PLOT LINES

OVER-DOING THINGS HAS A COST TO THE ENVIRONMENT, SAYS TIM, WHO SUGGESTS EATING SEASONALLY MAY BE A HELP

- WITH TIM FOSTER

WHY is it that we always manage to overdo it? Take an idea or an existing practice and expand it - expand it to a point where people, animals and the environment all suffer. And it will be justified under the headings of 'Food Security' and 'Economics.

I was reading recently about salmon farming - the only kind of salmon we are likely to eat is farmed salmon. Start with wild salmon or a few in pens and the next thing you know, huge companies from abroad are scraping the oceans of virtually any living thing (almost half a million tons each year) to feed confined, polluting, disease-ridden farmed salmon off Scotland. So that we can have 'cheap' salmon.

It's the same with farm animals. Distorted chickens in cramped cages, producing vast quantities of polluting effluent. The multinationals involved get huge subsidies from UK taxpay-ers, apparently. What happened to chickens scratching around? Inefficient, my boy, inefficient. We can make far more money stuffing them into giant sheds.

Cows that never see a blade of grass. In the name of progress, we frequently mess things up. Vote with your feet (or your purse). If you are