'Somebody'
As humans, we’ve fought for equality among all races, all genders and all sexual orientations. But what happens when the fight for equality is not a fight for human rights?
One girl lays on her side. Her legs flail in a final struggle to roll onto her feet. Without any avail and no fight left, she bows her head and lies motionless. Her feet poke through the holes of the wire fence she laid against. She will become one of the decomposing carcasses littering the muddy ground – where bones blend into dead grass.
Those alive climb over each other to look for food that isn’t there. Hundreds of red faces peer out from the crowd. One stands next to another breathing its final breaths.
Instead of chirps and clucking, a sombre moan looms over this shed.
To the farmer, these are chickens prepared for dinner plates.
To Emily Duncan, they are somebody preparing for death.
***
In January 2017, Emily stepped into the icy air of Sweden a new person. From the moment her boots hit the tarmac, she began telling everyone at the same time as telling herself, “yep, I’m a vegan.”
“For me it was a really great way of transitioning. People had no idea that I wasn’t vegan, so I just had to live up to it,’ she laughs, the impulsiveness of her decision is still surprising even to her. To become vegan is not as simple as flipping a switch.
The Oxford Dictionary of English defines a ‘vegan’ as a person who does not use or consume animal products. Their diet not only excludes meat like a vegetarian but dairy, eggs and honey as well.
No milk.
No cream.
No yogurt.
No cheese.
In other words: they remove almost everything we grow up joyfully eating. They do not wear leather, fur, wool or silk.
But Emily does not mention any of this when she provides her definition:
“Veganism is living a life that causes the least amount of suffering to the least amount of creatures and living organisms.”
For Emily, veganism is far more than a diet change.
***
Four years ago, Emily and I sat around a campfire in towels still wet with salt water and nothing but eucalyptus leaves and smoke from a portable barbeque above our heads. Our tummies grumbled in reply to sizzling beef sausages, eager for the smell to turn into taste. We never spoke about our diet then. We never had any reason to – our diets were considered ‘normal’.
“Back in the day I was one of those people who was always like,” she tuts and waves her hands dismissively to mimic her past self, “‘I would never go vegan!’” But eating meat never really sat right with her – “I had a subconscious idea that it was wrong” – so she made a stepping stone out of vegetarianism. The final push she needed to commit to a meatless life was the 2014 environmental documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret that shone a light on the destruction caused by the demand for meat products. Those beef sausages were the last Emily and I ever ate.
“I’m a huge environmentalist and I really care about the sustainability of the Earth,” Emily says. “As soon as I saw Cowspiracy I realised that I couldn’t participate in the animal agriculture industry anymore.”
The animal agriculture industry is responsible for destroying more than 136 million acres of rainforest to date, leading to the extinction of 110 animal and insect species every day. It is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and water pollution and is a primary contributor to rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topical erosion and ocean dead zones. While the scale of devastation is difficult to comprehend, it is not hard to believe when considering livestock now covers 45% of the land on Earth and the meat and dairy industries alone hog one third of the planet’s fresh water.
One single quarter pound hamburger requires almost 2500 litres of water to produce.
But vegetarianism left Emily unsatisfied. Something still did not sit right.
Vegetarianism still allows for mass environmental destruction caused by the dairy and egg industries.
Vegetarianism still allows for dairy cows to be artificially inseminated only 40 days after giving birth so milk production remains high. At only five days old, the surplus of calves are transported away from their mothers to be slaughtered.
Vegetarianism still allows for eggs sourced from battery cages where newborn chicks have the end of their beak cut off with a hot wire guillotine and no pain relief despite the many sensitive nerve endings located there. This is done to prevent injuries caused by cannibalism later in life due to the distress of living in barren, crowded cages.
Veganism does not.
***
‘Vystopia’ is a term coined by vegan psychologist Clare Mann that refers to the experience of being vegan in a non-vegan world. Emily describes it as the experience of knowing what happens to animals in the animal product industries while other people do not realise or do not care.
“It is an overwhelming feeling of sadness and grief,” Emily says.
It was the sensation of vystopia that meant simply being vegan was still not enough. Emily needed to spread the vegan message to a non-vegan world.
Anonymous for the Voiceless is an animal rights organisation that was established in Melbourne in 2016 and has since spread to over 800 cities around the world. The Cube of Truth is their main vessel of street activism where masked activists stand back-to-back to make a cube formation. They hold television screens that show the reality of standard national practice and numerous instances of animal cruelty. Surrounding the Cube are is ‘outreach’ effort where activists explain the footage and equip those who stop to watch with the information they need to begin living a vegan lifestyle. Anonymous for the Voiceless claim to have convinced over 271,000 bystanders around the world to seriously consider veganism.
Emily established the Illawarra branch of the Cube of Truth in December 2017 after watching a demonstration in Gothenburg earlier that year.
“Activism is my outlet,” Emily says with a sigh I understand as one of relief. “I realised that I needed an outlet for my anger, so I channelled it into positivity and I tried to spread the vegan message to as many people as I can.”
“I reached out to a lot of vegans and realised there was already a huge community of vegans here in Wollongong,” she says. “I thought why not just make that a community that can come together and actually do something about the cause?”
When Emily described the demonstration as peaceful and the bystanders as positive listeners, I
can’t say I believed her. Images of rolling eyes, waving hands and blocked ears popped into my head, accompanied by the sound of dismissive, angry voices. I was proven wrong.
People stopped, watched and listened. They walked away with pamphlets and asked for extra for their friends. In five hours’ worth of coverage carried over two days and two locations, I noticed one person respond with some condescending sarcasm. But this is not to say that the cube hasn’t had its fair share of controversy.
Emily’s first demonstration in the Illawarra was on Crown Street Mall. It ended with a number of complaints and a call to the police.
“Before this, the Illawarra had never seen any form of vegan activism,” Emily explains. “I think it was just a matter of everybody hearing that something was happening and wanting to take sides straight away without actually understanding what was going on.”
“We had a permit so…sorry!” she laughs cheekily.
They still regularly demonstrate on Crown Street Mall, just a bit further down where everyone seems to be comfortable with it. They continue to spread the vegan message to a community with increasingly open ears.
“The movement is growing,” Emily says.
***
Spreading the vegan message means fighting against a long-lived tradition. We take Vegemite and cheese sandwiches to school, we drink warm milk before bed, we hunt for chocolate Easter eggs and celebrate Christmas with leg ham.
Emily says we accept the tradition because we have been told animal products are the key source of our nutrients – meat gives us protein, fish gives us omega 3, milk gives us calcium. “We’re told that’s just the way it goes,” Emily says with a shake of her head.
Emily consumes a balanced diet. Her nutrients come from flax seeds, tofu, beans and vegetables.
“I will never eat an animal product again,” her nose wrinkles. “By eating that I’m hurting somebody else.”
“I like that you call them ‘somebody’,” I say and Emily lights up, glad that I’ve noticed.
“Yeah, it is an adjustment that I’ve made deliberately because since I went vegan I stopped seeing other creatures as something because they’re not something. They are someone. They’re sentient, they want to live, they suffer just like we would, they want to live and they want to be as happy as possible. For me, that constitutes ‘someone’.”
“As long as animal suffering is happening I’m going to be up in arms about it because it is an injustice and injustices need to be fought until the very end."