THE BBC2 series Stargazing missed a valuable opportunity during the discussion on SETI – the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.

Scientists may boast about their technological achievements but there is a paradox here; we feed nearly half the world’s grain, soy and water supplies to farm animals, which we then kill and eat, while one billion people starve for want of the same valuable resources.

No higher intelligence is going to desire communication with us while witnessing such appaling priorities on top of such low, primitive and quite ghastly eating habits. Darwin was right: we should not be killing and eating other species that are closely related to us. This is the message any higher intelligence would be giving us.

Meanwhile, they may continue to observe from a safe distance, as the elusive but genuine UFO activity witnessed by millions of people will confirm, much as the scientists dismiss it with the overused cliché of ‘little green men’.

EDWARD SANDERSON Great Clarendon Street Oxford