Meat-Free Week

                                          Visiting a farm where animals live a natural life


This week is meat free week which is dedicated to raising awareness of the amount of meat Britons eat and the impact this is having on human health, the welfare of animals and the environment.

The subject of our global farming system (gone mad) should interest us all, after all, we all eat! I'd like to suggest to my readers that they read the book Farmageddon, Compassion In World Farming CEO, Philip Lymbery has joined award-winning journalist Isabel Oakeshott to tell the story about the true cost of cheap meat. Failing that I would ask you to look at the short film: Farmageddon http://goo.gl/ut64lc

As Mike McCarthy (one of thousands of supporters) from the Independent writes: 'Farmageddon is not a vegetarian rant. It is not anti-meat. But it is an unforgettable indictment of our hyper-industrialised agriculture.... we've lived with factory farming for a long time and we probably thought it couldn't get worse. But it can if we let it.'

All around the world, people are aware of the cruelty, wastage and destruction of factory farming. Farmageddon outlines a future of our countryside laid to waste, no butterflies, no bees, no birds and billions of animals that never see a blade of grass.

To put things into perspective, if you saw a child kicking and beating a terrified cat or dog you would expect him to be punished, but move animals off the land, en mass, into crammed sheds and cages, give them no daylight or fresh air, allow them to live up to their stomachs in excrement, slaughter them inhumanely and that's viewed by society as a good business model!

The assumption by the vast majority that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is at best ignorance and at worst cruel and barbaric. Not responding is a response - idle and indifferent - if contributing to the suffering of even one animal, let alone billions of animals who live sad and petrified lives and die in horrific ways doesn't motivate us, what will?

 
Creamed mushrooms

Recipe
50g butter
450g mushrooms, sliced
4 tablespoons plain flour
1 litre vegetable stock
125ml sherry (optional)
250ml double cream
Salt and pepper
Chilli flakes (optional)
Pasta
Grated cheese

Cook pasta according to packet instructions, drain and rinse

In a large pan, melt butter over a medium heat
Cook mushrooms in butter for 5 minutes
Sprinkle flour over mushrooms, pour in stock gradually, stirring continuously
(Add sherry if using)
Bring to the boil, remove from heat and stir in cream

Add pasta to sauce and return to heat, stirring sauce into pasta until it is completely coated
Serve immediately, season with salt, pepper and chilli flakes to taste and sprinkle with grated cheese

                                          

'Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.'
- Theodore W. Adorno

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxxx