Ten years ago I became a Vegetarian. 

To many that statement is straightforward enough to not invoke a raised brow or ponder for longer than it takes to read it. But for me, my family and interestingly enough my friends it was, { and sometimes still is }, a HUGE deal.

The thing is, I'd always been a proud carnivore. I didn't just love meat, for me it was a love affair whose passion always raged at the highest level.  I can only reason that it was something I was born with. As a child I would happily down a second or third helping of liver with onions. Reveled in that gently popping sensation in ones mouth when teeth penetrated a just sauteed kidney. And longed for stringy curried goat flesh between my teeth. Eating meat, was a multi-sensory experience and each meal a psychedelic trip that left me in a gastronomically euphoric state.

I kid you not. 

Then one day everything changed. Despite what one friend claims, it wasn't <strong>one </strong>specific event that 'turned me'. Rather, over the years tiny cracks in my meat loving fortress were ever so slowly compromised until my resolve caved and vegetarianism was the only and most important thing before me. 

There are many ironies in choice. Not least, the fact that I always used to mercilessly mock vegetarians. I just didn't 'get it'. "No meat? Whyever would you choose to do that?! Something surely must be WRONG with you." To my brain, vegetarianism was like trying to explain Shakespeare in Lithuanian to a class full of Japanese students. There was merely no comprehension at all.

The first crack in my fortress had to be <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001792/">v.Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease</a> { vCJD }, more popularly known as Mad Cow's Disease. I remember when cases started making news in the UK. Images of girls retreated to a mere shadow of the person they were merely month's before. Non-communicative, demented, wasting away, fragile and most worryingly, incurable. 
Appropriately, the public reacted with outrage. As for me..I wasn't quite sure what I felt. All I remember was being stunned that this could be the end result to someones short lived life and the reason, not the business end of a gun. But shoddy farming practices. I stared stunned and open mouthed at many and any reports of vCJD sufferers and their inevitable deaths.

Although I was shocked, I wasn't motivated to make any change. Why should I? Meat had been my faithful escort for so many years, why would I leave it now?

Fast forward several years. A transatlantic move and many new life experiences under my belt. It's funny, moving to another country. People ask a lot { of the same } questions. Whether out of general curiosity or due to necessity - ie. employers, doctors etc.  It was here that I learned that "If, from January 1, 1980 through December 31, 1996, you spent (visited or lived) a cumulative time of 3 months or more in the United Kingdom." You could not give blood. Not ever. The reason? The prevalence of Mad Cow's disease. 

This stunned me. I knew vCJD was a bad thing but to see in print from the medical industry that they full well realised the serious effects, and shockingly long incubation of the disease somewhat frightened me. 

I wondered which meal, if any, had been my poisoned chalice..

But the thought didn't stay so much as eat away in the back of my mind. Like the white noise of an oscillating fan in a warm summer room.

A move again. This time a lot of meditative thought was taking place. Trying to come to terms with oneself and realising that what I was told a few years back by a best friend, that I was 'fundamentally the person I was always going to be' was incredibly true.

If that was true, then I was a person of my word, who staunchly and unapologetically stood up for what is right vs what is wrong. And I was getting a creeping feeling that for me, buying into the meat industry and consuming its sacrifice was...wrong.