No, I have not always been a vegetarian. In fact, I used to be a heavy meat eater since childhood. Since I became aware of what was behind that, reading and attending to speaches about karma, transmigration of the soul, and animal cruelty, the thought of eating meat started to clash with my ideal of life.

It was because of the animals, tortured and forced to eat unnatural food for them, in cages, being raised just for the purpose of becoming food products for people, that I decided not to go with this wicked and selfish idea any more. If you ask me: do you miss eating meat? I have to tell you that I'm amazed by the fact that I don't miss it, and I did not know it would be so easy to let it go. Think about decaying condition of the meat you eat (it is a corpse, after all), with not only toxic substances from the corpse and chemicals added to make it look better, but also the miasma (energy of pain and suffering) from the animal, that the meat is loaded with.

Animals feel pain too, they make their noise (scream) when hurt, and they suffer. There are organizations created to protect animals, but unfortunately they have excluded so many living beings from this service. Remember, animals are not just "cats, dogs", or "pandas".