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A problem with killing and eating
• IN her enthusiasm for all kinds of meat, Clare Latimer (You won’t need fries with these, July 16) makes a passing reference to “the calves that have to be killed at birth…”
Not so – humans choose to kill them, without any concern for their right to life or to the mother cow.
Use the word “babies” for calves to get a sense of the enormity of the crime committed.
Playwright Samuel Beckett coined a phrase “we are born astride a grave” about the human condition.
This is literally applicable to the young of the cattle.
If the meat must be eaten can we at least treat the animals with compassion?
The wholefood brigade know that raising animals in decent conditions improves the taste of the carcass.
But that costs more than the factory farming method.
Imagine, if you will, the terror experienced in slaughterhouses, added to which is the ritual killing by religious minorities.
Though the human population will increase by a third over the coming decades, extra land is not created.
Vast areas of rainforest is cleared to raise cattle – at a cost to the Earth’s environment.
Cooks like Ms Latimer should discourage meat-eating, creating instead, nourishing dishes.
As a species we cannot afford to continue to kill and eat.
Our stomachs are not cemeteries for dead beasts.
Skip Murphy
Prince of Wales Road, NW1
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