1. My Journey to a Vegan DietFor much of my life, I ate meat, milk products, and eggs, just like most other people do today. It’s estimated that over 85 percent of the world’s population include meat in their diet, and this number is expected to rise as poorer countries raise their standard of living.1 Like most people, I grew up consuming a wide range of animal products. They were simply part of my daily diet, which included milk on my morning oatmeal and slices of mortadella in the sandwiches in my school lunch box. (The first thing I did was to pick all the pistachios out of the processed meat.) Even as a child, I understood what it meant to eat meat: an animal had to die. Despite being aware of the connection, I found it easy to suppress the images that briefly flashed through my mind.When I was six weeks old, my father accepted a job as a community forester, and my parents moved from a tiny rented basement apartment in a small town to a cozy forester’s lodge in the Eifel, a range of low mountains in western Germany. The lodge was out in the country, surrounded by green fields and forest. The best thing about growing up at the lodge for me and my brother, who is two years my junior, was the huge yard. We spent almost every day in the yard, where many large trees invited us to climb them. They were great places to play hide-and-seek. Our favorite was a Douglas-fir with sturdy branches the length of its trunk that allowed us to climb almost to the top.My father’s predecessor had raised Christmas trees on the property, and the firs left over from his tenure were now all grown up. There was hardly any lawn, and the patches of ground between the mature Christmas trees had become overgrown. My parents spent most of their spare time outside, reclaiming the yard. Even so, they left a large part wild, not because they didn’t want to put in the effort to clear it but because they valued the ecological benefits of wildness. My father left unmown patches at the front and back of the house, where a riot of grasses, wild herbs, and flowers grew, making our property a veritable paradise for insects. In summer these wild grassy patches were bursting with flowers, full of oxeye daisies and brilliant purple fireweed. Deer wandered through to nibble on the bounty.The yard had space not only for wildlife but also for us. My parents put in a large vegetable garden surrounded by an attractive wooden fence. My father had single-handedly sharpened every fence post with a chain saw. When he was done, he built a small wooden bench for my mother, which was mostly occupied by me and my brother while my mother indulged in her favorite activity: hours of meticulous weeding. In summer, we harvested fresh fruit and vegetables. The currant bushes and strawberry plants offered irresistible snacks. Every day produced fresh supplies of lettuce and zucchini. Beans and cabbages had to be picked and processed. Potatoes were dug in fall after the green foliage on the plants had died back, and my brother and I were enthusiastic helpers. We had a great time digging in the soil, wondering which of us would unearth the largest potato.My mother stored the potatoes along with the parsnips in the cool, moist cellar of our 1930s lodge. The root vegetables kept for many weeks, and the supply was usually so plentiful that we hardly ever had to buy potatoes from the grocery store. My mother also did a lot of canning to preserve the rest of our produce so we could keep eating homegrown fruits and vegetables even in winter. She labeled each jar meticulously and then placed them all in the cellar. As soon as winter was over and it was time to seed vegetables in spring, my mother drew up detailed plans, carefully colored in crayon, so she knew exactly where and when everything was planted.My parents raised animals as well as vegetables—and not only because animals are beautiful and you can pet them. After they lived happy lives in our yard and neighboring pastures, they were slaughtered. On the designated day, my parents went out into the barn or pasture armed with a bolt gun. As the animals were enjoying their favorite food one last time, their lives were abruptly terminated. My brother and I were never allowed to watch when the animals were killed. Our mother called us to come outside only after they were hung, head down, from hooks attached to the doorframe of our shed. We often tried to get a glimpse of the proceedings through the small window in our father’s office—luckily, we never succeeded. When it was all over, we grabbed our little chairs and sat in front of the open shed door. Now we could watch as our father slipped the animals’ skins down over their ears and then removed their innards. When he was finished, my mother brought what was left of our animals into the house. There, she washed the meat before processing it. She packed the rabbits into freezer bags marked with the date and weight before storing the bags in the large freezer in the cellar. One year, my father even found a use for our cuddly rabbits’ soft fur, trying his hand at tanning and sewing warm mittens from their pelts. The meat from goats and sheep was ground, and sometimes my father made homesmoked sausage, using a smoker that lived in our shed. A marvelous aroma wafted out while the meat was smoking.My mother’s roast rabbit was a special treat. First, she simmered the animal in a vegetable broth. She reserved the broth, and many meals started with a hearty rabbit soup. A highlight