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Would you consider eating less meat for the greater global good? And if you did, what would you miss most? ...

"Unfortunately," reads a notice on the National Vegetarian Society's website, "we have now run out of all National Vegetarian Week promotional materials." If there has been a rush on such veggie propaganda this year, it's no surprise.

According to the last Food Standards Agency Consumer Attitudes survey, vegetarians still only constitute a tiny minority of Britons. Just 2% of respondents described themselves as vegetarian, with a further 5% declaring themselves "partly" vegetarian. Whatever that means. However, this National Vegetarian Week (May 19 - 26), there's every reason for Britain's veggies to feel buoyant.

They may never have come close to winning the moral argument, but, now, they may not need to. For years, there has been a steady flow of bad meat-related news. Take your pick from BSE; the links between red meat and bowel cancer; the role meat production plays in contributing to greenhouse gasses globally (18% of the total); the treatment of animals in industrial farming. Throw in a new key ingredient - soaring meat prices - and it's not alarmist to suggest that, certainly among informed western consumers, meat is heading toward a perfect storm of problems which may, if not instantly, then certainly over the next decade or so, radically alter the way we perceive it. ... The question is: do you care? Would you be willing to eat less meat for the greater global good? Do you relish the fresh eating experiences that this new cauliflower-shaped world may have to offer? Or is a world without T-bone too much to contemplate?

Indeed, if the age of cheap, freely available meat has passed, what are we going to miss most? Is it the sausages, the bacon or the spiritually uplifting simplicity of a good burger?

-- read full article: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2008/05/vegetarianism.html