Letter: We evolved to be omnivorous for a reason

I have absolutely no problem with people wanting to be vegan/vegetarian, be it because meat and/or dairy doesn't agree with their digestive systems or they won't eat anything 'with a face'.

However, if we all jumped on this bandwagon, be it for the reasons just mentioned or to try and save the planet it can only end in tears. Just as an aside, we are not trying to save the planet, the Earth will carry on doing what it has done since long before we came along, that is surviving. Everything going on at the moment is about saving the human race - a different thing entirely.

Back to the main subject - we evolved to be omnivorous for a reason, to make use of all food resources in good times or bad. Were we all to eschew meat and dairy those cuddly little creatures in the fields would become competitors in our bid for survival as all food would have to come out of the land we stand on, be it with two legs or four.

The only way we would ensure our survival would be to kill all these poor animals so we could utilise the land to produce food for ourselves. We couldn't even see the odd sheep or cow in a zoo as we would eventually need that land as well.

Then we hit other problems, much of the land on the planet is too poor to grow the foods we will need and the only way to utilise that land is either by grazing animals on it to go into the food chain, but there wont be any animals left or fertilise the land heavily.

The next problem comes with fertilisation, to quote Anthony Bradley 'We use tiny amounts of fertiliser relying instead on clover, manure and rotational grazing'. Obviously the rotational grazing is out of the window and the natural manure from livestock, probably the most eco-friendly fertiliser, will not be available due to lack of said livestock.

Producing artificial fertiliser or digging it out of the ground is also very bad for the planet so that's a non-starter as well. Eventually what crop producing land we have will become less and less productive.

End result, future generations slowly starve to death. Not the best of unintended consequences. Without a doubt this will upset a lot of non-meat eaters, but as I stated earlier, I have no problem with some people not eating meat or dairy and even have friends who do so, but the consequences of trying to turn the majority of omnivores into herbivores would be a disaster.

On a lighter note, why oh why do all adverts I see on TV bang on about how their vegetarian food looks and tastes just like meat? If you want to eat meat that much just eat it. After all, when I go to the butchers for a couple of pork chops for her indoors and myself I don't ask the butcher to give me two that look like turnips!!

Paul Morley

Long Preston