Something inside me broke. As a meat eater I didn’t know any better. I didn’t realize animals could suffer. For me it was just about the money. After seeing the inside of the piggery I’d built, I couldn’t stand by anymore.
KATRINA FOX: ‘Wally Fry had just finished building an industrial piggery. He was proud of the work he’d done on the project with his construction firm in his native South Africa and went along to inspect the now-operating facility. What he witnessed changed him forever: Thousands of pigs – who are as smart as dogs – were crammed into barren, concrete pens. Recognizing that these curious, playful and sentient animals were destined to spend their lives suffering in pain and misery before being transported to a slaughterhouse where they would die, kicking and screaming in terror, Fry experienced an epiphany…
“Something inside me broke,” he says. It was 1987 and this incident was the final straw that prompted the entrepreneur’s transition to cruelty-free living on a journey that had previously involved a stint as a livestock agent, selling goats from the family’s farm… “It was far from ideal but I was just trying to make us a living. As a meat eater I didn’t know any better. I didn’t realize animals could suffer. For me it was just about the money. After seeing the inside of the piggery I’d built, I couldn’t stand by anymore. Everything Debbie and Tammy stood for became clear: All life was precious and I could live without sacrificing the life of another”…
His wife, Debbie, a vegetarian, had begun planting the seeds of consciousness shortly after they met, and his then three-year-old daughter, Tammy, a born vegetarian, regularly piqued his conscience with her questions about why people killed animals. “Debbie would name the goats and get attached to some members of the herd, separating them from the ones that would be taken to market,” says Fry, who grew up on a sugar cane farm in rural Zululand in the 1950s.. After making the decision to turn vegetarian (and later vegan), Fry began experimenting in the family kitchen to create protein alternatives for his own consumption. “I knew I had to create an alternative that I enjoyed, otherwise I may not have been successful in remaining vegetarian,” he admits.
When family and friends tasted and requested the products – which originally consisted of a sausage, hot dog and burger – Fry realized the potential business opportunity. Like any startup, it came with challenges, including the fact that in 1991, when The Fry Family Food Company was registered, there was virtually no market for vegan products in South Africa. “It required us to spend hours on advocacy and showing people how tasty plant meats could be and how easily you could switch to a plant-based diet,” says Fry. “This meant weekend markets, events, and shows – every weekend”.’ SOURCE…
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