Reflection

Me with a veggie dog - not a very good one.

            Through doing this project, I have been able to actually carry through with something I have always considered doing but never had the initiative to do. I don’t think solely doing this project myself had a very large impact, but I think it’s like voting – one person doing it doesn’t make much difference, but many people participating creates the outcome. I have had people tell me that there is no point in doing something like this because it won’t make a difference, but even if there isn’t a large group doing it, I think it is still worth living your life a certain way that abides to what you think is the right thing to do. If someone thinks that eating meat is bad for the environment, and in general for the methods of farming used, and doesn’t want to support that practice, then I think there is definitely a point and purpose to what they are doing. Thus, by not eating meat these 3 weeks, although I may not have made a marginal difference in the world, I felt good about not supporting these large meat companies and their farming practice – because even if people don’t realize it, just buying a product is supporting that company and anything it does to provide you that product.

            I don’t know if I made an impact on anyone of my friends or family while doing this, but they were aware that I wasn’t eating meat. I tried to install any information that I could about bad meat farming practices to my dad, and convince him that we should eat less meat, or try to buy meat from farmer’s markets, and I think he agreed with eating less meat, but it would be difficult to get him to buy other meat if it is more expensive. I also have a friend who lives on a farm and has her own chickens and bees. She also shops at farmers markets and is always telling me about how food is produced, especially meat, so I think she gave me more insight than I gave her. But, even though I probably didn’t influence anyone in a huge way, I think that friends always influence friends even if in the smallest and most subtle way. I think, maybe subconsciously, you always pick up on the things your friends do and how they act.

            Initially, I thought giving up meat would be harder than it was, but I found it to be pretty easy. I didn’t have many incidents where I almost ate meat, and it didn’t affect my life very dramatically. There was only few times where I thought I could smell chicken somewhere there wasn’t any. I think it was made easier by the fact that I knew it would be over in 3 weeks and I could eat meat again, and that I only had to go to school for 1 class, and could eat lunch at home. I almost always had a turkey sandwich, and it was so easy to bring to school, so I thought that part would be hard – to find something else to bring. But since I didn’t have to be a school for lunch, I could eat at home (hummus and pita), or sometimes I woke up late and had breakfast at noon and didn’t even eat lunch. But once I find something that I could easily bring for lunch, I think I could continue eating less meat. I don’t think I will continue eating no meat (not in the near future), but I will definitely eat less of it and try to buy from companies I can respect for their practices. I don’t think giving up eating animals and animal by-products is necessary, because animals’ eating each other is part of life. But the methods we choose to allow ourselves to do so is a large issue, one that many don’t realize or consider, or care about.