Letters | 31 January 2019

Vegan excess

Sir: As a lifelong vegetarian I am heartily sick of vegans and of the amount of attention that is being paid to them. (‘The great carniwars’, 26 January). Vegan food is everywhere, in places where it used to be difficult to find vegetarian dishes. Often it tastes of nothing much and has the consistency and flavour of sawdust. Their principles of not harming animals seem to me to be a little warped. I accepted long ago that animals have to die to provide meat for people and pets. Vegans would do well to campaign, if campaign they must, against factory farming and cruel methods of slaughter. Issuing death threats for farmers seems a little extreme. Why should the life of an animal have more importance than that of a human?

When my husband was alive, I tried to give him the best meat, from animals which had been reared locally. I buy locally produced organic milk. But no way would I give up dairy products, eggs and honey. So could we have a little less hysteria and a little less attention paid to these fools?
Sally A. Williams

Dinas Cross, Pembrokeshire

We need manure

Sir: I carry out to the letter what Jenny McCartney advocates at the end of her piece; rearing cattle on organic grassland, untouched by artificial fertiliser or pesticides. The result is that antibiotics are rarely needed. But there is one thing an organic farmer cherishes as much as his animals, and that is the soil which is so vital to all life. It would be near impossible on my thin topsoil, above chalk, to grow anything without the use of animal manure.

At this time of the year my cattle have the choice of picking what grass remains in their field or coming in to lie in the barn, on straw freshly laid over their manure, which will make fertiliser for next year.