The brutal battle for the soul of veganism

Like born-again Christians and recovering alcoholics, many vegans credit their awakening to some kind of epiphany; a pivotal, before-and-after moment which allowed them to see the world for what it is, its true essence unmasked, their animal-free futures unfurling before them with rapturous clarity...

For Andy Faulkner, it all began with his penis.

"For the first 41 years of my life, I was a typical Aussie barbecue-loving meat eater ... Bacon every weekend, steak at night. It was so normalised that I never saw it as an animal – a cow, a duck, or a calf – that was on my plate."

Around his late 30s, however, Faulkner's health began declining. He developed severe back pain and crippling haemorrhoids. He had so little energy that he was struggling to do his job as a primary school teacher. Worse still, he had erectile dysfunction, and was "even looking at using Viagra". One day he was searching the internet for answers when he came across an Australian vegan YouTuber called Freelee The Banana Girl ...a former cocaine- and speed-using bulimic from Queensland who found fame in 2014 by spruiking a raw vegan diet that consisted of up to 51 bananas a day... impressed, Faulkner began his own banana diet.

"I ate 20 a day for a year. But I still wasn't vegan. I'd go to the fridge at night and grab some chicken."

What really clinched it for Faulkner was Gary Yourofsky. Yourofsky, 48, is an American animal rights activist, who, in 2010, delivered an address to students at America's Georgia Institute of Technology...

"That was it," Faulkner says. "As soon as I saw that speech, I went vegan."

The results were gratifying. Within two months, his back pain and haemorrhoids had disappeared, and he was enjoying what he describes as "very firm erections"... He now devotes himself almost full-time to... his preferred form of activism...the Cube of Truth.

Originally developed in Melbourne a Cube of Truth ...involves activists... holding TV monitors. The monitors... play a constant loop... including piglets in holding pens drowning in their own excrement, cows having their necks sliced open, and live baby male chicks being fed into a macerator, where they are ground up into pet food... (A spokesman for the national industry body, Australian Eggs, says..

"current practice is for chicks to be given carbon dioxide gas so they are unconscious before being disposed of"

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