SIR — One positive outcome from the recent horse meat scandal is that many people have decided that they have had enough of the uncertainties and cruelty of the meat industry and decided not to eat animals.

However, other consumers should not be hoodwinked by the farming industry attempting to convince them that buying British means high welfare. This is a long way from the truth.

The scale of animal slaughter in Britain is quite staggering. Over 950 million land animals are slaughtered each year in this country. The majority of those are intensively farmed and kept in poor conditions.

The chicken is the most eaten animal in Britain, being packed into gigantic sheds in their tens of thousands only to be killed at six weeks old. One of the nation's favourite birds can be added to this toll: the duck, which is usually kept in filthy, cramped conditions with no water for swimming.

Where are all the British pigs? Most of them are kept in slum conditions. Sows are kept in indoor farrowing crates for three to five weeks that prevent movement and tending their piglets. Even piglets that are born out of doors are moved inside to fatten them, often in very poor conditions.

What the farmers and supermarkets also don't tell us about British animal farming is that it relies heavily on the mutilation of young animals. Eighty per cent of British pigs are mutilated each year. Their tails and-or back teeth are cut off. They are castrated.

Chickens are de-beaked, lambs castrated and all of this is very often done without anaesthetics due to the fact that baby animals are not deemed to feel pain! Young calves and goat kids are often disbudded without painkillers. The list is endless and, what's more, totally legal.

Whatever the welfare of the animal you choose to eat, there is no such thing as humane slaughter, and the terror for the animal approaching this is substantial. It is an unavoidable violent act.

Sadly, there is no alternative other than to not eat animals if you don't want to contribute to their suffering.

On the positive side, there are many tasty products on the market to replace meat; giving up does not have to be a great hardship.

Of course, the most cruel form of animal product has to be foie gras, the duck/goose liver paté produced by force-feeding the birds via a metal tube down the throat three times per day. Many die during this process and the rest develop a very enlarged painful diseased liver considered to be a delicacy.

It is illegal to produce this product in Britain but we are allowed, due to EU law, to import many tons of it. Local people have the power to end the sale of foie gras by not visiting establishments which sell this barbaric 'delicacy'.

Meg Sunningdale,

Withycombe.