for us children—it sounds really macabre when I think about it now—was the kidneys, which my mother always simmered along with the rest of the soup ingredients. One kidney per child. After the rabbit had been simmered, it went into the oven to be roasted until it was nice and crispy. My brother and I each got a leg so we could nibble the meat off the bone.Our school friends or children from the village often came over to visit. We played together in the yard and especially enjoyed spending time with the animals. We might grab a handful of dandelions and squat down in the spacious rabbit run, or we might decide to visit the goats in the pasture. It was especially fun when the animals had just had babies. But, sooner or later, someone asked a question I felt uncomfortable answering: “What do you do with the rabbits and goats when they grow up?” When I finally told my friends—all of whom ate meat, by the way—what was going to happen to the animals, I always felt I was making a confession, and I was worried about how they might react. My worries turned out to be justified, as in most cases the children were deeply shocked. The rabbits and goats were so adorable. How could anyone be so heartless as to kill them, let alone eat them?When I was young, I didn’t understand this. After all, other people spread liverwurst on their sandwiches and grilled sausages for supper. My friends’ reactions told me my family must be coldhearted because we slaughtered animals—animals that had wonderful lives and never had to endure being confined in tiny stalls. Animals that were allowed to live in family groups, got medical attention when they were sick, and didn’t have to suffer when they were killed.***My position on killing animals has fundamentally changed since then, but for a long time it didn’t bother me in the slightest—especially when it came to the rabbits—that they were going to end up roasted for dinner one day. When I ate, I didn’t consider my connection with the animal. I didn’t worry at all that what was now lying on my plate had been bouncing happily around on green grass just a couple of days before. But at some point, things changed. I forged an especially strong connection with the goats. Anyone who has raised goats knows that they become extremely tame and affectionate, almost like dogs.Our favorite goat, Schwänli, whom we had for almost sixteen years, was unusually affectionate. The goat pasture was a couple of hundred yards away on the other side of the road. When Schwänli spotted us in the distance making our way out to the little herd, she would run down the hill in the pasture to the goat shelters. As she was the highest-ranking goat, the others would follow her, and their mad rush was accompanied by the clanging of the bells around their necks. The moment we arrived at the pasture and climbed the fence, Schwänli greeted us and never left our sides. She also didn’t tolerate us petting the other goats, forcing herself between us and them and insisting we pay attention to her and her alone.The goats spent the winter in the goat shed by the house, with a small outdoor run in the yard. The warm shed protected the goats from wind and weather, which was important because the kids were born in late winter—often at night. When a kid was due, my mother would make the birthing stall comfy by adding a thick layer of hay and turning on a warming lamp so the kids, which arrived in this world covered in a layer of amniotic fluid, were immediately warm and cozy. When we were young, my brother and I spent every free minute in the goat shed. Some kids were so trusting that after bouncing around their winter quarters like little rubber balls they would cuddle up to us and fall asleep. Sometimes my mother had to raise a kid by hand and bottle-feed it, either because its mother didn’t have enough milk or because she had rejected it. To make sure the babies had enough to eat, my mother trudged back and forth to the barn multiple times both day and night. These hand-raised kids were particularly trusting, and we became especially fond of them.The kids had names, of course, which my brother and I were often allowed to choose for them. In spring, when the grass shot up and changed from dusty brown to lush green, the goats were let out into their summer pasture. They had more space here, and a proper shed was no longer necessary; all they needed were a few open-sided shelters for a bit of protection in bad weather. It was wonderful to see how happy the older goats, who remembered the pasture from the previous summer, were when we took them out of the shed. My parents had the mother goats on lead ropes, and the kids trotted after their mothers. My brother and I always followed close behind to make sure that none of the kids took off down the road. We felt like little goatherds. When we saw a car approaching in the distance, we waved our arms around so the car had plenty of time to slow down.When the goats got to the pasture, they usually ran straight into the tall grass and stuffed themselves. For weeks they had been deprived of fresh grass, having to make do with hay, carrots, and grain. Now they could spend a few months outside, where they could live life to the full. There was plenty of fresh grass every day, and you could tell right away they were enjoying themselves. It was heartwarming to see how well they were doing. Just before the kids reached sexual maturity, however, their happiness ended abruptly: that’s when they were