Your correspondence does go round in circles, doesn't it?

I seem to remember – it seems like yesterday but it's probably longer – Mrs Allison mounting her factory-farming high horse and quoting previously the statistic "two out of three animals reared for food are factory-farmed".

Very emotive stuff! It gets people thinking that two-thirds of all the cattle, sheep and pigs that we eat are intensively reared, which is not the case. What she fails to point out is that she counts every chicken reared for meat and/or egg production in her totals – and there are hundreds of thousands of those.

I am not suggesting that the lives of chickens are not worthy of consideration, just that their inclusion paints a misleading picture.

I cared for livestock all my working life – and to the highest standards, for they deserved nothing less.

When the time came for them to die they had earned a quick and merciful death. I took them to the abattoir ,which was only a short journey from our farm, at the appointed time. I knew that by the time I was driving out of the slaughterhouse yard they were already dead.

That is no longer possible because EU regulations have made the existence of small local abattoirs almost impossible. I felt sadness but no shame and I don't now.

By our determination to accept nothing less, let us strive to enforce high standards in all livestock farming and in every abattoir – shine a light into every murky corner and root out callous and inhumane practice wherever it is found.

And if we, in our country, consider some forms of slaughter to be unacceptable, let us have the courage of our convictions and ban them.

Wendy Warren, South Kilworth.