Vikram Batra

Activist: "Going plant-based means nothing has to die for my dinner." Farmer: "Ever walked behind a combine?" Activist: "No." Farmer: "Follow one across a wheat field in August. Mice, voles, leverets, ground-nesting birds that sat tight instead of running. The buzzards learn the timetable and sit on the poles waiting. Then there's the rat poison round the grain store, the slug pellets on the oilseed, the pigeons shot off the brassicas, and whatever dies against the rabbit fence." Activist: "That's incidental. It isn't deliberate." Farmer: "It's annual, and it's on the invoice. The vole hasn't got an opinion about your intentions. You've drawn a line between the death you paid for and the death you paid for and didn't have to watch." Activist: "It's still fewer deaths than eating meat." Farmer: "Depends on the field. One bullock off a hill that's never seen a plough feeds a family for months and cost the wildlife the grass and nothing else. A hundred acres of arable gets combined, sprayed and baited every year to make your bread." Activist: "You can't seriously claim veganism kills more." Farmer: "I'm claiming nobody eats without something dying. You've chosen the version where it dies out of sight and called that innocence."