Diana Burbano, a Colombian immigrant and punk rock playwright, is always true to herself. She’s been a feminist, a writer, and a vegan for three decades. She writes about food, feminism, and sex. She runs a non-profit organization for sex workers in Medellin, Colombia. She loves to travel, and has lived in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Bogota. She hopes to travel to every South American country and write stories about all of them.
There has, for ages, been a cultural conversation about eating meat in general and specifically about the slaughter of animals for consumption, often referred to as “de-faunation”.
The concept of de-faunation is controversial. People who do not eat meat may feel uncomfortable. Many believe that, with the rise of the vegan lifestyle, it is the responsibility of the eating animal to eliminate or reduce its consumption. Many argue that meat consumption results in the deaths of billions of animals per year, and that eating animal flesh is inherently cruel to animals.
As a vegan, I don’t have any interest in eating meat. I’m not here to convince anyone to change their dietary habits. I’m not here to argue that eating meat is a great idea, or that we need to eliminate meat. When it comes to de-faunation, I’m interested in how, in a time where many cultures are becoming more environmentally conscious, animals are still targeted, slaughtered, and killed in shocking ways, mostly for its consumption.
To those of my vegan friends who would argue that we should kill meat and that animals should be treated more humanely, I say that killing food animals is not good or wrong. It’s a necessary process when you don’t have an alternative source of protein. It’s also part of our culture. We eat meat because it is delicious and delicious food is delicious.
I want to talk about one of those delicious, delicious animals that I was raised eating, and how many of us grow up eating in a culture of meat, from our family table to that of a restaurant we’re not visiting to eat because it’s delicious.
One of