SIR - If Pauline Burgess is promoting veganism, then why did she not say so openly in the first place?

I do, in fact, agree that we all eat too much meat, and the production methods used are not always great, but here in the real world perhaps we should recognise that the vast majority of people in the world are meat eaters and they are not about to change overnight!

Livestock are an excellent means of producing high quality protein and providing many vitamins which are not easily obtained from a purely vegetable diet.

Also, there are many areas of the world, particularly upland areas, which are unsuitable for crop growing but which can grow grass.

Livestock can glean a living in these areas where humans cannot and produce valuable food from areas which otherwise would be wasteland.

This makes a nonsense of the much quoted and questionable figures concerning efficiency of production.

SIMON GARDNER, Birtsmorton.