Thank you for your letter. I hope you will understand if I do not
provide a full reply to the serious and complex issues to which you
refer.
I am unconvinced by vegetarian campaigns, although I have deep
misgivings about some aspects of modern animal rearing. I am willing to,
and where possible actually do, pay a premium price for meat from freely
reared animals. I keep a few hens, in a fully free-range situation, as a
personal protest against some modern farming practices. Equally, I
understand the pressures which farmers are under, and not least the milk
farmers in Cheshire.
Your question concerning Lent is important. I do regret the passing
of a formal period of restraint, fasting and penitence in the approach
to Easter. But how would this best be recovered? A vegetarian commitment
for Lent would need to be looked at alongside other options.
Yours sincerely
(17/2/03)
Return to Episcopal responses
(2003)
Return to Lenten letters (2001-04)
