Recently protestors badly disrupted the UK’s biggest horse racing event in Liverpool. They are making the argument that horse racing is wrong, barbaric and many other such things for the horses which should be allowed to roam free as nature intended. That keeping animals for our pleasure, be it to eat or to participate is sport, is something which needs to be stopped. It is fair to say that these are vegans, those who choose to avoid all animal products.

I have some sympathy with them. On the surface it is fundamentally wrong to exploit another living thing merely for our pleasure. I feel that is agreeable to most as a concept.

Scrutiny pulls it apart though. Let’s look at other situations whereby we imprison animals entirely for our pleasure, animals which could survive in the wild.

Dogs, probably top of the list. Our species has been breeding their species mainly for our pleasure for thousands of years. They are predominantly used as family pets, still a form of incarceration. They are also used in racing, as enforcement animals, drug sniffer dogs for drugs and so on and, the huge ones, as helper dogs for the blind and deaf. If we have to free the horses then, we’ve got to stop what we are doing to dogs too. We cannot have it all our own way as surely that is the very point of the protest.

Cats. Mostly useless beasts kept in homes for our pleasure. I’ve never heard of a cat performing a trained roll so, just for fun and company then.

Rodents, rats, mice, gerbils and so on. Likewise, should we make it illegal to own them and release them into the wild?

They’re planning a campaign of ‘free the animals’ later this year which they didn’t deny would involve releasing zoo animals, giving them their freedom. Again, all lovely and fluffy but what exactly are they planning? Zoo’s actually run at the forefront of animals conservation. They breed rare species to release into the wild in effort to avoid extinction. Yet, the animals are still caged up, still not free and people pay to see them so, not much difference to the Aintree Horse then?

Ultimately, their aim has to be to have no more imprisoned animals.

There is another argument I heard them use. That it isn’t right to force animals to do things against their will for the benefit of people. They should be free to do what they want each day. I take that argument on board. I believe they referred to it as inhumane. Therefore, making another animal perform a task repeatedly every day just to survive is inhumane? Again, it sounds reasonable until I mention this one word … employment! Millions of us every day are made to do menial tasks in exchange for the means to survive. We can say no, of course we have choice and yet, do we really?

Should we go there with the whole vegan argument and how crazy stupid it is … let’s overlook that the food is just so crazy boring. We are talking vegan here, zero animal products so, get rid of those leather seats and belts.

For a start, our species is not herbivore. We never did graze the land and forage for berries. Indeed, thankfully we did not else we would likely not have absorbed the protein our brains have needed to evolve as we have to be debating such things.

But, let’s go with it, ban all animal for meat and by product production which includes milk and eggs of course.

Where do all those animals go exactly? Farmers still own the land and if they cannot keep livestock they’re not going to let their freedom fighting cows eat their corn fields! All those chickens, all they know how to do is breed. Pigs, sheep and so on, all roaming around desperate for food with all the fields they used to feed in blocked off because farmers need to make a living feeding vegans.

In short, my conclusion has to be that they are well meaning crazy people