Dominique Brooks's blog

When I was seven years old, my day camp took a field trip to the National Air and Space museum. All of us in shorts and green Blake Academy t-shirts, running around laughing as we bought Astronaut Ice Cream. I felt especially awesome because this was when they still had the exhibit about the Air Traffic Controller Strike and my dad was in it as one of the Union leaders. I mean, how many people get to say their dad was a part of the Smithsonian? How cool is that? My friends and I were walking the grounds in a group when we saw a large display in front of the museum. It had a very large crowd, a lot of which comprised fellow campers and faculty from Blake. We ran over to check it out, thinking it was simply an outside exhibition. A girl in her mid-twenties handed us pamphlets with a smile. And we looked at the displays. There were sculptures in it, sculptures of animals. I loved animals, what seven year old doesn't? So I moved closer to get a better look. They weren't quiet nature scenes however, far from it. They were sculptures of an infant monkey attempting to hug its mother, only instead of a live primate, it was a stuffed animal that had been rigged to administer electroshocks, so that scientists could get data on its reactions to physical pain and isolation. Sculptures of rabbits being restrained, their eyes held open as lab technicians sprayed Aqua net into their eyes in order to see harmful after affects. Sculptures of wolves and racoons suffering in too-small cages in the cold, waiting to be choked and skinned for some woman's next fashionable winter coat. I remember being aboslutely horrified, my fun and free afternoon completely shattered. Why would someone allow this to happen? Animals don't actively seek to hurt anyone. They don't do anything wrong aside from living their lives. Why would someone want to injure someone's companion? I had a puppy then, an English Springer Spaniel named Sparky. The very thought of someone doing something to him like this made me want to cry. Why would people do such terrible things? I went home and I asked my mother these very questions. I showed her the pamphlet about the exhibit with frightened eyes. My mother hugged me and told me it would be all right, that she thought it was wrong too. That she wished there was something she could do, because she also found it horrific. She reassured me that her one coat was faux mink and that she never, ever found wearing fur to be acceptable. She said she wished she could tell me why people do the other things, but sometimes it's better not to understand. Sometimes, no matter how much we try, we simply can't understand. When I was twelve years old, my mother made t-bone steaks for dinner. I was excited, because steak is not something we ate a lot in my house. Not due to any lack of money, but honestly because my mother can't chew it very easily because of her disabilities. I took my plate into my room, as I had a large project due for my biology class and ate while doing my homework. When I got to the conclusion part of my lab write-up, I cut a peace of meat away from its bone. With the piece of meat came a huge artery with veins coming off the sides. I stared down at my plate, my traitorous dinner staring back at me. I quietly stood from my desk, went to my bathroom, and threw up everything I had eaten that day. I took the plate back into the kitchen and told my mom that I wasn't very hungry after all, and to give dad the rest of my steak to take to work for his lunch. To this day, I've never told her the truth. To this day, if it's some sort of meat attached to bones, I cannot consume it without becoming ill. There is a reason why I always got chicken strips from Bojangles or Popeyes. There is a reason why I never ate pork chops and why I dislike ribs. And why on the rare occasions I did eat a steak, it was a filet, something with no skeletal remains. When I was twenty-four, I became interested in becoming healthier and more fit. I began to research different options for changing my lifestyle. I joined a gym and began to work out five times a week. I started watching what I ate and began doing almost all of my grocery shopping at Whole Foods and the organic section of Harris Teeter. I did research for good healthy recipes. In my research, I came across many truths about the meat industry, hormones, bacteria, mistreatment. I joined the boycott against Tyson Chicken, KFC, and all of its sister companies (including Taco Bell) for their unncessary cruelty towards their chickens...the squalor, the torture, the starvation and forced dehydration, the still being alive while being processed. I did more research and discovered that there are no government regulations on "free range" farming. That it doesn't guarantee any more humane treatment of the animals being processed for food, all it does is say they got two square feet of cage instead of one. Organic doesn't necessarily denote humane either, just a lack of hormones and less impurities in the meat. I made the decision that year to cut out beef and pork entirely, and to lessen my intake of poultry, becoming primarily a pescetarian (person who consumes seafood but not really any other animal flesh or products.) Primarily for my health, but also because I did not want to support an industry who sacrifices respect and compassion for a profit margin. I have not been perfect in that objective, and have in fact fallen off the wagon so to speak for short periods of time. Now I am twenty-seven. I have been reading and researching this week. I have watched videos demonstrating that KFC has still not changed their ways, that Mars candy company has funded force-feeding of rabbits and dogs their M&Ms and candy bars, to dissect them and check their cholesterol levels. The fur trade in China that primarily consists of people stealing someone's beloved pet cat or dog, starving them, breaking their bones, forcing them to go insane, only to be beaten, killed, and skinned for Lindsay Lohan or Aretha Franklin's next awards show coat or a cow skinned alive in Indonesia for Donna Karan's next new pair of boots. I have signed petitions. I have cried, over and over again, at the suffering that goes on in the offices of companies like L'Oreal. I have seen the photographs of the March of Dimes sewing closed a kitten's eyelids, to study it as it lives in a year of forced blindness, only to be euthanized when it hits maturity. I have read and reasearched atrocity after atrocity and I have come to a conclusion for myself. By the time I am twenty-eight, on May 10th of this year, my entire household will be cruelty-free and I will be a practicing full-time vegan. Because I cannot talk about how much I love my Hachi, my Spike, my Faye, and my Al, and give money to people and industries who do not understand that they would feel pain and suffer in similar ways that we do. They just can't articulate it. I do understand that, at some point, animal testing is necessary for medicines, treatments, and fighting disease. There would be no vaccination for Feline Leukemia or FIV if not for cancer research. But with the advent of in-vitro testing, cellular mock-ups on computers, cloning of human cells, stem cell research, there is no reason at all for it to be still as prevalent as it is. One day it won't be necessary at all any longer, but until then as a last means of determining the affectiveness of certain treatments, we have to resort to that. I am not critiscizing anyone for their beliefs. I will not lecture you about the dairy industry when I see you make a cheese sandwich. I will not take your make-up out of your hands and throw it into the trash. I will not throw paint on your handbags or your coats. I will not ever call you a murderer. This is what is right for me, this is the right way for me to continue to live my life. For my health, but most of all for my principles and my heart. So please return the courtesy and respect my decision. I don't mind people having philosophical discussions in this entry, but do not tell me I've bought into liberal malarkey or that I'm being ridiculous or over-sensitive or a naive bleeding heart, because I am not going to call you heartless or cruel. I would love it if more people would join me, I won't lie and say otherwise...but I can understand why someone wouldn't care to do so. It's going to be a gradual adaptation and process, but I'm up for the challenge. Because...it is the only thing I can do. And if I can save hundreds of animals a year by not consuming them or their by-products, then it is worth it to me. It is true that right now it is a way of our life, but it doesn't have to be. And it won't be for me anymore.