Shatha Hamade

1. Can you tell us about your­self?

I’m a Syd­ney-born girl who moved to Mel­bourne in 2007. Af­ter fin­ish­ing school I studied a Bach­e­lor of Eco­nomics and a Mas­ters in Com­merce at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney. I worked for 9 years as a Pro­ject Ma­n­ag­er for a ma­jor fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider and then de­cid­ed at the end of 2006 that I want­ed a ca­reer change. That’s when I moved to Mel­bourne to com­plete a Ju­ris Doc­tor in Law.

I’m now work­ing for a law firm and will be go­ing off to work as a Judge’s As­so­ci­ate in the Fed­er­al Court in Septem­ber this year.

I love liv­ing in Mel­bourne. I love the food, the cul­ture, the peo­ple, and the live mu­sic. It’s a fab­u­lous ci­ty and I don’t think I could ev­er live any­where else.

I like keep­ing fit and I es­pe­cial­ly en­joy run­n­ing.

(2)    How and why did you go ve­g­an?

I be­came ve­g­an a few years af­ter be­com­ing veg­e­tarian. I be­came veg­e­tarian/ve­g­an for an­i­mal wel­fare is­sues. The more I learnt about where my food came from, the more dif­fi­cult it be­came to jus­ti­fy sup­port­ing such hor­ri­ble and cru­el prac­tices. It got to the point where I couldn’t phys­i­cal­ly di­gest food know­ing about the atroc­i­ties and abuse that the an­i­mal would have en­dured in the pro­duc­tion of that food. So I be­came ve­g­an.

(3)    Did you en­coun­ter any dif­fi­cul­ties? If so what were they and how have you dealt with them?

The biggest dif­fi­cul­ty in lead­ing a ve­g­an lifestyle is deal­ing with peo­ple’s awk­ward­ness. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, peo­ple hold a stig­ma about ve­g­ans where they think ve­g­ans are thin and pas­ty ex­tremists…he­he…I have dealt with such peo­ple by be­ing hon­est and friend­ly. It’s nice to be asked ques­tions about ve­g­an­ism in th­ese si­t­u­a­tions be­cause it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show peo­ple that be­ing ve­g­an is re­al­ly just about not tol­er­at­ing an­i­mal cru­el­ty and choos­ing to lead a healthy and hap­py life with­out harm­ing others. How can you argue with that?

(4)    How have your fam­i­ly and friends re­act­ed to your ve­g­an­ism? Have you in­flu­enced any­one else to go ve­g­an?

My fam­i­ly were a lit­tle con­cerned about my ve­g­an­ism to be­gin with. But they are now very sup­por­tive of it. The main fac­tor driv­ing their sup­port is their re­al­i­sa­tion that I am able to lead a healthy and hap­py life with a ve­g­an di­et, and they are al­so very sup­por­tive of my rea­sons for be­com­ing ve­g­an.

I haven’t de­lib­er­ate­ly in­flu­enced any­one in be­com­ing ve­g­an or veg­e­tarian. A few friends, how­ev­er, have gone veg­e­tarian as a re­sult of hang­ing out with me and ask­ing ques­tions over the years.

I’d like to think that my in­volve­ment in an­i­mal cru­el­ty aware­ness cam­paigns over the years has in­flu­enced peo­ple’s choic­es about their di­ets.

My mum has stopped eat­ing meat which was rather sur­pris­ing! This is a re­sult of her be­ing ex­posed to some of the cam­paigns that I have been in­volved in re­gard­ing an­i­mal cru­el­ty aware­ness. And I’m very proud of her for that.

(5)    How do you feel switch­ing to ve­g­an­ism has im­pact­ed your health?

Hon­est­ly, I have nev­er felt bet­ter. My skin, my weight, and my gen­er­al lev­el of fit­ness has im­proved since be­com­ing ve­g­an.

Many of my friends and my fam­i­ly of­ten ques­tion how I keep up with all of my com­mit­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, I was re­cent­ly able to com­plete a law de­gree in two years while work­ing 25 hours a week and com­mitt­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 hours a week to an­i­mal pro­tec­tion cam­paigns. I feel very en­er­get­ic and fit, and that has al­lowed me to achieve a lot in a short space of time.

It’s al­so a great feel­ing know­ing that I lead a life where I do not bring harm to other be­ings.

(6)    What are some of your favou­rite meals, take­away and/or home cooked (please pro­vide recipes)?

My favou­rite meals are any­thing and ev­ery­thing ve­g­an on the menu at Vegie Bar (Brun­swick Street, Fitzroy), fol­lowed close­ly by Shaka­hari (Fara­day Street, Carl­ton).

My favou­rite take­away has to be the burg­ers at Lord of the Fries on Flin­ders Street in Mel­bourne. Yu­u­u­u­um!!!!!!

(7)    Have you en­coun­tered any ab­surd stereo­types, com­ments or neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes?

Un­for­tu­nate­ly I have. But again, it’s about show­ing peo­ple that I am in fact “nor­mal”…what­ev­er that means!

(8)    Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you?

There are count­less peo­ple in the an­i­mal pro­tec­tion move­ment that have in­spired me. The most in­spi­ra­tio­n­al peo­ple have been the peo­ple at An­i­mal Lib­er­a­tion NSW who first got me out of my com­fort zone by open­ing my eyes to the suf­fer­ing of an­i­mals. I will nev­er for­get how shocked and upset I was af­ter learn­ing about fac­to­ry farm­ing and what pro­duc­tion an­i­mals en­dure in the food in­dus­try. Al­so, the Voice­less or­gan­i­sa­tion has been very in­spi­ra­tio­n­al in show­ing me how pow­er­ful a law de­gree can be in help­ing the plight of an­i­mals.

(9)    What do you think are the most ef­fec­tive ways of help­ing ve­g­an­ism to be­come more main­stream?

By some­how re­mov­ing the blink­ers from the eyes of mod­ern so­ci­e­ty and pulling peo­ple out of their com­fort zones. Peo­ple are ig­no­rant to the suf­fer­ing of pro­duc­tion an­i­mals and don’t re­alise what goes on in this in­dus­try. The rea­son for this ig­no­rance is a com­bi­na­tion of in­dus­try do­ing a great job of ly­ing to con­sumers about where their food comes from, and con­sumers choos­ing to lay low and not en­quire about where their food comes from.

So it’s about ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness. I’d like to think that most peo­ple, af­ter learn­ing about the atroc­i­ties of fac­to­ry farm­ing (and this in­cludes the dairy in­dus­try), would choose to not sup­port such un­ne­ces­sary cru­el­ty.