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Remember when vegetarianism was radical? It was a weird notion, that anyone would choose not to eat meat, and we all had a story about catching a vegetarian scoffing a meat pie. Today they're simply people who don't eat meat, often because they don't want to eat anything that has to be killed to be eaten, and we need to know about that only if they're our dinner guests. It's no longer the subject of wide-eyed gossip, and the fact is that those who eat more rather than less meat, the paleo diet believers, are higher on the weird scale. If either was to be a revolution it was a fizzer, and today someone who doesn't eat meat is in the same basket as someone who avoids sugar and teetotallers and those who clog the supermarket aisles studying the nutrition specs on cans and jars. People so devoid of weirdness they're boringly inoffensive. There is, though, a new weird and it is veganism. These are the people who don't eat or use anything that has had any association with animals, and right now they're so visible because they've taken over the highest ground. There's no escape, not even if, like me, you fly well below the radar. We see the special vegan section at the supermarket, and you too may wonder how vegans explain away shopping in a supermarket that relies on food containing animal products for its profit, indeed for its very existence. I see that vegan food costs more than ordinary food, which feeds the moral superiority I suppose, but we bloodied savages should not be smug about this because a meat tax is in the grand plan. My wife tells me that vegan recipes are taking over the various food magazines she reads and that when a clip for a vegan dish turns up on her Instagram there's an online clamour for more vegan recipes. In one she watched this week chia seed soaked in oil replaced eggs, which is a bit much for someone with chooks up the back. Vegan markets are becoming a thing, and I was delighted to see in this paper a photo of a fellow wearing what appeared to be a leather hat at such a market recently. And I have heard of an RSL club planning vegan nights at its restaurant! But I don't want to be narky about veganism, because who could take issue with its mission not to eat or use anything that causes or promotes suffering, to live without the exploitation of animals! And like I've always said of sexuality, that it's none of my business what anyone does in their bedroom, so I say of veganism, it's none of my business what anyone does in their kitchen. Australians seem to need the diversion of a cause, and it may be no coincidence that veganism has erupted just as we've sorted the eruption that was homosexuality. Today people of any gender and sexuality have the right to marry, tomorrow it may be that vegans will have the legally ensconced right to vegan food in every place that sells food. Which raises a question that occupied my mind when I went recently to buy halal meat for Muslim family members who were to be guests at a barbecue lunch at my house. The butcher sold both non-halal and halal meat, and he happily sold me both. When I noticed that there was no separate tray of halal sausages he quickly made some as I watched. But how, I commented later to my wife, could I know it was halal? The answer, as she pointed out, is that it didn't matter, and it didn't. There are aspects of veganism that seem to me to be extreme, and one of them is the rejection of honey. I'm told by vegans that honey is rejected because keeping bees is exploitation and because bees are killed in the process of stealing the honey, but without beekeepers keeping bees for pollinating orchards much of the fruit vegans eat would not exist. Indeed, the hived colonies of pollinating bees would not survive without a beekeeper removing honey if the beekeeper did not remove honey from time to time and otherwise manage them. Like many extreme doctrines, veganism is riddled with contradictions. Vegans eat fruit and vegetables, for example, that could not be grown in the quantities they require without pesticides, whether those pesticides be acceptable to the organic movement or not. These pesticides kill more insects, and, yes, bees, in a minute than beekeepers will kill harvesting honey in a year, maybe a decade, maybe a century. Vegans eat food that has been transported on trucks that kill millions of animals on the roads each year, a toll that shocks and disturbs even little old meat-eating me. How can buying food that has been transported by truck not cause and promote the suffering of animals? They drive cars that smash inestimable numbers of bees and other insects against their windscreens every day. Many have pet dogs, which is exploitation, no? Man would certainly not have survived without the exploitation of and killing of animals, but vegans don't claim veganism as the natural way. That's a fine thing for adults but sometimes tragic for infants, as you may have read in news reports of the malnutrition and death of small children of vegan parents. Right now it seems that veganism and vegans are being lifted on a massing wave of public adulation, that tomorrow they will be our new moral compass, but don't hide your barbecue yet. This week I read that the author of I Quit Sugar and a leader of that world-wide sugar-free movement, Sarah Wilson, says now that she eats chocolate and drinks wine every day, and soon enough you'll notice in your friendly butcher shop that your local vegans are looking uncharacteristically healthy. While you're with us, did you know Newcastle Herald offers breaking news alerts, daily email newsletters and more? 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