Meat is good. TV tells us so.

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What can we do about it? It’s everywhere you look. We see it all the time on commercial TV. It comes at you, in your living room. The okay-ness of eating or using animals creeps into day-to-day behaviour, reinforced in stories, films, cooking shows and the ubiquitous sausage sizzle at every community event. But especially on TV, where honest-looking people talk as if they know what sort of approach to animals you will approve of.

Take the ads.. Good looking actors come on, like friends, sharing their meat-is-okay opinions with us. They talk about animal foods as if they were nothing to do with animals themselves. All this, over time, seeps into our psyche and into our habits. It addicts us and contributes to our sense of normality. Only ‘good’ is ever spoken of the items advertised - any drawbacks aren’t mentioned. But the consumer isn’t completely gullible, we know we’re not being given the truth. And yet ... even though we’re ‘telly-wise’, what we’re being told conforms to what we find acceptable  – we don’t necessarily believe what they say, but we take it in rather gratefully. And the ads work on a subtler level, getting us to engage with what’s being said, if only to make the ads pass quicker, so that we can get back to the programme we’re watching. We’ve learnt not to turn a hair. We’re half tempted by what we see and are being told, and half tempted to accept the lies. That’s just television. Even kids ignore the insult of them.