MICK Heavey’s fixation on the idea that, because I despise people who can blindly accept that meat is right and proper for human consumption, regardless of the conditions under which the animal has lived, the method of slaughter, or whether the end product is displayed on a slab or packaged, then “all those letters about foxhunting” cancel out my claim not to feel the need to see my views on other matters in print. (Oxford Mail, June 29). A strange logic.

Butchery is hardly in the same league as hunting, where the target animal is ruthlessly pursued to the point of total exhaustion and then killed in an unspeakably cruel manner – but perhaps it is not so far removed from the food markets in Taiwan which, according to his letter of June 17, “make brutal viewing at first view, but where produce is always local and fresh”, tradition and freewill again being the excuse for human cruelty.It is wrong to accept that the Hunting Act is working and that the hunters really are trail hunting instead of cynically exploiting every loophole in the Act and bleating innocence!

BEATRICE BRADLEY Cuxham Road Watlington