Carnivory

Mr Squeers has caught a rabbit. The  killing bite that severed its spinal cord was as fast and final as a bullet to the head. Now, watched by his grandmother, he settles down to eat as much as he can manage. She will take what's left.

Along with foxes, cats  are apex predators on rabbits which provide a much more substantial meal than the smaller creatures they also, unfortunately, catch. Without predation, the rabbit population swells until myxomatosis (an introduced contagious disease) cuts an unpleasant  swathe through their numbers. 

I know that people love bunnies and may not now realise that at one time in Europe wild rabbits demolished crops in fields and gardens to such an extent that people's livelihoods were compromised. And their meat provided poor folk with one of the few sources of protein they could afford. (In this area of Wales rabbits were so numerous that every day saw a consignment dispatched to London shops and markets on the early morning train. Some folk made a living by catching them.)

Few people eat rabbit now. Nor, oddly, do they eat venison. Deer have no natural predators in Britain. The bears, wolves and lynxes that would once have preyed upon them have long gone. So, those are not shot  for posh sport have be 'culled' - another, less glamorous, form of killing. Shooting and culling both ceased during Covid and now the UK has a deer population boom. In a recent newspaper article a wildlife manager explained that  "deer destroy the habitats of our native flora and fauna, and the ability of trees and soils to capture carbon from the atmosphere”  So, given the speed with which deer breed, at least 750,000 animals need to be culled this year just to stop this enormous population increasing further.

It seems there is already a surplus of deer meat which doesn't have a ready market   in the UK (too posh, too expensive?)  and thanks to "post-Brexit complications" can't be exported to the continent. So what to do with this glut of venison? Already, much of it goes into pet food.

Now a new scheme aims to funnel it into the national food chain  via  food banks, schools, hospitals, the armed forces and prisons. Food banks are notoriously short of high-protein supplies so this could see folk dining on venison ragu along with baked beans. Let them eat cake as Marie Antoinette didn't say.


There's certainly a lot to digest when we start to think about  the food chain, national and global poverty,  the pros and cons of meat eating, and the preservation of our natural habitats.
 Luckily for Mr Squeers, his stomach is full  but his head is empty.

(We're having venison sausages for supper; I bought them before I read the article.)

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