VeganVanguard.com - About the Author of VeganVanguard.com ____________________________________________

VeganVanguard.com's Author

Welcome,

My name is Jeremy Alcorn and I am creator of VeganVanguard.com and most of the material listed on this site. Sometimes, when viewing a website I have a desire to know what the creator is like. In case someone else has such an interest I have created this page. I have also created a trivial fact page listing useless facts about myself. Below is the journey I underwent on the way to Veganism.

I was raised and continue to live, in Beardstown, Illinois (United States for you international visitors). It is a small community in the west central portion of the state, located where the Sangamon and Illinois Rivers meet. I grew up embodying the traditional rural life, very much stereotypical to be honest. I was raised as an omnivore, with an overemphasis on the reliance of meat. From an early age I went hunting and fishing with my family and to be quite honest enjoyed the experiences at the time. The demise of animals was always a mainstay in my life. Through my life in this rural setting I have been witness, and sometimes a participant, to various aspects of factory farms, hunting, fishing, and the fur industry. I enjoyed having pets and kept various species of native and tropical fish, turtles, and lizards. I also used to be a beekeeper at the height of which I kept three hives totaling between 30,000 to upwards of 60,000 honey bees (which is low compared to most beekeepers). I grew up with animals, though they didn’t fair well by my hand. I was taught, or so I thought, to respect animals. Gradually my ideology began to shift.

The Path Less Traveled

A definite step towards vegetarianism began when I started to take courses in Philosophy which taught me, among other things, why philosophical issues were important and how to evaluate arguments posited by myself and others. Eventually, my own life’s doctrine started to bear the brunt of criticism and I began making changes accordingly. Still, change toward vegetarianism was nonexistent. Then I began to watch a show which was being hosted on the network Animal Planet called Animal Precinct. The show chronicled the jobs of New York ASPCA officers, a sort of COPS for animals. I was appalled at the ways humans treated the animals shown in each episode. I took interest in the show because people were punished for abusing animals, something I felt was inherently wrong. This is where philosophy took hold. I knew these animals were sentient beings and possessed the right to avoid suffering at the hands of humans. If animals had this right, I began to wonder, what other rights, if any, they were entitled to. Simply stated, if animals deserve the right to avoid harm in the form of physical abuse because they can experience pain and suffering, then do they not also deserve freedom from slaughter? After all, it seemed arbitrary for me to assert that it was wrong to injure these beings, but still appropriate to kill them.

Eventually, I came to a conclusion and a stalemate. The conclusion was that animals have an interest in survival and avoidance of pain. For me to respect that I would have to stop consuming them. The stalemate involved my unwillingness to take the first step and discontinue my consumption of meat. There were many reasons for my hesitation, though none of them held any merit. As ridiculous as it sounds, I liked the taste of meat and wasn’t sure I wanted to give it up. Also, I was fearful of the treatment I would receive from my friends and family. The sting I felt because of other deviances from mainstream culture was fresh in my mind and I wasn’t looking forward to further rejection by any of the aforementioned parties. I came to rest in a precarious position, a place that recognized the harm meat eating perpetrated upon other sentient beings and a lifestyle that still encompassed such a harmful diet.

About a month later I received an epiphany. Innocently enough I purchased Goldfinger’s new album entitled Open Your Eyes. Evidently the group had switched ideologies as their new album espoused lyrics concerning animal rights. The Compact Disc contained a video called Meet Your Meat and is set to the song Free Me. Meet Your Meat contains explicit footage involving the treatment of animals in the industries of livestock handling and slaughter ₁. To say the least, the video is a contradiction to what we preach; that it’s alright to kill and consume other beings. Once I witnessed the scenes on the Meet Your Meat video it became apparent to me what my procrastination meant to the animals in those industries. It was time for me to stop procrastinating for petty reasons; taste buds cannot dispel or override morality. Furthermore, if my friends and family are unable to cope and accept my new lifestyle change, then it shows a weakness in their character, not mine. I declared that I would purchase no meat before the weekend at which time I would become a vegetarian. I set a date that was near enough to act on the excitement that was building in me but allowed me a couple of days to prepare mentally. Because I was not buying any meat, I would only be consuming what I had already purchased; therefore no further suffering would occur by my hand.

Giving up Vegetarianism

My vegetarianism was short lived but not for the reasons one may expect. I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Also, I was curious as to why vegans chose abstinence from all animal products, because many products, I believed, could be obtained without loss of life. I searched intensely into the issues of animal treatment on factory farms. Originally I thought I would be able to continue eating eggs and various dairy products. However, I soon realized that the suffering of dairy cows, veal calves, and battery hens was worse than their slaughterhouse counterparts. Not only are they treated badly but their lives are also shortened by such treatment. Death is also a mainstay in these agricultural arenas. Also, I realized that by using other animals for human purposes we are subverting their desires regardless of how humane their conditions are. What good is a life that must be lived in total subordination of another? What privilege would a life be where I had to remain a prisoner regardless of how much supposed freedom my captors could grant me? In short, I was vegetarian for a total of two days. By the end of the same weekend I became a vegan (June 17, 2002).

