Vegetable Rights.

After yesterdays post I have come to a decision about becoming a vegetarian. It seems to me that we do not know enough about how vegetables feel when their short lives are rendered even shorter by our seemingly insatiable appetite for them. Don't tell me vegetables have no feelings. How do you know?

Take the humble cabbage for instance. There it sits in the garden or allotment, growing happily away developing a beautiful firm heart, and looking forward to bursting forth it's flowerheads. All it wants, is to do what we all strive to do, perpetuate it's species, well OK I will admit I do this purely for pleasure these days. If the opportunity should present itself that is, and what do we do, us humans? We watch and admire it's beauty, and then with never a moments regret, we sever it from its life source, and callously plunge it into boiling water.

Something has to be done about this, and not just for cabbages. Carrots too have suffered for years. What about Brussel sprouts? Not only do we kill and eat Brussel sprouts, but we do it even more at Christmas! Surely Christmas ought to be a time of peace and goodwill to all vegetables? And oh how the poor pumpkin must dread the approach of Halloween?

There are some vegetables that I dislike, but I believe that even they do not deserve to be killed indiscriminately. Even turnips, which have to be boiled for a fortnight before they become edible, deserve some respect.

So there you are then. You may by now have realised that I have decided against becoming a vegetarian. I just can't do it. I have far too caring a nature.

So sadly, I must inform you that I will continue to eat meat. It would be so wrong for animals to die needlessly. Naturally if I am to eat steak I shall need a few chips with it, or french fries as they call them in restaurants, and America. But potatoes are quite antisocial, the way they grow underground an all, so they don't count.

All right I admit it,I shall keep eating vegetables too. Perhaps I will compromise by eating tinned or frozen vegetables only. After all they are already dead, and there are an awful lot of them to get through.