A Burger flipped this Aussie vegetarian's switch; now she's a butcher

A woman who followed a decade long vegetarian lifestyle flipped completely after she ate a burger during her pregnancy. The woman now owns her own butcher farm. Tammi Jonas made a lifestyle choice for herself, which completely changed her life. 

Vegetarian turned Butcher 

The 49-year-old woman was reportedly a vegetarian during the 1970s. She told international media that she turned vegetarian after she read a book on the treatment of farm animals, which disgusted her enough to drop the idea of eating non-veg. However, after ten years she again decided to taste meat for the first time. Tammi Jonas resides in  Victoria, Australia, during her third pregnancy, she was suffering from acute anemia and that instigated the change. Jonas said that one day, she randomly decided to have a burger and she turned back to eating red meat, beef, and lamb, once a week during her pregnancy. She took her time to taste pork for the first time which led to her having her own pasteurized pig farm. 

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‘Killing of animals for food is not unethical’

Jonas said that she was never against the killing of animals and never believed that it was immoral to consider animals as food. However, she did accept that initially, she felt it was immoral to treat animals with a cruelty which would mean keeping them caged and not letting them live their life. Jonas along with her husband Stuart did collective research only to find out that they can earn a living by having a poultry farm on a small scale and treating animals with proper care and ethics. 

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Jones practices ethical farming

Tammi Jonas now has her own website where she said that ‘My journey from mindless industrial eater to vegetarian to ethical omnivore led me all the way to become a pig farmer to contribute to the growing movement to get pigs and poultry back out of sheds and onto paddocks.’ She further said that “We now grow, butcher and cure all of our meat, and serve 80 households from our thriving community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm." According to Jonas, they practice ethical farming, where the animals are allowed to live freely as long as they are on the farm. She also said that they don't use any harmful chemicals while breeding to ensure the organic farming of animals. She believes that killing an animal for consumption is not unethical if it has had a good life. Also, she calls herself an ethical omnivore.

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