Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Bubble has burst – the balanced diet is back
Vegan food sales are starting to drop as the trend begins to run out of steam. No one is more content than Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian LiddellGrainger, as he tells newlyappointed Defra Secretary Ranil Jayawardena
DEAR Ranil, Firstly, many congratulations on your appointment. You will, I am sure, find the environment brief an interesting and challenging one.
Secondly, a warning: you are going to find me bending your ear on a weekly basis because I shall continue the missives I regularly dispatched to your predecessor in an effort to keep you up to speed with the way things are outside the M25 – not always easy for a busy minister to perceive. I hope you will perhaps find them of use now and then.
At the moment I see too many clouds and too few silver linings but one bright ray of sun, at least, is peeping through and that’s the news from the vegan food sector.
From all accounts the market is shrinking. The bubble appears to have burst – as many of us forecast would be the case – and the bandwagon has come to a creaking halt with one of its wheels lying in the dust. The magic has most definitely worn off.
Vegan food sections in supermarkets are contracting almost daily and many of the newly-converted veganites are quietly slipping back into their old, carnivorous ways.
Now I am not decrying anyone who genuinely feels they would rather exclude meat from their diet. That’s fine with me as long as they are happy for me to continue including the normal quota of meat in mine. We can co-exist quite happily.
But what I have found most objectionable from the start of the vegan revolution has been the way it has been developed into some kind of religion – and one led by wild-eyed apostles who are prepared to go to any lengths, including wrecking butchers’ shops and brainwashing children, to prosecute their beliefs.
And when it comes to trying to prevent the public having access to milk – proper dairy milk rather than the foul, filthy and far less nutritious vegan alternatives – which remains incontestably one of the world’s finest foods and upon a daily supply of which millions of families rely only a deluded imbecile would have reasoned that that was likely to engender any sympathy for the sadly misguided vegan cause.
That evangelical fervour has eroded any respect I might have had for the movement – that, and the way they were prepared to hijack the descriptions of carnivorous products such as ‘bacon’ and apply them to their awful plant-based substitutes.
As to the twisted logic of insisting that veganism was somehow better for the planet, that was a whopping inexactitude.
The degree of processing necessary to bring vegan products to the market – let alone the immense environmental impact of shipping raw materials such as soy beans here – far outweighs the footprint of naturally-raised meat.
When I hear of vegan pet food (inevitably more expensive, too, than the standard variety) I seriously begin to wonder whether the human race has lost all its marbles and when I see ‘vegan’ shoes being offered for sale that suspicion is only confirmed.
Much as the early stack of claims for organics was gradually demolished until only one or two remained, all the wild assertions about the benefits of veganism are also being swept away.
As I said I have absolutely no objection to anyone espousing vegan principles if that’s what keeps them happy. But don’t lecture me if I don’t and don’t send me unpleasant letters or shout in my face.
And just let the rest – the vast majority, in fact – of us get on with enjoying a balanced diet with the inclusion of meat as the human race has been doing for at least the last 10,000 years, particularly now we are starting to see what can be achieved with regenerative farming.
Yours ever,
Ian