I'm Putting My Mouth Where My Ideology Is

Why A Veggie Chooses To Eat Meat

Most all those who have been on one of my guided walks will know that I fantasise about one day becoming a great dictator and so having the power to issue edicts to shape the world around me, crafting it to reflect my carefully honed personal ideologies.

One of the first proclamations, following my securing ultimate power over the land and its peoples, would be to end the farming of animals. Cows, sheep, pigs and chickens would all be phased out over, perhaps, five years. This act is wholly for animal welfare reasons. We all know the arguments. Farming of animals, as it has become, is cruel, degrading and painful and has no place in an ethical society.

What of the farmers you ask? Well, I would task the farmers with managing for all the re-wilding of the countryside, including upland Britain. We would begin to see forests recover and once again the United Kingdom would be, in the main, a rich and diverse ecosystem, from coast to coast and from plain to mountaintop. There would be an active planting programme of mixed native woodland but with fruit and nuts included. Free grazing for all!

This rich and diverse ecosystem would encourage the flourishing of those animals that have no natural predators, deer, boar, a variety of gamebirds and of course rabbits.

The farmers in turn would become the gamekeepers and instead of rearing in closed captivity, feeding their animals steroids and antibiotics, they would harvest the excess population of these wild beasts that roam their land, maintaining a healthy population that compliments rather than depletes the nature they live in. No more monoculture patchwork field landscapes but rather rich forests ripe with fungi, fruit, herbs, roots, nuts and of course the game that we will then consume.

Food would be free from gene therapy, pesticides and other such chemical interventions. Meat would be as our forebears ate.

Perhaps we would have less meat to eat but the meat we would eat would be high quality and more importantly free from a lifetime of stress and cruelty. It would be safe and ethical. Furthermore, access to the one-time fields, now forests, would be open to all. No more fences to maintain or cross, no more hauling dogs over styles, just enjoyment of nature utilising paths as designated by those who walk them, the most popular routes becoming the new rural highways.

I was a vegetarian for over 40 years. I have begun to eat, perhaps once a week, game from an ethical and reliable source. My diet is still mostly vegetarian but this choice to eat venison I took because I truly believe that the countryside ought to be sheep-free, ought to be forest rather than a grass monoculture and that we ought to, where possible, support nature rather than make everything for profit and industrial.

I buy my meat from here - £80 every three months with enough for two people once per week.

https://knoydart.org/knoydart-wild-venison/

Please vote for me to be dictator for a few years. I promise I’ll resign when my transformation of society has been completed ;)

Chat to Andy about re-wilding on one of his guided walks!

You can book our walks through the Wales Outdoors Website or, if you are a group, you can book us for a bespoke adventure, you choose the date and time, using the ‘Book Your Guide’ option.

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