Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Looks like veganism’s running out of puff
A fad? A trend? A seven-day wonder? Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell Grainger tells Defra Secretary Ranil Jayawardena there are more and more signs that veganism has had its day.
DEAR Ranil, You will have noted the anti-dairy campaigners trying to make nuisances of themselves of late as they pursue their ambitions of creating a new world order where we all munch on beans and seeds.
Don’t know about you but I failed to detect the merest indication that this fitful spark of protest was about to ignite a firestorm of public approbation to the extent where the 96 per cent of the population who currently consume and appreciate dairy milk would immediately switch to one of the filthy, nutritionally-deficient alternatives and that anyone seen heading home with a regular pinta in their shopping basket would immediately be put in the stocks.
But, as we have seen, the more these obsessive, single-interest groups get a bee in their bonnet about something the less they can understand, let alone tolerate the other man’s point of view – and the more that point of view is at odds with theirs the more extreme measures their frustration will drive them to resort to.
There have been enough scientifically-based warnings about the perils of a vegan diet – particularly when forced on growing children – for people to have concluded that they want nothing to do with it and that they will continue drinking proper milk and taking their protein in the form of meat, thank you very much.
But what has really got me is the way veganism has been elevated to the status of a religion under the aegis of which any action, however disruptive, however damaging, is countenanced as long as it spreads the word.
And this intolerance has also infiltrated the various vegan food outlets, including the vegan ‘butchers’ – a concept which, were it not so tragic, would be comical.
I mean any pub landlord or restaurateur who hasn’t put a ‘vegan alternative’ item on the menu has risked being loudly and publicly denounced by any customers who have espoused the animal productfree way of life and come in looking for a beansprout burger.
Yet how many vegan eateries have ever offered a carnivorous alternative? And how many customers who may have inquired about one have been treated like they stepped in something unpleasant on the way in and sullenly pointed towards the exit?
The whole vegan thing has become a farce: I recently read in a left-wing publication a glowing eulogy for vegan pillows (i.e. they had foam but no feathers inside them). I ask you. As recorded recently, however, the tide is turning and the vegan revolution is running out of puff. Just within the last two weeks I have read of two vegan restaurants which have now added meat dishes to their menus because that’s what the public was asking for.
In such circumstances, of course, one perhaps shouldn’t laugh. But I did. Until the cows came home.