For the last twenty or more years I have chosen not to eat meat. Back in the early '90's, I judged that my concerns about meat safety and animal welfare outweighed my desire to eat meat and since free-range, organically produced meat was hard to find and outside my budget, giving up meat seemed the best solution. I'm still not eating it, but I have no problem with other people doing so and I cook meat on a daily basis for my family. I think there will come a time that I go back to eating it; I'm just not quite there yet. But if you do eat meat, you need to understand where it comes from. That means having an appreciation of what the animal was, how it was reared, what it ate, how it met its end, and how its meat produced was processed. This story from the UK has had wide media coverage and I hope that it continues to provoke discussion. It's hard for me to find the words to describe my anger and utter bewilderment that our attitudes have evolved to a point where it is acceptable to blindly eat nuggets made from pink sludge and chew on a burger containing the remains of hundreds of cows (not to mention the odd sick horse) but the site of meat hanging in a butcher shop window is deemed unacceptable. Independent butchers will probably be our saviours from the nightmare we've created, and we should be doing everything we can to protect them and their fine traditions.