Ending All Vestiges

Eventually, I was able to give my tropical fish to a couple of people who wanted to expand their current fish populations. Rather than have these individuals perpetuate the pet industry by purchasing more, I gave them my fish to care for. I felt this was the best scenario for all. I wanted to take care of the fish but knew they would continue to breed, thus creating a never ending situation for myself and the fish. Simply killing my fish was out of the question as was returning them to the pet store. I wanted to control who would receive these lives and a pet store makes such a determination by who is in the position to purchase them. They received a new home in a couple of well established aquariums. I don’t ask how they are doing because most of them have likely died of age by now, the thought of which is painful to me. It saddens me, often to the point of tears, to think of the life I caused them to endure. They were born into captivity only to die in captivity, how I often wished I could have lived near their natural habitat so that I could have returned them to their rightful lives ₂.

The bees that I erroneously thought I owned, share a similar conclusion. I was a partner with another individual to whom I gave my remaining interest. This was, as far as I know, the only option. If I had left the bees in the wild they would have eventually abandoned the hive to find a natural home, but not before sustaining a catastrophic population loss which may have included the queen. With no queen the entire colony would have died. However, while the bees still remain under the interference of a human, their keeper follows non-traditional approaches. He interferes with the hive only minimally during the year and during harvest he leaves the main hive bodies undisturbed so that the colony may better survive. We have also discussed utilizing a method in which he would leave a surplus of honey, kept in what is called a “super,” for the bees to feast on in the winter. Some keepers take all of the honey and kill the bees at the end of every year, only to replenish their livestock each subsequent spring.

Due to time constraints I hadn’t hunted or fished for three or four years before I became vegan so those aspects were not hard to discontinue. I sold all of my fishing equipment for twenty dollars. In retrospect, I should have destroyed it and if I had it to do again that would have been my course of action. I have kept my firearms as they were gifts from my family. I also kept my archery equipment, except for items which only use is to kill other animals, such as broad head arrow tips (sharp tipped arrows meant to penetrate flesh and split bone). I still enjoy target shooting and will continue to use both my firearms and bow for that purpose. The one thing that remains is the images of the animals I killed. Once proud memories and symbols of my chauvinistic conception of masculinity; now haunt me.

As for my other pets (three cats) I now consider them companion animals or cohabitants (luckily none of them came from a pet store). They are all spayed and neutered so as not to exacerbate the current companion animal epidemic. My treatment of them has also changed to a more compassionate, understanding approach. After all, both the cats and I, equally fail to relate our needs to one another.

Future Plans

One of my plans is to keep expanding this website. I want this site to become a reliable tool for educating activists so that they can successfully debate with those who would deprive sentient creatures of their entitled protection. Also, I mean to effectively question many of the reasons people kill and consume other animals so that they will possibly develop a vegism lifestyle. I have a special interest in undermining hunting of which this website will attest.

Conclusion

As for those concerns about my family and friends; I found my family was more responsive than what I expected. My friends on the other hand did not fair so well. I met harsh resistance and ridicule at the hands of some of those I considered my friends. I have since redefined my relationship with them in light of this new discovery. I still treat them as I always have but now regard them more as acquaintances than anything else. Still, all in all, I am grateful for where my commitment to moral imperatives has taken me. I am a richer and more compassionate person from the experience.

If you have a comment about my story, would like to tell your story, or comment on anything else then please contact me. Also, if you live in my area and are vegan or vegetarian with an animal rights orientation then please contact me. I would very much like to expand my current selection of acquaintances with those who are of similar ideology. I can be reached at

Animal Liberation Now!
Jeremy Alcorn

Footnotes

1 - Meat eaters don’t like to watch this video, which speaks volumes for its impact on the viewer. Meat eaters often upon seeing the video resort to all types of neutralizations such as, “that video is just propaganda,” “I used to work on a farm and I never saw any of that,” and “maybe that happens some of the time, but it is likely rare.” It is also relevant to note that these statements are usually accompanied by a display of anger. All of this suggests that meat eaters wish to continue in their slumber and dream of a world where there activities are benign.

Meat eaters; realize that by purchasing meat you are killing other beings. As separated as you may wish to be from such atrocities, the two; meat eating and killing, are inextricably linked.

2 – Companion animals should never be released into the wild. For most companion animals this is a death sentence as they do not possess the behavioral or biological traits necessary for unaided survival. For instance, even though the black footed ferret lives naturally in the United States many domestic ferrets have been released into the wild only to perish never having developed the proper survival skills needed. Also, releasing exotic (non-native) species into foreign ecosystems may negatively affect existing species of that ecosystem. The northern snakehead is a perfect example. This species of fish was released into Maryland ponds. The northern snakehead has no natural predators in the United States and is a prolific breeder with a ravenous appetite. An added peril is its possession of what has been termed a “primitive” lung allowing it to breathe out of water. Couple this with the ability to crawl across land masses to inhabit other bodies of water and you have a potentially dangerous situation for every ecosystem in which the snakehead encounters.

| | |
| | | |

Posted/Updated: 2/25/07