One of the things that we've all quite got to grips with is the luxury that is our food supply. We no longer have to worry overly about availability of food - where shall we do lunch, is a much more pressing question than 'will there be food tomorrow?'.

But one of the things that this has done, is allowed us to isolate ourselves from the production of said food. It's actually quite easy to buy stuff in packets, tins, and tubs that has no real link with 'where it came from'.

Think for a moment, just how easy it would be to never have seen a potato. There are kids who have done exactly that - they've lived on chips, mash, croquets, shaped dino-bites, and all sorts of other things that have no bearing on a potato, despite being made from it.

And if you think about it, that's really quite a horrific notion when it comes to meat - you're able to ignore and trivialise the fact that something has died to provide you with your steak. Your chicken breast. Your bacon. Even your reformed chicken nuggets, your sausages and your leather shoes.

Fluffy, Ermintrude, and little Shaun the sheep, look at you with pleading eyes, saying 'please, I just want to live like you do. Don't kill me.'.

It's not so much whether you feel you could, or couldn't kill an animal for the sake of feeding yourself (or your family) - it's more the sheer atrocity, and immorality of pretending it doesn't happen. Of not thinking about what's happening to that lorry load of cows driving into the abatoir.

I don't actually have too much problem with the notion that the world is a savage garden - humanity exists primarily through being right near the top of the food chain, and we're omniverous, which really helps, because we can eat practically anything. I don't even have a huge problem with the notion that you might feel you could make the decision that the lives of you, your tribe, your family are more important than the life of that cow.

I'm just sayin' that if you don't honestly feel comfortable with the notion of killing and butchering an animal - one that has done you no harm, and may have even been providing you with eggs or milk for the last few years. Or worse, the 'factory farm production' where animals are kept in cages, artificially fed hormones and fattened up in a short and pointless existance, other than to make their way to your dinner plate.
If you have problems with these notions, then then each time you order a bacon sarnie, you're a being a hypocrite.