Not a post about veganism, or even vegetarianism this one. Instead I'm flagging up a piece by George Monbiot in the Guardian promoting collectively significantly reduced meat consumption for the benefit of all. As my partner is a meat eater and he really fancied some meat dishes for the festive season, this is how we've approached this Xmas ourselves. I will be doing free-range gammon steaks for Xmas eve dinner, a free-range chicken for Xmas dinner and some venison sausages for Boxing day before returning to another meat-free year in 2015:

If You Eat Meat, Save it For Christmas

"This system is also devastating the land and the sea. Farm animals consume one third of global cereal production, 90% of soya meal and 30% of the fish caught. Were the grain now used to fatten animals reserved instead for people, an extra 1.3 billion could be fed. Meat for the rich means hunger for the poor.
    What comes out is as bad as what goes in. The manure from factory farms is spread ostensibly as fertiliser, but often in greater volumes than crops can absorb: arable land is used as a dump. It sluices into rivers and the sea, creating dead zones sometimes hundreds of miles wide. Lymbery reports that beaches in Brittany, where there are 14 million pigs, have been smothered by so much seaweed, whose growth is promoted by manure, that they have had to be closed as a lethal hazard: one worker scraping it off the shore apparently died of hydrogen sulphide poisoning, caused by the weed's decay.
    It is madness, and there is no anticipated end to it: the world's livestock population is expected to rise by 70% by 2050."