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No food at the Inn

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‘It’s not in our remit to provide vegan food,’      

Said the man on the phone, trying not to sound rude.    

‘We’ll never have a vegan dish on our menu’                    

Sounds like I’d better find an alternate venue.   

 

Why are there still too many boring chefs           

Who stopped their training at ‘meat and two veg’?         

Vegan food is no longer for cranks          

Or a handful of health-conscious yanks                

We know that Indians have eaten it for millennia            

And spread veggie food worldwide through the Asian diaspora  

It’s popular with planet-conscious youth              

Reducing their carbon footprint to boot              

So think of our planet Earth that’s over-warming                           

And the biodiversity that we’re losing                  

The climate catastrophe that we could reverse                

If only our logic wasn’t so bloody perverse                        

 

There are many large animals that choose to eat only plants       

I’m thinking of elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes                      

But nearly two hundred dinosaurs were herbivorous                    

And cows, sheep, deer and horses are not carnivorous.               

So human beings can easily reduce their consumption                 

Of foods that lead to depleted oceans and deforestation             

 

Seventy million vegans worldwide are a large market to ignore                

Adding a few dishes for us and our friends surely isn’t a chore.