I GREW up on a farm in the mountains of South Wales and understood all about life and death and the utilisation of beasts from birth (Animal rights protest at farm, September 28).

I have always loved animals and have always surrounded myself with animals.

I went thorough phases as a young woman of veganism and vegetarianism as I rebelled against the cruel trade of animal slaughter in order to feed my lowly carcass; but the truth is, I enjoy meat.

My only proviso is that I have to know where that meat has come from and how the animal was treated before it was slaughtered in order to feed me.

So, do I agree with battery farmed meat? Do I agree with animals being experimented on for medical purposes?

The answer is a straightforward and emphatic no.

There is no justification for animals to be treated in these barbaric ways.

I cannot believe that any God – no matter who He/She may be – would be so cold and callous as to put animals on Earth for us to torture or to treat as though they are less than we humans are.

In my experience, all the animals I have ever had any contact with have had feelings and have felt pain when hurt or injured.

On our farm, when the time came for the beasts to be taken for slaughter, they could smell death coming for them; they were intelligent creatures and knew they were going to die.

The problem today is simply that people have been desensitised to what meat is and where it really comes from.

As far as most people are concerned, it comes from a supermarket and is wrapped up nice and clean in packaging that takes it far away from being a little lamb springing about in the fields.

It's just lamb chops, and very tasty too, or a big old gentle sow who has suckled many litters of piglets before ending up on the table in the form of bacon.

As for vivisection and medical experimentation, I have no idea how this can be justified, if for no other reason than the genetic make-up of animals and humans is so vastly different.

How can something that is tested on a rabbit or a rat give scientists any clue as to how that same drug or chemical is going to react in the human body?

The simple answer is that they cannot, because these animals are made differently to us.

If drugs and medications have to be tested, which of course they do, or the drug companies would be killing us off in our hundreds with untried drugs, there has to be a better, more effective way of doing it.

They actually need to be tested on the human body; so why not get condemned criminals to sign themselves over to testing?

When a man or a woman goes into the prison system and has been branded an evil animal for crimes against human victims, and are told that they will sit on death row waiting to be executed or will sit in prison at our expense for the rest of their lives, then why not make them give something back by using them to test drugs on?

Mrs Dawn M cKENNA Ferry Road, Southrey.