slaughtered. The meat—especially the meat of billy goats—takes on an unpleasant flavor after that point. One year, when I was ten or eleven years old, we had a baby goat I was particularly attached to—a brown kid with adorable little horns whom I called Julia. I spent a lot of time out in the goat pasture, and Julia never left my side. As the weeks passed, the little kid became a fast friend. Slowly, however, the day she would be slaughtered approached, and I became increasingly upset. The thought of my friend ending up as ground meat being fried in a pan broke my heart. In my head, I ran through a scenario where I took her from the pasture and hid her in the dense beech wood behind the house. My parents would think she had run away, and I would bring her fresh water and food every day. No one would notice, and she could live to a ripe old age and stay with me. Before the dreaded day, I told my parents what was bothering me, and that I didn’t want them to slaughter Julia. Fortunately, they took me seriously, and my favorite goat was spared.The way I felt about Julia was in stark contrast to my feelings about the rabbits. Surprisingly, I didn’t care about them nearly so much, even though they were small, sweet, and fluffy. Looking back, I think it was mostly because we never named them—and because there were so many of them, we never got to know them as individuals. They were also not as tame or affectionate as the goats. We simply never felt as close to the little furballs.***In the summer of 2010, when I was nineteen, I graduated high school and moved to Bonn to attend university. From then on, I was responsible for all the household chores required when you live in a tiny student apartment. This included, of course, the weekly grocery shop. I enjoyed choosing which items ended up in my cart. Meat in all its variations was a staple. My little refrigerator was always stocked with assorted cold cuts, ground beef, and chicken breasts. I didn’t buy organic meat because it was way too expensive and my student budget was tight. I knew what it meant to eat meat, yet I bought the cheapest meat on offer. I did so even though I knew better, and I confess I never considered the consequences of my actions. It’s all so abstract when you’re looking at plastic packages of meat displayed in a cooler. I didn’t see the animal, an individual with its own personality; all I saw was the product. I didn’t spare a thought for the animal this meat had once been, and the unimaginable ordeal it probably had to suffer before it was finally dispatched. Not a flicker of guilt intruded on my enjoyment. Back then, I also believed thatcarbohydrates were bad and that I had to eat lean animal protein to be healthy.When I look back, I see I was very good at suppressing any thoughts about what eating meat meant in the larger scheme of things. All went well for a long time, and most days meat was on the menu. If it didn’t make an appearance in the main meal of the day, I at least had bread and cold cuts. That’s what my diet looked like for almost ten years. I was pretty much average in that respect. I didn’t question my behavior because people around me were making the same choices, and that meant what we chose to eat wasn’t something we talked about. Things, however, were about to change.It was fall 2018. One evening, we sat down to supper as a family, and my mother served a vegetable lasagna that smelled amazing. The conversation was animated, as it always is when we get together. As we chatted, my parents told my husband and me, and my brother and his girlfriend, that they had decided to basically stop eating meat. They didn’t want to be overly rigid and would perhaps eat meat at a restaurant or when they were invited out for dinner, but they would no longer buy any meat themselves.My husband and I looked at each other in astonishment. From time to time, I’d briefly considered becoming vegetarian, but up until now this hadn’t been on my husband’s radar at all. It was important to him to have meat for dinner every day and to take his beloved ham or liverwurst sandwiches to work for lunch. Even after my parents’ announcement, it was clear to us that we didn’t want to give up meat, and we continued our weekly trips to the grocery store without any pangs of conscience. My route would take me from the produce section directly to the meat counter. As I gave my order, my son would happily nibble on the slice of ham sausage he always got while we waited.***But sometimes things don’t turn out as you expect. The impetus for change was that documentary, Cowspiracy, directed and produced by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. Watching it fundamentally changed our lives. We witnessed the unspeakably cruel treatment of animals raised solely for human consumption and learned how modern livestock production affects our environment and our climate. When the credits rolled, my husband looked at me and asked what we were going to do now that we had all this information. There was basically only one thing we could do, he said, answering his own question: stop eating animal products. I wasn’t sure I had understood him correctly. After all, he was the one who liked to eat meat every day, and now he wanted to give it up, and all other animal-based foods as well?But I felt relief spreading through me. The film had moved me so deeply that in a few scenes I couldn’t hold back my tears. I, too, felt a desperate need to strike out in a different direction.
Les mer