ADRIAN Grady (Letters, November 19) hasn't moved into the 21st Century yet. Of course, people can live without eating meat and have been doing so very heathily for thousands of years.

Pythagoras (569-480BC) was feted as the father of philosophical vegetarianism. Ovid (43BC-17AD) quotes him in his Teachings of Pythagoras: "Not only is it wrong to harm animals, but a degradation of the human spirit."

Vegetarianism has been current in western beliefs and practices throughout recorded history and is the norm in some societies.

Nearer home, the unfortunately named William Cowherd (1763-1816) founded the Bible Christian Church in Salford. He pledged with his followers to abstain from meat and from this beginning the Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847.

Even nearer home, my two lads, both in their twenties, are fourth generation veggies.

Their grandmother and great aunt are both in their nineties; their great, great grandfather was a missionary in the Swedenborg Church, latterly the New Jerusalem Church, of which there was one in Accrington, not far from Mr Grady's address. Emanuel Swedenborg had never eaten meat from an early age.

As a family we have progressed to veganism (not eating or using animal product) and have done this for some 20 years; that the four of us have run more than 30 fast marathons collectively is testimony to our good health.

Meat eating, not unlike fox hunting, is killing for pleasure, it isn't necessary.

VERNON STUTTARD, Millbrook, Fence in Pendle.