I'm from a farming family. Mixed farming, back in the 40s. I stopped eating meat at the age of four after seeing wailing animals being loaded up for slaughter. No special veggie recipes back then, not to my mum's knowledge anyway. I was given the two veg and a lump of cheese. My schooldays were a nightmare when it came to lunchtimes, always having to repeat that I don't eat meat.
I've survived though, into my seventies without meat, although I admit to occasionally eating fish and have also tried a small slice of turkey at Christmas. It does feel alien to my palate though, the texture is unpleasant to me, I feel the body of the animal. However, I've always eaten eggs and dairy, as a child it was raw unpasteurised and still warm from the cow. No intensive farming. Our animals lived and grazed in the fields, but were brought in during the depths of winter and their diet supplemented with hay and silage. Most farms these days don't operate that way, they need to produce much higher yields, but smaller organic farms are growing in number and I still look for organic produce.
I realise that my childhood farm which was the norm then, just isn't practical now with the increased population, but if we all ate less meat, butter, cheese etc it would probably be better for us, the environment and the animals.
