Dear Stephen,

I read about the turkey that you raised and killed and I realized that I should stay vegan, because I could not raise and then kill a turkey or other animal. I have been guilty myself of going astray and running to Whole Foods for "rotisserie chicken". We all know that most "free range" chickens have little freedom and do not live a good life like a real chicken should, so I applaud your efforts at avoiding factory raised animals because I think that is so inhumane and horrible.
I think it is much easier for someone in a culture who never grew up eating meat, like Gandhi for instance.He was raised with parents who told him that animals are sentient beings with rights like humans.
In our culture as kids if a kid told their parents that they wanted to be vegan, the response of many parents would be "Oh my gosh!, my kid has developed an eating disorder." Most people also associate eating with childhood memories, like at our house. Sunday's was either my mom's fried chicken, which I loved, or roast beef. Of course we had the "side dishes" but never considered have a "vegetarian meal".
Anyway, I am not judging you at all, because I recognized myself in your "struggles" with what diet to eat. There are always eggs. That way you could keep the chickens as pets and still have a good alternative protein source besides vegetables.
I did read that scientists now believe that early pre humans were fruit eaters and did not eat meat. I remember reading a book where a Yogi, Sri Yukteswar (don't think that I spelled that right) said that humans are not meant to eat meat. He said to observe wild animals that live on a meat diet and you would know this. For instance, lions, wolves, other meat eaters salivate at the sight of raw blood and meat, whereas most humans find raw meat gory and could not eat raw meat. He was making the point that if we were meant to be meat eaters, we would love the sight of bloody raw meat and want to gobble it up! Yuck! sounds awful to me. Grains and fruit sound much more appealing than raw, bloody, meat.
Some yogi's even turned pet lions into vegetarians, giving them a diet of milk and rice, to make the point that even wild animals can be taught to eat vegetarian. I did read about a woman who was a vegan and fed her dog only a vegan diet, and the dog was very old! So, who knows, maybe even meat eating animals can live pretty well on a vegetarian diet. That  being said, I still give my dog, fish, eggs and chicken, but am considering taking her off of the canned chicken after rethinking how chickens and turkeys deserve better.I might quit that fish oil too. See how I struggle. Maybe next time I will come back as a Hindu and not have these struggles!
On another note, I think that we should give every human on the planet an equal amount of land and take all of the power from large government and have local governments with shared community rule and no one person or groups in charge. Saw this guy on Link TV before I cut off Dish who said that every human would get 4.6 acres, according to the population, probably less now as population continues to grow. Forgot his name. Liked his ideas. But considering how selfish we humans can be, myself included, socialized government rarely works because even people who start out with good intentions are often seduced by power and change for the worse. Hopefully, we will keep evolving for the better before we destroy the planet. Dorothy

Dorothy,

Thanks for this great note! My girlfriend is a vegan so the topic of meat-eating is definitely up in the forefront. I actually sold my last few turkeys to a friend who will treat them well and breed them. So I may be giving up on the idea of killatarian for the time being, as I just have laying hens now.

I agree that our culture is mindlessly meat-eating and almost no one has any clue how little they need the meat they are eating or how much pain and suffering to the animals and the planet that happens because of it. I've been working at a restaurant part time and people throw away so much food, including meat...it is frustrating, like we've been so degraded and detached from nature that nothing other than human lives have value. How can these people be so blind to all the beauty that nature has to offer, and treat it so callously and ruthlessly? I think part of the problem is the stories we all tell ourselves that have been handed down to us, like humans having "dominion" over everything and the planet is here for us to use up as we please. For me, the most important work out there is trying to come up with an alternative story. Part of me being a killatarian at least for a while was to try to get people to think about the meat they were eating because they would walk by my turkeys everyday and then one would be gone. Hopefully this would make them think - where do I get my meat? Would I be able to kill an animal that I raised? I reckon the answer most of the time would be absolutely not. What percentage of people have killed an animal that they've eaten? It can't be very many b/c once you do that, you can't callously throw away leftovers - it is the ultimate disrespect to the animal you raised.

Thanks again for your note!
Stephen