Victims of vegans
Even in prehistoric non-agrarian times, the nearest we ever were to the vegan nirvana, some hunting and fishing and stealing of birds’ eggs and bees’ honey, etc was still necessary for survival, and even then the earth could support only a minuscule fraction of its presenthuman population.
We therefore learned to breed and keep domestic fowls and animals which could turn rough pasture and grain into the protein which we omnivores ( just look at your teeth) need for existence .
These creatures also need some cultivated crops and human care for survival. If we simply turned them loose (Jennifer White, Letters, 20 October) then both they and we would rapidly perish.
In short, I don’t mind a small number of people adopting a vegan lifestyle so long as they realise that they are consuming much more than their fair share of the earth’s directly edible food resources and refrain from preaching at the rest of us who provide them with this sustenance.
(DR) A MCCORMICK
Kirkland Road, Terregles, Dumfries
Has Jennifer White fully considered the future prospects for farm animals if the human population became totally vegetarian?
Farmers are businessmen and must make a living like anybody else. If there were
no market for pigs, for example, they would change their fields over to other crops and stop breeding them; certainly there would be no economic advantage in buying food for them and they would soon become extinct, except perhaps for a few kept in zoos for old time’s sake.
Similarly. sheep are useful for wool but much less of it is produced in these days of artificial fabrics and their numbers would be drastically reduced. Apart from dairy cattle, there are many breeds which would become likewise extinct or nearly so.
Is extinction a better prospect for a species than the status quo? Abattoirs are required to use humane methods of killing; however, perhaps the way to go would be to improve that rather then to let our farm animals die out completely. A short life and a merry one rather than no life at all.
JENNY MARTIN Dudley Avenue, Edinburgh