Why you should turn vegan to end factory farming’s daily carnage – author’s manifesto for change

We continue to eat meat and wear animal furs because we won’t face up to the horrors inflicted on sentient beings by industrial farming, Roanne van Voorst says

Having aroused our compassion for farm animals, she seeks to channel it into action with advice on how to cook plant-based food and what to listen to and read

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Pigs being fed at a farm in eastern China. Intensive farming subjects animals to unspeakable cruelty, but there is an alternative - veganism - writes Roanne van Voorst. Photo: EPA-EFE

Stephen McCarty

Published: 7:45pm, 11 Dec 2021

Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food by Roanne van Voorst, translated by Scott Emblen-Jarrett, pub. HarperOne

Death toll: 150 million a day.

And that’s a conservative estimate. As youanticipate gorging on your Christmas turkey, consider that the above is the figure author and anthropologist Roanne van Voorst puts on the number of “fish, chickens, pigs, cows, goats, sheep” our species slaughters for food.

It does not include any of the millions of animals killed in laboratories every year in tests on the latest cosmetics or cleaning agents, or those slaughtered for fur coats or other attire. Or male calves and chicks, designated “waste products” by a food industry that has no use for them and kills them immediately after birth, or animals used in bullfights, dog or horse races, aquariums or “waterworld attractions”.

Workers process pig carcasses in a slaughterhouse in Germany. Photo: DPA

“Every week,” continues van Voorst, “more animals are killed for human consumption than humans who have died in all wars in human history combined.” This carnage is made possible, she says, because although most of us might consider ourselves humane in outlook, we are not prepared to face the horrors inflicted on sentient beings by, primarily, the business of factory farming.

The scale of our behaviour, she says, is simply too overwhelming to contemplate. Hence this manifesto for veganism calls for our compassion first to be aroused, then to be put into action: the book closes with advice on what to watch, listen to, read and cook; on how to reject what is considered “normal”.