A drive across Bristol this morning via the Avon Ring Road, which of course doesn’t go all around Bristol, enabled me to see plenty of wildlife. Between Keynsham and Kingswood alone I saw a badger, a fox, a hedgehog and a young deer, a fawn, as well as numerous birds including a large seagull. Unfortunately, it was not exactly an enjoyable experience since all these beautiful creatures were extremely dead and some splattered across the road so badly that soon they would merely be a mass of blood and feathers/fur.
I know I am not exactly on the moral high ground when it comes to animal deaths, since a portion of my diet includes animals which have been slaughtered for my dinner. And when I bang on about the daily carnage on our roads, I am not exactly Mr Consistent, am I?
There are varying estimates – guesstimates? – of how many animals die on Britain’s roads each year, but the total is in the millions. Some say it could be as high as 70 million, which if true is shocking. You would think these deaths are caused by accidents, generally by animals being knocked over by – dare I say it? – speeding vehicles. As ever, mine was just about the slowest car on the road today, sticking as I was to the speed limits, but even then, an animal deciding to wander across the road as the very second I am trundling amiably by would not stand a chance if they got under my wheels.
I was saddened by the sight of the dead deer sprawled by the side of the road, a trickle of blood having poured from its head after what must have been a sizeable collision. The driver of the vehicle, likely utterly blameless, would have felt the impact. I wonder if they stopped to check on the wellbeing of the fawn or drove on, perhaps fretting all day about what happened? We will never know.
Having found myself saddened by the catalogue of death, I promptly went home and enjoyed a ham sandwich. Then, I thought, how many pigs are slaughtered every year for my sandwich, as well as the full English which would not exist in any meaningful way without them? It’s about 11 to 12 million. If I went for a Big Mac – and while I do enjoy a burger every once in a while, I have never had a Big Mac – I’d be munching my way through part of nearly three million cows which are slaughtered and then referred to as beef. As a meat eater, don’t I have some level of guilt about this?
Of course, I do. That’s why, wherever possible, I tend to consume meat that is produced to the highest standards, which is to say that the animals have a decent quality of life, however brief, before being taken to the abattoir. For vegans, and probably vegetarians, that will never be enough. They will argue, form the moral high ground, that no animal should ever be slaughtered for food. I will not even attempt to argue from the moral low ground why I keep on eating dead animals.
By rights, then, I should be at least a vegetarian but here I have a problem. I am not a big fan of vegetables per se. If I had my way, the only vegetables I would eat would be peas, preferably the frozen variety. My partner, who thinks I am an idiot, insists that we eat a wider variety of veg than just peas, so I am forced – a word I use inadvisedly – to consume things like broccoli, the disgusting veg called kale, carrots and all the rest of it. “They’re good for you,” she says. “Yeah, but only physically,” I don’t dare reply. “Mentally, they are killing me.” Truth be known, if she made me eat kidney beans, I would not be able to vouch for the consequences. Peas, apparently, are not enough.
My reaction to the Ring Road Carnage doesn’t change my attitude to meat-eating, although I know that if I had to kill animals myself to make burgers or whatever, I would soon become a reluctant veggie. I think there must be a bit of Albert Pierrepoint in everyone who works in an abattoir because I rather like animals and would not like to make a living by killing them. For now, I am able to set to one side my concern for and love of animals as I tuck into my ham sandwich. The day that I can’t will see me become a reluctant veggie, too, letting everyone know that I am a vegetarian or a vegan because that’s what vegetarians and vegans do. That day, I should add, is never going to come and am well aware that anyone who calls themself an animal lover probably doesn’t love animals as much as someone who doesn’t eat eat them.
