Sir, – Those of us who make our living of the land are often reminded how much nature is 'red in tooth and claw'. Yet, it was still disturbing to read in the current issue of New Scientist that scientists observing a troop of wild chimpanzees witnessed a female giving birth, as they usually seek solitude and hiding to do so.

They may well have good reason, because a male member of the group immediately snatched up the newborn chimp and took it away and was soon found to be eating it.

It is not known if this is typical behaviour on either part, but it does show that our closest genetic relative cannot be said to share our morality, whatever that means. The BBC Scotland TV programme 'Landward' allowed a vegan lady to defend their contentious promotion that would have us believe that livestock farming (in this case dairy farming) is immoral. People believe what they want to believe and select the 'evidence' that supports that view. They also tend to dismiss or ignore contrary evidence or interpretations of what is presented. Veganism is a relatively new and more extreme version of vegetarianism and neither could be said to be the natural state of our species. Evolution of our kind is reckoned to have taken a period of more than a million years, but possibly less than five million years.

All of us have the dentition of omnivores, which means for all of our history, until less than three thousand years ago, we all ate meat and other animal products as and when we could get them. So where and when did this moral dimension suddenly appear (if it actualy exists)?

After all humans should be as entitled to exploit available food as worms, insects and vultures. I am quite happy for vegans to eat what they like, but don't think they are on any higher moral plain – they just think they are, and that is their conceit.

Sandy Henderson

Faulds Farm,

Braco,

Perthshire.