ENVIRONMENT REPORTER BRIAN ETHIC

VEGETARIANS ARE INCREASINGLY FACED WITH A DILEMMA.

There is growing evidence that plants have feelings, even communicate and may even be conscious to come degree.

“This has been coming for some time now and the evidence, while not conclusive, is forcing thousands of vegetarians into periods of self-loathing and denial.” So says Dr Ronald Stalk of the European Institute for Biological Sense. “That stick of celery you plunged into guacamole last week, it may have been begging for its life as you mercilessly crunched down upon it. Don’t get me going on cabbages and carrots. Pulled from the earth in their millions and slaughtered without compunction. We’re probably looking at a holocaust here. Shame. Shame.”

“Only fruit is safe from this new morality,” according to April Lettuce, a vegetarian advocate all her life. “I’ve released all my vegetables. I won’t touch them again. But the price of fruit is astronomical. Veganism is a real loser here. They were on the highest of high moral ground, smirking at the rest of us. Well, who’s laughing now? We have to accept that we have slaughtered – yes, that’s the word, slaughtered – billions of individual lives, all based on false scientific information that people adopted merely because it suited their lifestyles. Now look at them? You can’t put the Broccoli back in the ground. You can say sorry, I guess, but what does that achieve? We have to shut it all down, vegetable farming. Stop the harvesting. I’ll be joining a protest group and we’ll throw ourselves in front of any harvest that isn’t just for fruit.”

As well as fruit futures, contracts for timber and wood products have skyrocketed too. It could be that the last tree has already been felled.