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vegetarian 9 December 2008

In Ireland we now hear that some cows may also have been in contact with the contaminated feed that has dessimated the pork industry here and led to a massive recall of Irish pig-based products. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the Government on a misguided Nanny State exercise to get us to live healthier lives and become therefore vegetarians to that end. Also, if cow farts are as much to blame for global warming (and indeed the wind of farm animals, in general) then the world’s climate would benefit too. It’s a bit elaborate of a theory, though and I can only hope they haven’t begun such nonsense but, hey, you never know…
I was surprised to see some items still on my local Tesco shelves yesterday which were clearly rasher-wrapped starter delights aimed at Christmas parties. The packaging said ‘locally reared’ and the origin of the food was Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland. I brought this to the attention of a lad working the floor who clearly thought I was a daft old bat. He sighed DEEPLY and explained in words of few syllables that this product was allowed because it had a UK symbol on it. I’m not nationalistic so I didn’t go into that whole Northern Ireland being part of Britain or Ireland area but I did point out that, UK symbol or not, farms in Northern Ireland were officially affected and the shop should take the product off the shelf before some actual old bat (as opposed to me) got it into her head that she was being deliberately poisoned or whatever. I don’t think he followed my advice and, in fact, all I noticed as I did my shopping were whispers and a bit of nervous checking as to where I was while I was in the supermarket. I felt like a total idiot, to be honest.
A friend told me her local butcher has people bringing back cooked joints and wanting refunds (though the meat was bought raw) and that one cooked, breaded ham was so nice looking that he gave the customer the money back and had the ham for lunch. He said it was delicious.