Free range pigs

So it's Christmas day in America still but here in the southern hemisphere we're all done and and dusted with the ho, ho, ho, hip, hip hooray of guilt-free gluttony on this holiest (hungriest) of days.

Well, when I say 'guilt-free', I mean only as far as the waistline goes and only for the day. The morning after is another story, and don't we know it! I could start a chocolate shop with this year's stash.

But having not one but two vegans in the house for Christmas this year, as well as a recently turned vegan friend who came round for dinner on the 23rd, there is no guilt free eating as far as the environment and animal ethics go. Even buying free range, as I dutifully did for all my meats, including the stuffing pork that cost 60% more than the pork in a prison pen variety, will not get you off the hook. 'Free range pigs? Do you want me to tell you about free range pigs?' No, I didn't want.

According to my vegans, animals should not be eaten no matter how 'free range' the price and how much freer their lives are than ours -- when you (I) think about it. They don't have to worry about their waistlines or Donald Trump, or the cost of buying free range to ensure other animals get some kind of quality of life before they become stuffing. I should be so lucky.   

I've been trying to get my head around the whole vegan thing since the younger females of the house (and male friend) went vegan, but I can't quite manage it. It seems to me that their case against the harm to the environment and to the animals that is done by eating animals and their products logically leads to a case for eliminating farm animals altogether, not least the graceful moo cow that gives us chocolate and ice-cream. How is that fair on the pigs? I'm sure I don't know.

Now please excuse me while I head off for a chocolate brunch while I still can. Oink oink (that's wink wink in pig, a dying language).