MP Kerry McCarthy said she is a vegan and "militant" about it.
The Labour Party’s new shadow farming minister — a vegan who brags about being a “militant” against meat consumption — has announced that she wants meat-eating to be treated like smoking.
“I really believe that meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it,” Kerry McCarthy, the Member of Parliament for Bristol East, said in an interview with the vegan magazine Viva!life, according to an article in The Daily Telegraph.
“Progress on animal welfare is being made at EU level . . . but in the end it comes down to not eating meat or dairy,” she added.
Of course, anti-smoking measures in England go far beyond public campaigns. It’s not clear whether or not McCarthy is suggesting that people should be forbidden from eating meat in the workplace or while in the car with children and/or if people who order cheese on their fries at a restaurant should have to eat in the parking lot.
#share#In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today, McCarthy assured that she would “listen” to other views on the subject.
Still, the cruel irony of an anti-meat farming minister is not lost on those involved in the industry. In fact, the Telegraph reports that one person who heard the BBC interview compared her appointment as shadow farming minister to “having an Archbishop of Canterbury who is an atheist.”
Thankfully for meat-eaters, the Labour party does not have a majority in Parliament right now. If that changes, however, “No Eating Ice Cream within 20 Feet of This Building” signs might not be far behind.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.