Letter: Carrot and stick

Monday 02 August 1999 23:02 BST

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Letter:

Carrot and stick

Sir: Please, no more laboured ironies on the dying cries of vegetables! If your correspondents cannot empathise with the suffering of animals, they merely show their frivolity and inhumanity.

Treating the other species which inhabit our world with that sympathy and imagination which is uniquely human is a measure of civilised conduct and of "our self awareness that sets us apart from other species. The cat when it kills, kills in innocence. ... Man when he kills ... can imagine what it is like to be dead." (Borges).

We may rear and kill animals for food; but to enjoy or tolerate their suffering is vile.

RJ DAVIES

Salisbury

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Letter: Carrot and stick

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