VEGANS, CHEW ON THIS!

the war against meat consumption continues: vegan dog food is the latest thing, apparently. I’m sure it is theoretically possible for a dog to have a healthy vegan diet. But if vegans are, as they claim, so preoccupied with the welfare of animals, here’s a question for you: what are the ethics of imposing human moral and cultural choices on animals?

My three dogs have never, to my knowledge, expressed any misgivings about the contents of their tin of Chappie, and when one of them happens on some rotting animal carcass in the park, I don’t, for example, hear Snowy (the eldest) lecturing Monkee (the puppy) about the rights and wrongs of eating leftover KFC; instead he just growls at him and claims it for his own.

Fact is, nature is red in tooth and claw — and no amount of anthropomorphic wishful thinking on behalf of vegans is ever going to change that. ContInuIng on the subject of vegans (it is, after all, ‘Veganuary’), one of the main arguments deployed by plant evangelists against the farming of livestock is the amount of methane that cows produce, and how it is contributing to global warming. I am willing to concede that cows do indeed produce a lot of gas; but then again, so do pulseeating humans. Might we not simply be swapping one source of methane for another? FInally, more exciting vegan news (not that I’m obsessed or anything). My son reports that following Chelsea vs nottingham Forest at the weekend, he popped into greggs for his customary postmatch steak bake, stocks of which were perilously low. the new vegan sausage roll, left, by contrast...shelves full of the things. happy to say he still wasn’t tempted.