Mark Honigsbaum and Alok Jha report in The Guardian today (14.01.06) about amongst other things, the tight security on site at Oxford University’s planned new animal research laboratory in South Parks Road, Oxford.  As will be well known, animal rights activists have used terror tactics in an endeavour to close down animal research establishments and intimidate anyone connected to them.  The previous contractor at this site withdrew after a campaign of intimidation against its shareholders. Now, workers of the new contractor are escorted to and from work each morning.  Commenting upon the security at the site, it is reported by Honigsbaum and Jha that the head of the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit, Superintendent Steve Pearl explained,

“In the past, activists haven’t hesitated to commit criminal acts against contractors and their suppliers.  Last year we also saw arson attacks on college boathouses.”

It had been noticed that the workers on site wore balaclavas which hid their faces.  Though it was admittedly cold, the protesters picketing the site remarked to the reporters that they did not believe that the balaclavas were for warmth alone.  A spokesman for the protesters is reported to have explained,

“Perhaps it’s because they are ashamed.”

That may be, that may be.  Then again, it might be that each worker appreciates that if his identity became known a dear departed relative’s remains might be unlawfully exhumed and secreted away by someone from a terrorist Animal Rights organisation or fellow traveller.

Since a child I have felt a little uneasy at the knowledge that an animal has been killed so that I can eat meat.  I have taken some comfort from the fact that I have been designed by Nature to be omnivorous[1] though I have never been entirely convinced by the pro-meat eating argument (most recently propagated by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall eloquently in his book “The River Cottage Meat Book”.)  However, because I have never been presented with a convincing, decisive argument in favour of vegetarianism, I have continued to be an “omni”.  It has not been uncommon for my meat eating prejudices to have been reinforced by half-baked, flawed arguments made by vegetarians in favour of their preferred diet, relying upon facts I know to be bogus.[2]

I was reminded of this when reading the letters page of The Guardian Weekend (14.01.06).  My attention was drawn to correspondence by Nitin Mehta from Croydon, provoked by an article in the same publication a week earlier, entitled “Super Green Me”.

Remarks Ms Mehta,

“Some 55 billion animals are raised and killed for meat every year.  Our planet is simply not big enough for these numbers. The result is destruction of rainforests, spreading of deserts and massive methane gas emissions.  The grain fed to these animals could feed almost 4 billion people…”

Leaving aside the dubious, funny figures quoted, the destruction of rainforest arises almost entirely by way of demand for wood (such as teak) from the First World.  Thus in the main, these forests are not cleared for agriculture and where they are, it is not exclusively for growing fodder for animals that are to be killed for meat.

The staple diet of the six million people currently living on this planet is not grain (in fact it is more likely to be rice.)  If the land to which Ms Mehta refers were put over to producing the type of vegetable foods[3]  that those 4 billion people actually wanted to eat, it could not support all of them.

Yes, methane is a greenhouse gas, but the Earth has always been full of it and remember this, the alleged Greenhouse Effect is still a hypothesis, no matter what the Media says to the contrary and some scientists would like us to think.

Woolly, lazy thinking like this is enough to make any reasonable person reach for their chicken roast.