Varmblod är Charmblod

Sara Franklin Franklin

9^th grade

Antonskolan Österäng

A meat free story

To tell you this story we have to start from the beginning. I was born in Guatemala 1999, my family have always cared for the animals, people and the ecosystem. I have traveled a lot, I have been in Costa Rica, Honduras, Mozambique, India, Germany, Spain, Morocco, Mexico and many more countries and places. Because of this, I have seen a lot.

I care a lot about animals, since I was a baby we had this dog, Luna. She was like my sister but last year she fell asleep and didn´t wake up, I can´t believe it´s a year since she left us. It feels like yesterday. I have also a close relationship with horses, that probably affected me to, When I was four years old we borrowed two small ponies and ever since then what I can remember I had horses in my life, only for those three and a half years we lived in Guatemala I did not have a horse at home but I still went to an equestrian stable and took riding lessons. Now I have my own pony, his name is Sammy and he is my biggest and only love. This affected me in the matter of way that I became very close to animals.

I think my first real project about Animal Rights was when I was in 6^th grade and we were working about North Europe, I chose to work about links, about how they are hunted and killed even if they are just 3,000 left in Sweden. I was very upset about this and wrote to the newspapers and collected a name collection to see how many would like to stop the hunting of links totally. Last year one of my biggest dreams was to be a member in ”Greenpeace” and fight for the whales´ rights and stop the killing of them.

The idea has always been there I think, but it really started last year when I stopped eating pork because they are treated very bad. This spring, I decided to not eat chicken at all because I visited a chicken farm and saw how bad they had it. This summer, I worked in a farm to earn some money but when I started to work with the pigs, I felt really bad. They had no place to ”play” and walk outside. Their ”cages” were very small and they didn´t have much place to move around on. The baby pigs were almost walking around in dirt. This experience made me even more strong, and I would NEVER eat any pork after this! When I started 9^th grade, I started to eat as little meat as possible, and since I started school, I have not eaten any meat at all.

I think it was a good idea to start with not eating pork and then climbing up to not eating any meat at all. That gave my body a chance to accommodate. Now, when I smell meat, I think it smells disgusting, and when I see someone eating pork, I always think of the pigs where I worked.

My mom is a vegetarian, so at home, we mostly eat vegetarian food, and when I became a vegetarian it did not change so much at home. I like vegetables and the vegetarian options; so since I have been a vegetarian, I have been open to new suggestions, and I have tried more different types of food. Sometimes, when I am somewhere else and they don´t have any vegetarian option, it might get very complicated.

I don´t think that my close friends were so surprised over my choice to be a vegetarian, but most people were kind of ”shocked” that I was a vegetarian. Many persons ask the most common question - ”Why?” Sometimes, I get irritated when I have to explain it over and over again, and often they still think I´m ”crazy”.

However, mostly I like to tell people about the pigs and how the ecosystem is affected by our big amount of meat producing. Often, they think it´s interesting, but sometimes they start to argue with me and try to convince me to start to eat meat again, and when people do that, I get very annoyed and sometimes angry. I don´t tell them that they are stupid because they eat meat so they shouldn’t´t tell me that I am stupid because I don´t eat meat. When I get really upset, I just say ”mind your own business!”.

I like being a vegetarian. Since I became one, I have started to care more about the world around me. 

This is my story about being a vegetarian.