The festive consumer extravaganza is in full swing here in Scotland. Wandering aimlessly in a supermarket, I see a myriad seasonal items depicting animals; curly-coated lambs, fluffy bunnies, pink piglets, yellow chicks and doe-eyed, long-legged deer delightfully adorning pyjamas, duvet covers and all sorts of consumer tat.

Meanwhile, only a couple of aisles away in the chilly miasma of the mortuary aisles are the dismembered and bloody remains of these very same sweet young creatures, the whimpers of loss, terror and agony that reflect what our species REALLY does, all conveniently swept under the rug of our collective delusions. Meanwhile, we cling to a distorted perception of ourselves as ‘animal lovers’.

A few shelves along, adorned in glossy wrappers and tinsel we find displays of dairy chocolate confections for which despairing and defeated mothers and their panic stricken newborns were torn apart for ever. We are never taught about this