With the recent scientific reports which found eating red meat significantly increases the chances of developing bowel cancer, even the most insensitive of us should be able to see the benefits of going veggie.

In May, during an early-morning walk on the Downs, an empty field below the Jack and Jill windmills was full of sheep and newborn lambs.

I saw the strong bonds between mother and their young, which gambolled towards them for sustenance and security and would lie soaking up the sun's warmth.

By June, this idyll was no more. The animals had been transported to an abattoir, where their lives ended prematurely because some people like to eat them.

Until we allow our empathy with animals to develop into a universal bill of rights, extending to all living things, we will carry on treating other creatures as unfeeling property with a monetary value which perpetuates the appalling cycle of springtime birth to abattoir.

-David Hammond, Hassocks