YESTERDAY’S article by Karen Harradine, ‘Stop shoving veganism down our throats’ really struck a chord with our readers. Here is a selection of their comments (and please do watch the video mentioned in the final one – it’s brilliant).
David Stuart wrote:
Our reaction is nothing compared to that of the livestock farmers, including my brother, and the many others who earn their living downstream of the farmers, bringing healthy meat to our shops.
As usual urban, metropolitan types can’t be bothered to learn how livestock farming in the UK, almost always on land unsuitable for crops, sustains land management including the wildlife. This in turn is a vital component of sustaining socially healthy rural communities.
If livestock farmers stopped farming, the land would flood, revert to bog, heathland and eventually trees, depending on the local climate and soil type. Many recreational uses would be seriously harmed. Indeed the repercussion across our country’s many, varied and complex ecosystems and our economy would be endless and severely deleterious – but then starry-eyed idealists and politicos of all persuasions don’t do tiresome rational, science-based joined-up thinking – they just emote like children!
GeorgeEH wrote:
I can almost hear the short two-word reply when the BBC tell the indigenous Inuit or Sami peoples of the North, depending entirely on their animals for survival, that they have to become vegan to ‘save the planet’.
Partridge wrote:
The ideological zealotry of some vegan nut-cases is to be deplored. Carnivore diets are, after all, popular in the natural world. We must, of course, ensure that animal welfare in farming is paramount, and for the most part we do.
But ideological zealotry is not limited to vegans, and the imposition of ideological dogma upon others is unacceptable in practices which should be a matter of free personal choice.
There are strong doubts, too, regarding the halal and kosher methods of slaughter, so it is right that the slaughter of animals is properly regulated and monitored, and we should not be afraid to ban practices which are proven to be inhumane.
But I tend not to think of such things when I’m tucking in to my delicious Sunday roast pork, apple sauce and crackling . . .
LoveMeIamALiberal wrote:
I could never adopt a vegan diet; it’s against all my moral principles to eat vegans (even though they are free range and corn fed).
ichabod wrote:
Vegetarianism and veganism has always been associated with crackpots and Leftism. The interesting question is which is cause and which effect. Certainly either of the Vs is likely to result in nutritional deficiencies that affect brain function. Brains need fat to work – so maybe the plan to make the plebs vegan is another ploy to diminish intelligence, and hence political opposition?
Colkitto03 wrote:
Q: When you meet someone new how can you tell they are a vegan or not?
A: Don’t worry, within 15 minutes they will tell you.
lms2 wrote:
This militancy and activism has worked for the Trans activists, so why shouldn’t it work for the vegans, i.e. bully everyone else into accepting their beliefs on pain of public humiliation and/or prosecution?
I do have one question: if we get rid of all farm animals, so no more sheep, cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc, what will be used instead of manure to fertilise the fields? Lots more chemicals that kill insects and other wildlife?
Audre Myers replied:
Ground up vegans.
Suze Burtenshaw wrote:
I hate all those militant vegans and self-righteous vegetarians, and I damn them all to hell! I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years, am healthy, feel healthy, am relatively fit and very happy with what I eat (almost never ‘pretend’ soya burgers, incidentally). I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what others eat. I NEVER comment on what they have on their plate and I truly don’t care whether they are healthy or unhealthy. They make a choice, I make a choice. What I think about it is my business.
Now we have the diet police trying to make people feel guilty about what they eat, and that is beginning to result in a backlash of ‘anti’ feeling toward vegetarians and vegans. There are hundreds of thousands of nice quiet veggies and vegans, quietly going about their daily lives, minding their own business, eating the food of their choice but they will all be lumped in with the stupid, virtue-signalling food militants. It really does pee me off!
boomslang74 wrote:
‘If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why’d he make them out of meat?’
– Homer Simpson
Alice Williams wrote:
I suppose that I am lucky because I know several small-scale producers of beef, pork and lamb, can buy really fresh free range eggs and milk from a dispensing machine from a farm a few hundred yards away. So, yes, it’s great that I can do that and afford to buy good quality, humanely reared and slaughtered meat, but it is not so for everyone. Families and others on tight budgets do not necessarily have that luxury and to be condescendingly told to eat lentils and other cheaper forms of plant proteins rather than factory farmed animal protein, albeit because that is what they can afford, is both condescending and humiliating. There is a great deal wrong with the way many people in the UK feed themselves and highly industrialised food production encourages the consumption of unhealthy foods. Add to that the loss of cooking skills among large parts of the population and you have a ready made health disaster. We have a massively incoherent food culture in the UK. On the one hand we have those who seem to live mainly on highly processed foods and takeaways and on the other the ‘clean eaters’ and vegans with the rest of us taking up the ground somewhere in the middle. Being nagged just puts people’s backs up so what is the answer? I would be more than happy to put my extensive food and cookery skills to good use teaching people to shop efficiently and to cook decent inexpensive meals and I would do it for no recompense if it would be of any use.
captainslugwash wrote:
If meat-eaters acted like vegans:
