<Ask me why>
Alfredo Meschi ASK ME WHY
Why?
Awesome, you're the first that's asking!
I see you are tattooed too.
How many do you think they are?
How many Xs? I have no idea.
They represent the number of slaughtered animals.
How often, in your opinion?
I have no idea but I'm going to eat an hamburger.
Take care.
Thanks.
How many Xs for you?
10.000?
A bit more.
they are 40,000.
And if we were talking about animals, what could they represent?
Uhm, animals who are killed every hour?
It's 40,000 each second.
So every second, around the world, 40,000 sentient beings are murdered.
Just for food, which means no fur coats, no hunting, no vivisection.
When I found out these numbers, official FAO statistics updated every ten years, I made this choice.
I was a hunter, a fisherman. I wasn't born vegan.
It's only about animals for food industry or also for experimentation?
No, just for food.
Just to satisfy our palate, because that's what we're talking about.
Since we do not need to eat other animals to be healthy, we can say it's a matter of taste.
Something far from necessary.
Physically speaking, how are you feeling?
I'm vegan for ethical reasons,
related to my feelings towards animal suffering and injustice
therefore I'm not keen on the nutritional side.
But if you ask me: I feel better.
What makes me feel better is that I don't contribute to this madness anymore.
It would be insane to kill just one animal per second, because we're all people
humans or not.
Just being human doesn't give me the right to take freedom and life from another being.
While I'm eating meat or cheese
I can't picture how they are made.
Even so, when I watch videos about it I don't feel good either,
but the idea just hasn't seeped into my brain yet...
Honestly, I don't know if it springs in the brain or elsewhere.
Talking, communicating, they only go so far
it's not enough to know stuff.
I try to explore other channels, beyond the words.
I like to define myself not an activist, but an "artivist".
Certainly your approach is not aggressive
I think it's correct and fair one.
Ultimately, the purpose is to let people know that 40,000 animals are slaughtered every second.
You could've stayed home, on the couch, or gone for a walk here.
Okay then, thank you!
Bye, thanks.
40.000?!
how is it possible? Are you sure?
The number is correct because it's the number of animals who are killed every second in the world.
But that's a problem because while you reach a certain number of Xs,
the number of killed animals is going to increase anyway.
I hope this number will decrease... anyway being a per second related amount,
even if it grew there wouldn't be such difference.
If it decreases you should remove some of them by laser...
So I guess your diet is...
I'm vegan.
Totally vegan then.
Yeah
But you know, the human body without the essential proteins of meat...
From the Middle Ages until now, the human population has increased due to growing amount of meat available.
That's science...
Yeah, but in the last years, even science is making some adjustements about proteins
and the famous essential amino acids
that first they were 10, then 11, then...
Yeah but...
You can take some DNA samples from fossils so you can find out the diet related to that particular era.
Then you'll discover we were not hunter-gatherers from the beginning.
We were just gatherers for more than hundreds, thousand, even millions of year.
Then at a certain point hunting began.
Yeah but humans were stuck in the Stone Age for more than two thousand years.
In the last 500 years we had an evolutionary leap, in particular for our brains, as never before.
It's all a matter of perspective.
In my humble opinion you can't call evolution killing 40 thousand living beings per second.
Wait, cows have no self consciousness.
Wrong. Not only do cows have self consciousness,
but also some understimated animals like fish have it.
I remember this movie, titled "The sentence", based on a true story where a judge allows basic human rights to a monkey...
Yeah but a monkey is already a step ahead...
Yes, but pigs are even further ahead compared to dogs in terms of self-awareness.
One may argue that veganism is quite extreme. I believe.
I think quite the opposite. If I feel better without killing any living beings, I don't feel an extremist.
Discussing with some people, this debate started: "Is killing a little lamb equal to killing a child?"
"Is sodomizing your child equal to killing a little lamb to make a soup?" One of them told me: "Yes." Then I just saw red.
Alright, I can tell you my views on the matter. Those who think that way, they bear a lot of hate towards humans...
...that are responsible for lots of things.
Oh responsable, yes.
From an anti-speciesist perspective it has no sense. Because we're animals too.
So if I'm against species discrimination how can I hate humans?
So I understand your skepticism, but you can't dismiss the whole sensory capacity of animals that easily.
I mean... they suffer as we suffer. They feel fear as we feel it.
So we, homo sapiens sapiens, have to realise that there are other living beings treated like
...not even in the worst horror movie.
If you watch "Earthlings", that's worse than any horror movie.
Yeah, that's for sure... we're going to get fined, we must go...
Are you serious? Thank you for giving me this opportunity.
Thank you for the chat, bye.
Thank you so much.
That's the number of animals killed in the world for food. In your opinion, how often?
Per day, per day, we kill everyday, you know, how many...
Every second.
Every second?
Forty thousand every second!
The industrialised countries take cows which usually have a life expectancy of 20 years
and exploit them so they just live four, six, five years at the most.
That's all blood. But what they show you in commercials is: "Look kids, drink this milk made with love" and all that bullshit.
The cow always smiles then...
Then they show you children. But what do they have to do with cows exploitation?
I usually don't drink milk. That's not normal. Cow milk is for calves.
Now, if you say "drink a woman milk" people would be grossed out. But cow milk isn't perceived as gross, we're talking about a different animal.
That's an obvious consideration but unfortunately people don't think this way.
Moreover, if you think: "Is there a species that drinks milk from other species?" No, it doesn't.
So why should we go and drink everyone's milk?
I'm vegan but also anti-speciesist.
That's a philosophy that rejects dominance, so in a way all these aspects of industrialization, too.
So I checked out all the numbers that don't add up.
