Vegetarian Journal's 2003 essay winners

UNTITLED

By Raine Lamb, 9 yrs

Colorado Springs, CO

MY NAME IS Raine Lamb and I am a vegetarian. I have never eaten animals in my life. One of my friends said that fish and birds are not meat, but anything with a face that is killed is meat. I don't eat anything with a face!

I am a vegetarian because I love animals and I hate it when they are hurt. I think it is terrible when people kill animals just for food. There are other things to eat! I understand the part where the animals kill each other for food cause they barely have a choice, but we do.

If you eat pork, that's a pig. If you eat beef, that's a cow. People don't think about what they eat because they change the names to feel more comfortable eating dead animals.

If people knew how cows and pigs and chickens were raised and killed, they might choose to be a vegetarian like me.

I think people should get to choose. Even though my mom and dad chose for me to be a vegetarian, I am old enough to make my own choice now. I choose to be a vegetarian. My favorite animals are dogs, cows, pigs, and frogs. When I grow up I want to be a vegetarian veterinarian.

WHO KNEW?

By Nikki Fiedler, 17 yrs

Gainesville, FL

I ADMIT IT; I ate meat. To be completely honest, I consumed it in large quantifies. No, make that tremendous amounts. Meat took the starring role in breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There were the limitless options of burgers, meaty omelets, flaming steaks, or spicy tacos. As any typical teenager, diet was not my forte, and thus the seemingly perpetual cycle of "meat: it's what's for dinner" became my motto. However, this is not the account of my past relationship with the carnal side. Having "crossed over," as far as diet goes, I have discovered the universal significance of transforming my life into the life of a vegetarian.

Beginning in Honduras, my alteration of lifestyle became apparent as I witnessed the world outside of America. At an impressionable age of 16, I embarked on a life-altering experience with my church to go on a mission trip to a third world country. The poverty, malnutrition, and rampant disease prominent were a splash of frigid water in my face. Coming to take the basics I had received all my life for granted made the switch to a country of less fortune even more contrasting. Administering what I would deem "basic food" to the civilians made me realize how selfish I was and how wasteful I was in my relationship with food. The essential nutrition needed by the citizens did not cover meat, nor did ! absolutely need this meat to survive. Strikingly, I became aware of the millions of miles of pastureland dedicated to cows in the United States, serving only to sate the appetite of those who were already fortunate. If that land was utilized for crops, imagine how many more mouths it could feed. With this revelation, I knew I could not continue squandering my days as a homogenous carnivorous human being.

It was early one morning on one of the last days in Honduras that my epiphany completed its metamorphosis. Since the start of the missionary journey, a young native girl had grown attached to me, and I to her. Rosanna, a petite girl, with a deeply tanned, frail figure complemented by raven dark hair and adoring eyes, followed me everywhere I went. She had a pet chicken she called "Clucky" and which I cannot pronounce correctly in Spanish. A missionary had been talking about her incredible craving for a McDonald's chicken sandwich, since our sabbatical was impinging on her former fast-food junkie type diet. Rosanna gazed up at me with widened eyes brimming with confusion and fear.

"People eat Cluckies?" she questioned meekly. I explained to her gently that some people do not keep chickens and other deemed farm animals as pets but raise them for substance. She sat down on the dirt of the village slowly, pondering this apparently startling knowledge I had imparted on her with the feeling of great responsibility. I held her delicate little hand and asked if she wanted me to continue my explanation of the Cluckies and other such animals of the world who find their place on the dinner tables of many households. She shook her head no and blew me away with an astounding account of her opinion on my philosophy.

"I no understand. Clucky is same everywhere," she began in broken English. "We are like Clucky. We eat. We sleep. Why would we eat Clucky? He is living too. He is nice. I love Clucky. How can nobody love him too?"

In that afternoon, I sat with her and we held Clucky. Stinky, dirty, pecking Clucky. In my arms was not just a feathered chicken dinner but a breathing, existing animal. And it was beautiful. Every animal, big and small, from the peskiest mosquito to the exotically beautiful peacock, everyone was special and placed on the earth by God. Somehow God knew why each one specifically was important and this greater respect, and the knowledge that others in different countries were going hungry, enabled me to grasp the reason of vegetarianism and embrace it wholeheartedly.