Four years ago, a video on animal cruelty at farms popped up on Chef Dave’s social media feed on his phone. It was a video of newly hatched male chicks being dispatched in a grinding machine, as it was not profitable to keep them alive due to low market prices at the time.
Dave, whose full name is Kalidevan Murugaya, decided to stop eating eggs immediately.
“I asked myself: How many eggs am I eating in a day? Why I am a part of this, which I don’t agree with? I eat eggs and I pay the industry to do this.”
Two weeks later, another video popped up. This time, it was a video on the atrocities in the dairy industry, in which cows are caged in a crowded space while female cows are artificially inseminated.
When the female cow delivers, its newborn calves are separated and fed a blended solution while the nutritious milk from its mother is extracted for human consumption. Newborn female calves are kept alive and when they come of age, the same artificial insemination process is repeated. Male calves are sent to the slaughterhouse for veal and their skin is processed into leather.
This changed Dave’s mind completely. He recalled an advertisement for fresh milk, in which cows were living free and running around on green pastures at beautiful farms in foreign countries. But the reality was shockingly far from it.
