Licensed to kill

I REMEMBER my father telling me that he never took a driving test, which could have been rather worrying if it were not for the fact that he was a very practical person and drove at least 25,000 miles a year.

As a result he was a very good driver but you couldn’t credit the system for that. You could blame the system for the myriad poor drivers that had never been tested and, as a result, had no certificate to prove that they knew how to drive – which they often didn’t.

So the Government brought in a form of qualification that meant you weren’t allowed to drive a car on your own without someone teaching you all about it first.

They’re an interfering bunch, these government people. For many years you had to have a licence if you wanted to keep a dog. And there’s some logic in that except you didn’t have to prove that you’d learnt how to look after one first.

So the licence was scrapped. But if you get a pet from a rescue home, people come around to check that you are a suitable person to keep a pet and that you know what you’re doing. Despite this seeming a bit nannying, it’s sensible really when you hear about the animal abusers out there. It’s quite apparent that some people shouldn’t be allowed to keep pets.

Taking the logic further, shouldn’t there be a rule that nobody’s allowed to get pregnant without passing an exam first? After all, there’s nothing more important that you do in life than creating and bringing up a child. Unfortunately, it’s a shame that more people don’t take bringing a child into the world more seriously. There wouldn’t be so much reason for social services and the NSPCC.

Now what about other animals; especially those that we eat? You could say that there’s enough legislation to protect their wellbeing.

But surely the ultimate responsibility lies with us, the end user. When you buy a piece of meat, you are giving approval to the way the animal has been brought into the world, how it’s been fed and looked after, how it’s been transported and how it was treated and ultimately killed. That’s logical isn’t it? After all, you wouldn’t want to buy clothing that’d been made in a factory by under-age children who were appallingly treated. Would you?

But how do you know? How do you know that the bacon you’ve bought didn’t come from pigs kept on concrete from birth without seeing any natural light; kept in pens so small they’re not allowed to move so that they don’t lose weight; taken to slaughter in lorries surrounded by screaming relations?

Well, most people wouldn’t know.

But they also wouldn’t know what to ask about because they were never shown in the first place.

That’s because we don’t teach our children about these indelicate things. In fact, if some switched-on teacher does actually rear an animal at school with the intention of having it slaughtered so that the children can cook it, parents are up in arms protesting about the insensitivity of the teacher and how they’re going to hurt the children, never giving a thought to the animal issue.

Of course, these type of parents probably belong to those groups of people who say that they don’t want to know how their meat is treated, implying that if they did, they might not eat it. But you’re not one of those are you? You’re much more responsible and caring than that.