I do not eat corpses

PalmaI like animals so much that I had to stop eating them. I don't eat corpses, I can't, my body rejects this possibility. It is an entirely instinctive thing. I imagine slaughterhouses full of suffering and I am paralyzed. There is no ethical decision behind it, nor do I think about extensive livestock farming or the environmental need to reduce meat consumption. Simply, I cannot eat a dead body in the same way that I could not eat shit that I found on the street.

As often happens when you deviate a few centimeters from others, many people ask me for explanations as to why I don't eat meat. “I can't,” is my answer in 100% of cases. It annoys me to have to justify decisions that I don't impose on others – in fact, my children eat meat, my animals eat it too. I don't want to know why you eat meat. It doesn't seem wrong to me that you do it. But that is not what my body asks for.

Like the rest of mortals, I eat as I can. Often at odd hours and poorly. I should consume more legumes and vary my vegetables more. I have to supplement B12 and some mornings I forget. But I don't feel anguish in front of the plate, because there are no dead animals.

Sometimes, when I eat lunch alone at home, I watch my animals. Three cats and two dogs. And I touch them right away, because I like to feel the warmth of their living bodies. How much suffering is there in the world in a single instant? How many creatures approach death with indescribable anguish? Why is the developed world (in economic terms only, of course, not ethical) not even capable of making a reductionist approach to meat consumption? The last question is naive, I know. The world has not reached this point of disaster by making, precisely, approaches that take into account the suffering of others.

I think of Peter Singer, a key thinker for animalism. He talks about the contradiction between values and customs. Because many people don't like to think about the suffering of animals, but they don't change their consumption habits by a single millimeter.

My two dogs and one of the cats that live with me are very old. Every day I have to play nurse: one has to take a pill; another, syrup; another has to eat special feed... The female dog walks like a little grandmother and cannot chew very well and the male dog, who is a barker, the other day got bitten by another dog. Furthermore, the cat has recently gone blind, and now he is learning to move around the house safely. I am also starting to get old. So we spend wonderful moments on the sofa while we watch the two young cats playing. They don't need us for anything and, when they get tired, they join us. My children laugh at me, they say I am like Mowgli. When I arrive home this evening, all five will come to greet me (each with the effusiveness typical of their age). I will sit on the floor for a few minutes and pet them. Then they will follow me around the house, they will watch me. And I will smile, I won't be able to do anything else.