livin veg

Editor’s note: Please welcome guest blogger Laura Orban to Livin Veg!

How many of us don’t eat meat, but allow others to eat meat in our home? How many of us don’t eat it but serve it to family and friends? Being in the veg minority among my loved ones, that was exactly what I did for years.

In March, my husband and I watched HBO’s Death On A Factory Farm. We’d been to Farm Sanctuary, we’d seen videos about factory farming, I’d read many books on animal rights and veganism. But watching those pigs being treated with such contempt, and then watching them hang by a chain… I was not going to give one more dollar to that industry whether the product was going in my mouth or not. When we made our grocery list the next day, we bought only veggie burgers for a cookout instead of hamburger. That’s when our house became meat-free.

Some people have been very supportive, trying everything we serve with enthusiasm. Others, who always provide vegan food for me in their home, were clearly not so pleased about the prospect of not being given meat in mine. I really didn’t see the big deal. After all, Catholics eat meat-free on Fridays during lent. Sometimes meat-eaters eat pasta, right? My thinking was that if they were at my house once a month, that was 12 meat-free meals a year. How hard is that?

But then I realized it wasn’t the specific meals at all. Our refusing to buy meat was taking the issue from a level of personal preference to a broader statement on ethics. A meat-free home is saying: Not only will we not participate in this, we will not allow anyone else to do so here. My guess is that some people felt their rights were being infringed upon. I don’t think they liked having their freedom taken away.

I’m sure the animals who live on factory farms would agree that having no freedom sucks.

But I don’t accept the premise that it is a person’s right to do and eat what they want in someone else’s home. When I go into someone else’s home, I respect it. I don’t personally say Grace at meals, but I don’t talk while Grace is being said at someone else’s table. If I am a guest in a home where they don’t consume alcohol, I don’t show up with my flask.

And food is not just food. Food is comfort, nurturing, tradition. Our home is the center of family gatherings. Every year at Christmas we make pizza and a Sicilian dish that I learned how to make from my Great-grandmother. I am the person that has carried on these traditions. The past several years I have spent literally days making pots and pots of sauce and pound after pound of dough from scratch so that our family tradition can continue just as it did when my Great-grandmother was a little girl. The pizza has always been made with pepperoni. The other dish contains pork. I’m certain my family has wondered what will happen at Christmas this year.

Eating in our home is also now a reminder of what they are actually eating when they are outside our home. Eating vegetarian reminds them that behind every bite of meat there was an animal who suffered. My making that statement is probably old hat. But my husband, who is not vegetarian, giving up meat in his own home (and switching to soy creamer for his coffee and almond milk for his cereal), his doing it shakes people. He is harder to dismiss. He hasn’t been at this for years. He saw something that changed him.

Some of our guests are warming up to the idea. We’ve gotten some very nice compliments on our cooking. And entertaining is much more enjoyable now that meat is never a part of it.

Image credit Zsuzsanna Kilian via sxc.hu

Laura Orban is an animal person, vegan and author of a site about compassionate living in the suburbs. She holds in MBA in Management and has 15 years experience in interactive strategy and website effectiveness. She shares a home and home office with her husband, 2 vegetarian children and 2 dogs.

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