Why I am adopting a vegetarian diet ...

I love meat.

I salivate when I get near the butcher meat aisle in supermarkets.

I am on first name terms with my local butchers.

I eat meat from bits of animals bodies that you probably would blanche to feed to your dog.

I adore it all.

Yet I'm giving it all up - why?

Good meat is expensive.  But it's not because of the money.

The simple truth is that I had an ethical epiphany.  Which is not easy to say with your teeth in.

I am the owner (well, more truthfully SLAVE) to a retired racing greyhound and I am keen to support charities that look for homes for these wonderful, docile darlings.  A few months ago I learned that dogs from Australia were being flown out to Macau to race in a place called the Canidrome.

And when the dogs are injured or no longer up to speed, they end up in the meat industry.

I was appalled.

And yet immediately stricken by the double standard that I was living:
My dog is sacred to me, but in other cultures, they're no different to how we see cattle in ours.

I could no longer square my eating of animals with my ethics.

So I have stopped.  Hopefully for good, but blogging for a year to see whether I can truly embrace the philosophy.

But it feels good to look a lamb in the eye and say 'I don't eat you.'