- Deforestation, concreting... - Yeah yeah, it's all related...
So, you know what these 40000 Xs mean?
They also mean 40000 small plastic bottles thrown into the sea. In what timeframe?
Every second.
Every second. What does it mean? That's failure of a whole system.
We should start over, in some other way.
We have to change this system.
Not even change it, but to literally reinvent a new one.
A consciousness revolution. A mindset revolution.
An awakening.
A mindset awakening. We should see milk as a problem, that's what we need.
We should relearn how to think.
By the way, I'm Alfredo.
My pleasure, bye.
Thanks!
An alternative form of protest?
A communication form. They're all real, I swear! Forty thousand animals are killed to sate our palates.
Nice.
How often, do you think?
Well, around the world..
Every hour?
every minute I guess.
Every second?!
My whole body represents just one second.
Count, forty thousand, eighty thousand, one hundred twenty thousand, one hundred sixty thousand, two hundred thousand, that's the pace.
It's exponential.
If a counter started the moment you stopped here, it would now be already at one million and five hundred thousand, two million animals (killed).
So in your opinion eating meat is wrong because you kill animals.
Exactly.
My grandmother was a working-class woman from Livorno, she lived through the war, she was used to poverty.
So there were no animal products, no meat, fish cheese.
She wasn't vegan, but every meal I ate in my childhood was vegan.
And I enjoyed my grandmother and her cuisine.
But if we consider mother nature and the food chain...
But humans are not omnivores.
I think they are.
Humans can be omnivores.
A herbivore could never adapt.
A herbivore could not, but a frugivore could.
And physiologically speaking we're frugivores, that's what comparative anatomy says.
But it's so deeply rooted in our cultural DNA, tradition, etc etc... (omnivorism)
So what are you hoping to achieve?
When one of my pictures spreads, it ricochets from one page to the other.
It gets ten thousand comments, five thousand comments are insults: "go and ink one more X while I eat my steak".
Two or three thousand comments are like: "Oh, I never thought about that"
and then there's a small percentage that gets my message and decide to take that step they couldn't take before.
Good luck for your adventure.
Thanks.
Thanks. Eat your cake, if you still haven't done it.
Oh the chickpea one?.
Besides, it's vegan!
But it's a choice, I haven't eaten meat in three years. I've been vegan for three years now.
You're vegan.
Yeah yeah, she too, that's why I immediately knew it was related to animals.
Yeah this is a cow from Ippoasi [an animal sanctuary].
I've been there, yeah.
Her name is Earth. Maybe you've seen her, too. It was broken because according to the law if you find an animal without an ear tag it has to be incinerated.
Not just killed, but literally incinerated. It was a gift, it's a great honor, I carry it around everywhere.
All right all right, that's a reminder... what's your name?
Alfredo.
My pleasure.
My pleasure.
Thanks, bye.
They're forty thousand! But unfortunately it's not the daily amount, but per second.
Forty thousand every second?
In the whole world. Yeah. It is such a crazy number that I thought "I want to impress just one of those seconds on my skin."
I get it, animals are killed everywhere, every day, even uselessly. It's been a lifetime since last ate meat.
I'm also against any animal slaughter. Furthermore meat is not healthy. But what do you think you'll accomplish?
Nothing.
But I do everything in my power. You and I, in this very moment, simply talking, we're changing the world.
And when you make real, tangible change, is not nothing.
Then, how long it will take to stop this insane oppression, who knows? Maybe it will never happen.
We're destroying ourselves.
Without any doubt. And the vast majority of scientists agree that in 2050 fish stock will be over.
Yeah, I firmly believe so.
And in 2050, comparing sheer weight, there will be more plastic than fish.
Of course. Unbridled consumerism.
Today the only thing you can do is to just stop.
Yes
We've caused a worldwide deforestation, we've cemented the whole Italy...
And they keep doing it! The last lung of the Amazon forest, they continue to tear it apart...
I won't live enough to see this disaster, but my grandchildren will, and it will affect them in one way or another.
Alfredo, good luck.
Thanks, you too. Bye.
Bye. You're young, you can change the world!
So, knowing that's an ear tag for cows, what could these tattoos be?
Crosses for dead cows?
Not just cows.
For dead animals.
And why are they dead? Why do we kill forty thousand animals?
To eat them.
That's it, to eat them. And how often do we kill them? In a month or...
Every day.
Every week?
Every second.
Forty, eighty, one hundred twenty.
Three finger snaps and they're already one hundred twenty animals.
If a counter started the moment you stopped here, it would now be already at four, five millions, probably.
So in this moment we're killing those animals…
I see, because they use them to make sausages too, for instance, those are also made from animals
Everything related to our diet. However, it is more correct to talk about taste:
because you can eat, be healthy, grow up, enjoy life, without having to eat animals.
So this is a slaughter of enormous proportions, useless and unjustified.
We are frugivores, all of our organs evolved for millions of years to eat fruit, berries and small grains.
Since we are a highly adaptive species, we can also become omnivores but we can also choose not to.
Or even better, that's our nature: to eat without eating anybody.
It was, I mean... I met people who told me about this.
We also have vegan friends, some classmates, and at first I couldn't understand the reason why.
Now that I learned about all this...I don't know, let's say it moved me.
I really had no idea. I didn't think it would happen.
I also feel very sorry about this. And I feel moved, too, for all the animals that are killed.
I would have thought forty thousand, say, every year. Not every second. It kind of...I don't know.
What if they were one hundred and not forty thousand?
Nothing would change.
It's still killing
You're still killing animals.
We should adjust our eating habits to a more...
...still healthy diet, but without any animal slaughter
Will you think about it?
Yes.
Yes.
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