Cenk Uygur is Not Vegan (Not Yet…)

hey the purpose of this video is not to
ridicule genk weger it's not to make these guys look like idiots it's not even to criticize them the reality is the gen Weger is a guy who devoted most of his adult life to talking about political and ethical issues and to some extent researching them and you can hear that at 8 45 he's still just learning where milk comes from it's a question a child might ask but it's a question a child might not get an honest answer to the analogy of there are things that people think you don't want to see right you don't want to see where that taco meat came from at 59 cents right so as I tell that story and I know that correct answer is now you gotta look because the then people are going to make the wrong decisions for you right that if you were looking you'd say no no don't do that don't do that you'd be right to say don't do that so my problem is that I love me right so I I'm doing the same thing I tell people not to do which is I I'm desperately trying not to look like I don't know what it is I don't want to know what it is I fear that if I ever see how they make it that I'll net I won't be able to eat it again yeah for a number of reasons insurance well the your ethical compass would be I would probably keep you from certainly you'd think twice about it or you did what we've done the only thing i would say it without it you know without getting into any of the stuff what actually happens what we've done and we've done a successful because if you want not to know which is very eat and I don't blame people for not why no it's it's horrible i liked it was like a little bit and it's horrible is we've completely isolated our food from what it is it looks nothing like the thing it came from no matter what the food is if it's fish doesn't look like a fish if it's if it's chicken uh something like chicken it's chicken fingers that are digging out that our deep-fried and meat is the same way to take all of it doesn't it doesn't look like that animal anymore so it removes you from the suffering and from the the horror that is that industry so look you're right and and the animal cruelty that happens that's the only part that i do see right right when we cover that show like if you're being quote unquote decent to the cow whatever the that means right and then I eat it later I can live with it right now but if you're beating the cow up and you're doing all these grotesque things to it dumb don't don't do that don't do that what you don't need to do that the only reason you do that is because you want to make an extra buck right I find that but but the system that is really uh established and isn't kicking the out of something is even more disturbing to me and that you know like dairy like I was a big cheese freak you know I would have I love I could I would always say oh my god a cheese store and they're all over Southern California now at all in major cities they're like Disneyland to me I would eat so much cheese and I love it and them started reading stuff and learning about the way they get dairy nothing what's what's the problem of dairy it's like the cows well apparently the cows don't give milk unless they're pregnant so they artificially inseminate them which is uh and by the way that's a whole other thing I did this on my podcast a hold because the woman we had on had written a book about going to all these different farms you'd fall out of Wall Street she was not sure as a city kid or did anyway we talked about so apparently they artificially inseminate the cows and then they get pregnant and of course they start to milk it's for their calf the offspring comes they take the calf they toss it into a wheelbarrow you know the mother screams out I mean it's a they're very maternal these kind of these cows right and they wheel it off and that cow becomes veal okay that calf and they they milk the cow relentlessly the one that is left and she's of course she's in her own morning and the whole emotional thing it's that whatever but they also just relentlessly milk and that's why you need antibiotics for these cat because these those things that they attach to their udders they create all kinds of sores and all this sort of things so anyway they're milked so relentless in this process is continued for their entire lives which are short because they are so unrelentingly milked and then they slaughter them and those are the downer cows the ones that can't quite get up the platform because they're so depleted from this process so no cow is being beaten there in that description that I just gave you that's pretty much just business as usual on a dairy farm there's no and so when I found about that I thought wow man I can't I can't be part of it anymore right it was that was hard for me because I love cheese as I just told you but I had to push away from that so that's the kind of institutionalized mechanism that kind of always bothered me I really can sympathize we're all born ignorant and most of us grow up and stay ignorant especially on simple questions such as where does our food come from but you just heard an example of two people who are highly ethically motivated highly politically motivated highly vocal highly influential and they could be on our side and at age 45 genk Weger is sitting there at a desk figuring out the basics of where milk comes from and deciding what it means and what he's going to do with the rest of his life that's a process some people go through at age 15 25 but some people are going to go through it at age 65 I know someone here in Victoria and she asks you managed to convert her grandmother to veganism and the reason that happened I think she wouldn't have bothered you know having a big confrontation with her grandmother but her grandmother was confronting her her grandmother was trying to convince the granddaughter that she needed me to live you know the story the regular misconceptions that if you don't have meat and dairy you're going to collapse and in the process the granddaughter educated the grandmother and you know in some significant way turn that older person's life around so look it is what it is veganism is an ethical struggle it is an ecological struggle it is a political struggle but it is also in some ways as simple as quitting smoking and people need help to quit smoking I need public education to quit smoking at every age 15 4565 you name it