I’ve just read an article suggesting that meat-eating should be made illegal and a new crime of ecocide be put on the UN books.

Now, I’m not against that. The rearing of meat, especially in intensive conditions, no doubt does impact greatly on the environment. Not only on climate change, either.

These intensive farms are purely for economic reasons. The owners can argue all they like about how they aren’t impacting the welfare of the animals, but I saw, last night, a programme that mentioned the rising cost of pork in China. It showed a clip of pigs in what was described, in the case of veal, as crates. The animals would be able to lie and stand, but not turn around. Each crate housed only 1 animal.

Quite apart from the cruelty of this, surely in such intensive conditions, disease must be much easier to transmit. This will mean an increase in the use of antibiotics to alleviate this