I spent 17 years in farm management, having grown up on a farm. There was a time at college when, I had to implant stilboestrol (female hormones) pellets into the ears of bullocks, supposed to be the up and coming technique imported from US of A, never was comfortable with the idea and never practiced it myself.
We rear an animal from conception to the time it leaves the farm, know its history, its individual personality, see it parted from it's dam, thrive or nursed through ills or injury and yet feel pride, without sorrow at a good carcase hanging on an abattoir hook.
I wonder at, how quickly some sections of our society can get snagged into a mindset, by believing judgmental claptrap and then finding a niche identity, from where they can identify others to dislike or even persecute. The old name of the game was religion, where several creeds ban a particular animal, because it was host to some particularly nasty parasites not so prevalent in colder climes, now that control of those parasites are understood, many centuries later it is embedded into religious practice.
GWM does not eat meat because of his mother's perception of chemical impurities, the age I suspect he is, would coincide with a greater risk from crop pesticides and herbicides, which led to great improvement of staple food production at a time when this nation was recovering from wartime siege by German U boats. The understanding of this came later, we now have more effective delivery of sprays and regulation to protect our waterways from drift, thus providing permanent fallow alongside river banks.
Are these new strips of non productive agricultural land allowed into the leisure network of an increasingly obese and under-exercised society? Not likely because..................Why? Just a few random thoughts gleaned from an accident of recognition.