If only animals could talk, they would not have to go through the vast variety of suffering humans inflict on them.

As Ella Meah (Mailbox, August 5) says, animals clearly feel pain and fear as well as pleasure, cows and pigs no less than our own pet dogs and cats. This is at least as important as whether they have much comparative intelligence or not.

Mammals were looking after the planet for millennia before we ourselves were part of life on earth.

We've by now a very long history of interfering with their interests, so surely we can work out better ways to live and let live with them rather than cooking, hunting and eating them.

The white Chillingham cattle in Northumberland, for instance, successfully live wild in their herd until old age.

Chris Seal, Leicester.