I was going to write a post about Easter today, the Christian tradition where many celebrate the resurrection of Christ by slaughtering tens of millions of baby sheep. That’s no dig at religion, I know many vegans who are Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish and they are all vocal against their religion’s traditional treatment of animals. Some, like VBT member Professor Richard Schwartz, have written hundreds of books and academic papers showing that veganism and religion can and should go hand in hand.
Being a visual person, I usually start my weekly blog post by finding an image first. So I went to my stock image search engine and typed in the word ‘lamb’. I know we don’t yet live in a vegan world, but the results (pictured above) stopped me in my tracks. It just goes to show the complete disconnect when you search for a photo of a baby animal, and the first photo is an innocent cute lamb gazing at the camera but the next shows it’s butchered, dismembered body parts.
You may see the same disconnect from your friends and families on social media throughout the spring. Maybe they’ll take their children to a petting farm to feed the baby sheep, and then a week later share a photo of the roasted lamb they made for Easter Sunday – without ever connecting the two.
It’s our job as vegans to help others make the same connection we did. People are shocked to learn that lambs are killed at 3-6 months old, but when they walk past that empty field that was full of baby lambs just last week, they assume the animals have just been moved elsewhere.
‘It’s how we’ve always done things’ is a powerfully dangerous statement. So use this time to help people see what you now see. Happy Easter.
David 💚🌱🐑
David’s thoughts from the week, published every weekend for members only.
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