- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
I don’t know why, but I seem to have come across a lot of uber vegan/animal rights extremist nutter presence and sentiments of late.
Obviously it’s all over the social media and the web – those earnest keyboard warriors can spend their evenings pushing their agenda at no cost I s’pose. I could tune out of that kind of stuff, and keep myself in a comforting bubble……….but it intrigues me. And I try to be empathic and balanced, and consider whether there’s any merit in their sentiments.
In the farmy press there’ve been sporadic warnings to be on the lookout for the militant vegan types sneaking around pig farms, trying to find any transgressions in welfare. Socially I’m hearing a bit about what the anti’s have been up to in a couple of other perfectly legal ‘rural’ activities.
Then abattoirs both locally and further away are under constant pressure from these ‘activists’. There’s a concerted continuing attempt by a vocal minority to demonise the whole meat industry. They cling to ill-informed rationale, and plead their righteousness. We’re cruel, wicked, destroying the planet, and probably boil babies and nuns to boot.
I was thinking about this as I dropped a home bred Beltie steer to the plant where our retail beef is slaughtered and hung. He’d spent his 3 years skidding around the hill up here, and lived as happy a life as a beast might expect. I unloaded him still covered in bits of the gorse he’d been grazing amongst that morning, for he’d been living mostly on…well, not even unimproved pasture, but rather barely managed moorland scrub. Whortleberry, heather and rushes all figured heavily in his diet, which is not quite what the anti’s want you to believe. I handed him over to a steady competent ‘lad’ whose been quietly handling my cattle for over 30 years- again, not what they want you to hear.
I’m very comfortable with my profession- I sincerely believe it’s an honourable and sustainable way of life. And I don’t much care for people implying otherwise. I acknowledge it’s an individual’s choice how they take their own sustenance, but perhaps these aggressive vegans should search their saintly souls. Growing crops for human consumption relies on a near total suppression of the natural fauna and flora. For instance, if you consume soya products it’s difficult not to be supporting the destruction of tropical rainforests. Of course, the demonstrators and activists might all be righteously tending large allotments, eking out a thin living in this temperate soggy climate….but you know, somehow I rather doubt it.
Then this week the sky was falling because some tallow product is being used in the new fivers…..and I’ll be writing my letter of outrage in the warm glow of some flickering scented candles made of….Oh. And then some actress bird I’d never heard of was stridently assuring us she’d rather go naked than wear wool. Now I don’t know this lass, so I can’t say whether I’d prefer to see her in the nud, but hearing her spout such garbage, perhaps she ought to be seen and not heard. I hear PETA are rabidly against the wool trade –and they seem to be rabidly against quite a lot of things, seldom letting reality or the truth get in their way. Their glossy ad backalong was trying to suggest that lambs are killed for their wool. It would’ve been just silly if it hadn’t been so hurtful and dishonest. Wool is the ultimate sustainable renewable material. Using an age old symbiosis with our sheep, we convert rough pasture into warm clothing…what could be better? The wool clipped off the backs of many of my ewes –albeit with much sweating and good humoured grumbling from highly skilled operative Dave- has a carbon footprint of nil. That’s NIL folks, and afterwards none of the sheep look like the fake lamb in the setup PETA ad. Oh, I’m also led to believe that the landscape my sheep graze is actually sequestering carbon as they graze….so they’re undoing the damage which is done by using synthetic fibres from elsewhere.
So while the glib moron actress thinks she’s on the moral high ground, the reality is somewhat different. Does she want us to believe every stitch of cloth on her back has squeaky clean credentials? No, of course it doesn’t, she’s just spouting ignorant trendy soundbites. Open your eyes girl, you’re part of the problem. In fact, with billions upon billions of hungry human beings all wanting as big a slice of pie as they can get, it’ll be me and mine that find the solutions.
There, I think we’ve done well to get as far as we have. And there’s still some beef from that steer available…. You know the drill.
Obviously it’s all over the social media and the web – those earnest keyboard warriors can spend their evenings pushing their agenda at no cost I s’pose. I could tune out of that kind of stuff, and keep myself in a comforting bubble……….but it intrigues me. And I try to be empathic and balanced, and consider whether there’s any merit in their sentiments.
In the farmy press there’ve been sporadic warnings to be on the lookout for the militant vegan types sneaking around pig farms, trying to find any transgressions in welfare. Socially I’m hearing a bit about what the anti’s have been up to in a couple of other perfectly legal ‘rural’ activities.
Then abattoirs both locally and further away are under constant pressure from these ‘activists’. There’s a concerted continuing attempt by a vocal minority to demonise the whole meat industry. They cling to ill-informed rationale, and plead their righteousness. We’re cruel, wicked, destroying the planet, and probably boil babies and nuns to boot.
I was thinking about this as I dropped a home bred Beltie steer to the plant where our retail beef is slaughtered and hung. He’d spent his 3 years skidding around the hill up here, and lived as happy a life as a beast might expect. I unloaded him still covered in bits of the gorse he’d been grazing amongst that morning, for he’d been living mostly on…well, not even unimproved pasture, but rather barely managed moorland scrub. Whortleberry, heather and rushes all figured heavily in his diet, which is not quite what the anti’s want you to believe. I handed him over to a steady competent ‘lad’ whose been quietly handling my cattle for over 30 years- again, not what they want you to hear.
I’m very comfortable with my profession- I sincerely believe it’s an honourable and sustainable way of life. And I don’t much care for people implying otherwise. I acknowledge it’s an individual’s choice how they take their own sustenance, but perhaps these aggressive vegans should search their saintly souls. Growing crops for human consumption relies on a near total suppression of the natural fauna and flora. For instance, if you consume soya products it’s difficult not to be supporting the destruction of tropical rainforests. Of course, the demonstrators and activists might all be righteously tending large allotments, eking out a thin living in this temperate soggy climate….but you know, somehow I rather doubt it.
Then this week the sky was falling because some tallow product is being used in the new fivers…..and I’ll be writing my letter of outrage in the warm glow of some flickering scented candles made of….Oh. And then some actress bird I’d never heard of was stridently assuring us she’d rather go naked than wear wool. Now I don’t know this lass, so I can’t say whether I’d prefer to see her in the nud, but hearing her spout such garbage, perhaps she ought to be seen and not heard. I hear PETA are rabidly against the wool trade –and they seem to be rabidly against quite a lot of things, seldom letting reality or the truth get in their way. Their glossy ad backalong was trying to suggest that lambs are killed for their wool. It would’ve been just silly if it hadn’t been so hurtful and dishonest. Wool is the ultimate sustainable renewable material. Using an age old symbiosis with our sheep, we convert rough pasture into warm clothing…what could be better? The wool clipped off the backs of many of my ewes –albeit with much sweating and good humoured grumbling from highly skilled operative Dave- has a carbon footprint of nil. That’s NIL folks, and afterwards none of the sheep look like the fake lamb in the setup PETA ad. Oh, I’m also led to believe that the landscape my sheep graze is actually sequestering carbon as they graze….so they’re undoing the damage which is done by using synthetic fibres from elsewhere.
So while the glib moron actress thinks she’s on the moral high ground, the reality is somewhat different. Does she want us to believe every stitch of cloth on her back has squeaky clean credentials? No, of course it doesn’t, she’s just spouting ignorant trendy soundbites. Open your eyes girl, you’re part of the problem. In fact, with billions upon billions of hungry human beings all wanting as big a slice of pie as they can get, it’ll be me and mine that find the solutions.
There, I think we’ve done well to get as far as we have. And there’s still some beef from that steer available…. You know the drill.
