[Male, mid-twenties

Student at UCLA]

My parents, my mom in particular, we’re deeply involved in the Animal Rights movement, back in the 70’s and 80’s, in the early stages of things.  I was vegan, vegetarian my entire life.  As a child I was never forced to be a vegetarian, there was never any kind of pressure.  The only rule I grew up with was, no meat in the house.  My mom was like, “I’m not buying meat, you’re not bringing it in the house, there will be no meat in my house.  If you want to eat meat at school, at lunch with your friends, whatever you want to do on your own outside of the house is up to you, I’m not going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, that’s a decision you have to make for yourself, but there will be no meat in this house.  And I never ate meat.

I grew up around animals.  My first word was the name of my dog, Shadow.  I had a mama cat in my crib with me when I was a baby.  I can’t even imagine eating animal flesh.  It’s just not in my conception of things that are acceptable at all.  To me, it’s kind of like cannibalism, people have that experience of revulsion at the very notion.  Gee, I’ve heard about cannibal cultures and they say human meat is the best tasting meat.  It’s a difficult thing to explain but I think most of the people here [indicates people on stage] understand how I feel.

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