (goat) and cheese that came in bricks. Our freezer was full of blackberries, damsons and apples. We pickled our own onions. I kept my own chickens (birds so stupid they will drown themselves if a water dish is too deep) and tended everything with a deep loving connection. I declined meat.

 So what changed? I became pregnant. I became aware of the animal in me. A deep, primal animal. Fierce, holy and strong. I wanted meat. No I needed meat. As rare as I could get away with as many times a day as I could. Peppered steak. When I tried to eat anything else my body rejected it quickly and in a violently ugly fashion. Not for the first few months, but the whole pregnancy. I also craved shellfish (scallops, prawns and crab) but my landlocked ass was thwarted. I had to navigate this emotional roller-coater of guilt and shame, unbridled desire and primal need. I surrendered to my body, and its knowing. I surrendered to the wisdom of my animal self. My wildness. I finally understood, I was, I am an animal too.

I was connected to the earth, the plants, the animals, like a wolf. I could no more deny my nature. I could no more pretend that I was above death and blood and pain. I could not pretend that loving the wild, which I really, truly do, separated me for its laws.

I have known deep wise and beautiful souls, whom happen to be trees. I have known suicidal stupid chickens.  Mushrooms are scientifically now more animals that plants. Yeast is a living, vital thing. We are made of more bacteria than human cells. Were you draw the line of which life matters to you is important. I have seen a lot of vegans be pretty awful to people. Be terrible and unknowing to the human cost of their privilege. Rejecting the world of animal and animal products doesn’t save an animals life. That animal may end up in landfill instead. Eating better quality meat, from better sources and eating nose to tail helps the market change. Eating animals that are disruptive or invasive can help restore balance. Crop diversity, growing your own, cooking your own food and caring about what is in it and where it comes from is not a bad idea. Neither is eating a lot of fresh veggies and vegetarian foods. That said it is not my place to judge others. At least not for what they eat.

I am aware that food is a huge part of people’s cultures. It separates and joins families and communities, countries and likeminded souls.  Some of the best food cultures use meat sparingly, or consume it with great respect. The West used to be like his also. We would eat fish as our main protein, with bread and vegetables unless we were feasting. We would have a goose we would fatten for the Yuletide season, or a wild boar hunted at that time. Eating meat meant killing it yourself. Meat was privilege. Dairy meant milking a sheep, goat or cow. It meant wasting nothing. It was killing your pig for a ham, bacon, and sausages no matter how cute it was.

Mono-culture cash crops like soy and many vegan foods are terrible for economies, environments and poor usually brown people. They are terrible for biodiversity and make farmers in these places food poor. It makes them susceptible to corporate market forces making neighbours competitors rather than co-operating. Often these countries are not poor because they lack resources but because they are still paying for their freedom from colonial oppression. France receives around 400 billion euros a year from Africa. So when I see some “helpful” vegan leave rather cruel and distasteful remarks about indigenous people hunting and eating meat on food travel vlogs my eye develops a twitch.

I am all for making the world a better, kinder place. I am all for cooking more food. Being more aware where it comes from, how it is raised and grown. What I am against is the naivety that rejecting animals and animal products makes you better. I reject that humans are different than any other animal. That pets or people must make allowances for your beliefs. We are not separate from nature. Hoof and horn, corn and grain, we will all die, because that is nature’s law. We are human, primates and mammals. We are part of this world and each other.