I know that was intended light-heartedly, but I shall rise to the bait and respond inappropriately seriously because the subject is too important to me to drop!eccles wrote:Even vegans have to kill a lettuce.
As a vegan of 25 years, I can assure you my philosophy is not based on some kind of head-in-the-clouds aversion to death, or even killing, but is all about life, respect for life and quality of life. The kind of respect owed to a chicken is manifestly different from the kind of respect owed to a lettuce (as anyone who has met and interacted with chickens and lettuces must surely attest) and the intensive farming of chickens is many orders of magnitude more heinous than the intensive farming of lettuces (though even that can be environmentally damaging in various ways). Killing is quite simply not the issue.
If you buy a piece of meat in a shop, you don't sponsor death (contrary to what a lot of vegetarians say) but life - because the animal only existed in the first place because of the market in its meat. To buy the free-range meat of an animal that lived a meaningful life is to sponsor a good life. To buy the meat (or eggs) of an industrially farmed battery animal is to sponsor a miserable life. To preserve a countryside in which it is possible for people sustainably to shoot their own animals in the wild is to support and affirm life at its most meaningful.
So, as a vegan, I say three cheers for Felix. Bizarre.
Guy
Are they purple hairstreak eggs on oak buds or something else?
Followed by as much of this: 
as my wife can afford 
