One

Like Theodore Roosevelt said,

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

People sometimes ask me,

"Why are you vegetarian when it makes no difference to the meat industry?"

I think the words of one of my favourite bloggers conveys what i want to convey 

"A small change is still significant, and so much better than no change at all. What if I said I believed in environmentalism, but felt my actions would be too insignificant or unrewarded so decided to just leave my water running all the time? Or if I thought “well yeah, bigotry, sexism and racism suck, but that’s just the way things have always been, so I’m going to perpetuate and contribute to them because there’s no point trying to make a difference.” Just because social change seems difficult, a long way off perfecting, or even an isolated battle, does not mean you should abandon your beliefs and contribute to the problem. The main issue with this pattern of thought is that EVERYBODY (or many people) seems to cling to it. They reason “I want the world to be different but I’m just one small person, what impact could I have on my own?” But imagine if everybody who had that thought, stood up or what they believed in. We’d all be standing together. I’m not pointing fingers here, I used to feel the same way - powerless. It wasn’t until doing more research for myself, strengthening my beliefs and understanding how important it is for our whole planet to make a shift to living this way that things really clicked.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

– Mohandas Gandhi

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"What if you worked at educating others about animal cruelty, pacifism, drugs or whatever your concern is, and each year just one other person accepted your philosophy? What if that person did likewise? And so on. After six years 32 would have adopted your philosophy. Another six years and the number would have passed 2000, or if we halve that to allow for those who lose commitment or die, 1000, all coming from what you started a decade or so earlier. That’s quite a difference!"

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All it takes is one person.

One spark to ignite the flame.

Sixty years ago, maybe it seemed like not enough people believed in equality for people of colour for them to ever get the vote or be treated as humans. Then, in ‘55 and ‘63, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. each stood up and fought for what they knew was right. At the time, they would have felt small, part of a minority, and fearful that no change would come, but they spoke up anyway, and inspired others in the process. The same goes for Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall and Malala Yousafzai.

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"Dietary changes could therefore not only create substantial benefits for human health and global land use, but can also play an important role in future climate change mitigation policies." 

I’m not sure if you’re aware of the process of supply and demand, but it’s a pretty key one in this argument. Animal agribusiness does not exist on its own, it exists because consumers continue to pay for it. In purchasing meat/eggs/dairy/fur etc, you are directly supporting that industry not only morally, but financially. We vote with our dollar, so it either goes in favour of a product or against.


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The demand (i.e. how many people want to purchase the product) directly influences the supply (i.e. how much of that product is made). On a smaller scale - look at your home life. Were you to stop eating animal products, your family would subsequently buy less. If you went to your auntie’s house, she might prepare one less meat dish. Similarly, visiting vegetarian and vegan eateries financially supports their organisations and allows them to further their ethical business. On a larger scale, look at your weekly shopping. Say your local grocer orders a certain amount of eggs each week. If you and a few other people decide you no longer want to support/purchase them, their demand decreases. There will come a point where the buying and re-selling of those eggs is no longer profitable as they are left with a surplus of unsold eggs, so they will order less in the future. There is then less demand to produce a certain amount (even if only on a small scale), and it works all the way back up to the factory farms and slaughterhouses. 

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Each of your consumer choices is a vote for the kind of world you want to see. Each of your choices in the past helped build the world of today, and each of your choices from this moment forward will help build the world of tomorrow.

The question is not “can you make a difference?” You already do, it’s just a matter of what kind."

Right now, since I can be vegetarian without causing too much trouble to my mother and family and my own health, I choose to be, because, quite simply, I believe I should and can.