It has been almost 7 years since I became a vegetarian. I had been playing with the idea for a long time, but that never stopped me from eating a lot of meat. A lot. I loved meat. I guess I still do, because writing these lines makes my mouth water. I like it so much that I can’t stop myself from writing about it. A burger. I want a burger. A steak. Rare. As rare as you can. Raw. I loved steak tartare and things like that. Not to mention foie gras. Now I don’t have them. And, unless I am writing about them, I don’t really care. Actually, I only wish I were eating meat when I think of the things I could cook for the being. On the other hand, she is by now pretty well trained and loves things like this Thai Lemongrass Coconut Soup.

Now, why had I been thinking about becoming a vegetarian for so long before I did? There was a clear disgust for the way farm animals are treated—as commodities, mass-produced, without any consideration for their well-being. Animals raised in farms are treated in horrible ways, kept in cages or in really confined spaces. If given space to move, chickens will run as far as 200 meters from their coop. In the EU, the maximum allowed density for chickens is 9 animals per square meter. Ridiculously, in the US, the most stringent standard (Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC) Certified Humane® standard) says that “free-range” chickens should get 2 square feet—a bit less than 0.2m²—of outdoor space per bird. The EU is more generous, giving “free-range” chickens 4m² of outdoor space per bird. This is better than allocating (a maximum of) 7m³ of water for sharks in an aquarium, but it is still really cramped. You all know that most likely the egg you ate yesterday came from a chicken that, at best, gets 0.1-0.2m² and never sees darkness because light increases egg production. Pigs, cows, and so on, are no better. You also know that chicken farms keep only the female chicks, industrially killing the males by doing things like grinding them alive (globally, 6.5 billion male chicks are killed each year). Labels like “free-range” say nothing about that grinding or its alternatives.

Labels like “free-range” are there to assuage the consumer’s conscience. The packaging of meat or poultry in stores has the same effect. The goal is to completely disassociate a nice, cute calf from the meat on your plate. Not to mention rabbits. I always found this completely immoral. I always thought that if you were going to eat meat, you should, at least once, have killed a farm animal yourself. Or at least have been there when it was done. If you care, I have done that. Actually, quite a few times. Both things. If you cannot face the idea of, at least once, being there when a chicken is killed, or of visiting an industrial farm, but then you eat meat (or poultry) many times a week, then you know that what you are doing is not wanting to confront the horror that makes your ham or your roasted chicken possible. A clear example of cognitive dissonance. And yes, the average meat consumption in both the US and Spain is 270 grams per day (everything included: fresh meat, poultry, sausages, ham, etc.). In 1980, people in Spain ate 160 grams of meat per day, about half of what one eats now. In 1958, it was 55 grams of meat per day. That is a fifth of today’s consumption, and incidentally as much as Spain’s or Germany’s nutritionists recommend nowadays. Those 55 grams are a bit less than the weight of a medium-sized egg, shell included.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I might be a vegetarian, but I eat lots of eggs and dairy, and I know perfectly well where the eggs come from and that if you want to have dairy, there have to be calves and such. Egg-laying hens could live for up to 15 years, but they basically stop producing before they are 3, and it is clear to me that there are no retirement homes for them. I am no idiot. And I am far from perfect. And I don’t think that I will ever go vegan, although I tried. I am no Simone Weil. Thankfully, if I might add.

Now, a surprising number of people flaunt as a banner how non-vegetarian they are. Although it has gotten better, people find vegetarians annoying, not to mention vegans. The internet is full of memes like “for every pig you don’t eat, I eat 3.” Then people argue about how little meat they eat, denying all evidence. A bit like 95% of drivers thinking they are above average—you might know how much appreciation I have for drivers, but if not, you can read about it here. Then, people still argue with you about how little sense it makes to be a vegetarian, how arbitrary the distinction is between killing a mosquito and killing another animal. Some people even tell you about lettuces being living beings. Some people even go full Hobbesian and tell you that it is a law of nature that living beings kill and consume each other. I hear all of that, and I hear cognitive dissonance speaking. And I am immensely bored.

At the end of the day, I didn’t become a vegetarian because of the fate of farm animals, and I will rant about that some other time, but I believe that in, say, 100 years, people will look back at our society and have as much understanding for the ways we treat farm animals (and the natural world) as we have now for slavery.