SEVEN members of the European Parliament have signed a Declaration that calls upon UN member states to shift their societies to plant-rich diets. It will be presented at the UN climate summit, COP30, which starts in Brazil in eight days. The signatories are Anna Strolenberg and Anja Hazekamp from the Netherlands, Denmark’s Sigrid Friis, Germany’s Sebastian Everding, Jutta Paulus and Maria Noichi, and Luxembourg’s Tilly Metz. JOHN ELLWOOD, TCW’s ace investigative reporter on all things Euro, managed to infiltrate the event that launched the Declaration. This is his report.
ON ENTERING the plush Manoir Room in the EU’s Berlaymont HQ, I was immediately struck by a distinct odour of silage and manure. I noticed that the welcoming cava had been poured into small trough-like receptacles. The vegan nibbles were randomly spread across a table in a rather unhygienic manner. The enthusiastic crowd sat expectantly on the carpet.
The speeches started with a rousing oration from Anja Hazekamp, the MEP for the Dutch Party for the Animals.
She began: ‘We should be living in comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen by Man. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word – Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.
‘Comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others. It is all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.’
Her call for action was amplified by the next speaker, MEP Sebastian Everding, of the German Tierschutzpartei, the Animal Protection Party: ‘I have little more to say. I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. All the habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.’
The supporters of the Declaration had now been whipped up into a frenzy and they began a prolonged spontaneous bleating of ‘four legs good, two legs bad’.
When the exuberance of the assembled lessened somewhat, MEP Sigrid Friis, the pin-up girl of the Danish Social Liberal Party, led the crowd in a rendition of the movement’s hastily composed anthem, the first two verses of which were as follows:
Beasts of Europe, beasts of Ireland,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Of the golden future time.
Soon or late the day is coming,
Tyrant Man shall be o’erthrown,
And the fruitful fields of Europe
Shall be trod by beasts alone.
In view of the passions that had been aroused, I decided it was time to make a hasty exit.
Later, as I dissected a delicious steak in the subsidised Berlaymont restaurant, I reflected upon what I had witnessed. Despite their apparent harmony, I was left with the uneasy feeling that Anna, Sebastian, Anja, Sigrid, Jutta, Maria and Tilly, would soon be at each other’s throats about their journey to the planned socialist Utopia. I felt that it was only a matter of time before their Declaration would lead to (as these things always do) state sanctioned mass murder, abject poverty and widespread starvation.
