As with most causes, this has noble roots. Nobody likes to think of defenceless animals being kept in pens getting open sores, shot in the head with a bolt, cut open and then ending up in the grill. It does however progress – it progresses to the emotional blackmail and the eventual stigmatisation of meat eaters as nasty people who like inflicting suffering on fluffy animals. We have the tooth structure of carnivores though, and some of the supposedly most “primitive” tribes in the world eat meat. One thing I'd say in the favour of the folks of the Amazon Rainforest is that they are very efficient. But that's because there's no commercial aspect to killing their food. They take what they need and they let live what they don't. The problem isn't with meat eating, it's with big business. It's with government's relationship with big business. The Establishment aren't going to curtail and legislate the slaughterhouse practices of Bernard Matthews because Bernie slips them a few quid not to.
But I digress.
If you really think the animals would be roaming free (even more free than on a free range farm, let's say) if we all went vegan, than I'd like you to at least consider something.
In a country the size of ours, with a population the size of ours (61 million, according to some no doubt highly massaged statistics), where are we going to grow the necessary crop needed to both keep the woolly sheep fed and ourselves? It's not going to happen. They'd cull the animals with bolts to the head, incinerate them, and whatever was left in terms of land would be used to grow crop. Waste of animals, wouldn't you say? Killing them off just to burn the bodies on a bloody big fire. I guess we could share out the meat for a final blow out.
And then you consider how much land is suitable for growing crop. How much is there? I mean nature always wins in the end, so if much of the untended green land we see about us in the leafy south and scarcely populated areas of the north was suitable for growing sweetcorn, we'd see sweetcorn growing by itself. But we don't. We see grass. Lots and lots of green green grass. That's it. Fancy a grass sandwich? We'd better hope there's enough wheat, flour and yeast (plenty of grass though) to make the bread to feed such an amount of people.
It would ultimately mean that we were completely held to ransom by other countries for our food sources. At present, we're not. Oranges from Seville are nice but we could all cope without them. But we're vegan, and we're a nation of 61 million people (at the very least – by my reckoning it could be anything up to 64 million, and illegal immigrants still need to eat). So we're all going to survive on sweetcorn from Buckinghamshire, corn from Oxfordshire, imported tofu from Japan for the snobs.
It simply won't work.
Humans are meat eaters, just like dogs, birds of prey and predatory fish. But as usual, the blame is laid in very human nature rather than those who profit out of the inhumane practices used to kill animals for fulfilling that human nature. Why does nobody ask questions of Tiger sharks that chew up smaller fish? Some of them even get swallowed whole to be digested alive in stomach acid. Can't be pleasant. Nobody questions the government's lack of action regarding the treatment of animals. They simply blame meat eaters because it's easy, and it's what The Establishment want.
I do sometimes wish my former friend had thought twice before such outbursts. I do. There simply isn't enough space for us all to be vegan, and it's not even natural. But for now, I'll respect anyone's choice to do it, even find it honourable. But I shall defend to the death my right to be a human. It's those who are inhuman that vegans should be directing their vitriol at.
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