You report Mary Colwell’s address to the National Justice and Peace Network (News from Britain and Ireland, 26 July) in which she suggested that “Catholics could make the world a better place by eating less meat and fish”. She might have reminded her audience that unlike the staples of many British vegetarian dishes, which involve many air or sea miles, British meat is usually locally produced on upland areas otherwise unsuitable for vegetable food production; the grazing animals by a natural process turn the uneatable into the eatable: grass into meat. If wintered in the lowlands, by another natural process, they improve the nutrition and texture of soils for further arable crops, before returning to the uplands, where they reduce the use of hydrocarbons in maintaining