Eline Degenaar
Meat was always the most important part of the dish disposed at my families table. This was the part my dad divided instead of my mom between my two brothers and me. Staring at the meatballs you always hoped you end up with the largest one on your plate. Unfortunately, this one always went to my father because he was taller and had to work hard, as he explained. This made me think meat was the most important part of the meal.
A part of my life I grew up on a farm. We lived next to a cow farm, owned by the village butcher, where every now and then some of my favorite cows disappeared. Also the cute little lambs of the neighbor on the other side disappeared in September. As a child I was very much aware of the production process behind the meatball on our table. My aunt even showed me the body of a lamb in her freezer that she personally had raised in her own house since the mother of the lamb had rejected her. Dead was part of the life of the animal.
Since I was taught that eating animals was a totally normal thing to do, I did not understand friends that were vegetarian. There reasons at that young age was generally that ‘it is sad for the animal’. I learned that these animals experienced actually a great life so for me this reason was not plausible. Later I also heard the other side of the story. On a holiday in Spain the new radical girlfriend of my brother showed me some horrible documentaries of the large-scale livestock farms. Cows killed in terrible ways, pigs beaten by some psycho figures and even dolphins brutally killed by Japanese fisherman’s. I had no clue these animals were actually eaten. My appetite for the Spanish tapas was totally gone. My dad was free to take all the meatballs in tomato sauce.
After this holiday I was more aware of the troubles in the food industry but continued eating meat when back in my old pattern in the Netherlands. It is actually pretty silly that the broadcast of ‘De Wereld Draait Door’ of last Monday has finally made me decide to change this cowardly diet. Party leader Jesse Klaver confessed that he was not a vegetarian. This was a shock for the host of the show since Jesse just argued that we really had to eat less meat. Jesse explained that he is very fond of a piece of meat, but only at this 2 or 3 times a week. And since a steak needed 25 000 liters of water for the production this was something he at only ones a month. His explanation taught me that with some easy choices you can already save the planet a lot of trouble. I started last week with the pilot of eating only meat in the weekend. Two days a week I am allowed to enjoy my piece of meat, making me even more long for the weekend!