Eating Ponies

There's been a lot of discussion in the media recently about tucking into sandwiches made from cuddly wuddly Dartmoor foalies.

I think it was my mate, Charlotte Faulkner (her real name), who first went public on the subject.  Charlotte founded The Dartmoor Hill Pony Association nearly twenty years ago, and no one could care more passionately about Dartmoor's ponies than she does.  With endless loyal support from her extended family, she has devoted  her life to their cause.

I know quite a lot about marketing meat because I used to work for the British Turkey Federation, so I'm particularly interested in all of this.

In our marketing materials we would never use pictures of cuddly wuddly live turkeys.  We had to completely divorce the idea of the clingfilmed slab of cream fillet in the supermarket from anything that had ever been alive. I eventually stopped sending press releases to The Independent (the least independent newspaper of them all if you ask me - worse than the Daily Mail.  At least nobody reads it except journalists) because they would simply use my info as a catalyst to call up their friends at 'Chickens Lib' (yes it does exist), and give poor old Bernie Matthews another roasting. I have even turned down opportunities to appear on the Today programme, because I know they're just after a slanging match between the Turkey people and the veggies, which is never going to sell more turkey sausages.

So I was a bit horrified to see on our local BBC Spotlight programme a large slithery piece of red pony fillet being swirled around in a bowl of what looked like dark red blood, but I think was actually wine, interspersed with shots of merry foals gambling on the moor, and licking tourists' ice creams.

However, on the Jeremy Vine Programme it was a relief to hear about 95% listeners talking sense.  The only two against were both clearly barmy weedy wimmin who frankly sounded completely off their trollies.

Charlotte is quite clear about the problem of not having enough ponies on the moor, which has been somewhat overlooked in most of the coverage. Ponies keep the moor in good order.  They eat scrub - gorse, bracken etc - that even the sheep wont touch.  With numbers down from 30,000 to 3,000 or something,  the speckled warbler (for whom it appears most of DEFRA's legislation is devised) is thriving - good for it, but being understocked, the moor itself is becoming  ever less accessible for walkers, riders, cyclists, farmers etc, the heather is disappearing, and basically its less beautiful than it was when we first moved here in 1995.

The Dartmoor commoners continue to maintain some ponies.  But most of the foals get shot, and fed to the hunt hounds, or zoo animals. Why not to humans too?

Unlike the millions of hothoused chickens and turkeys we consume, Dartmoor foals have a jolly, free life til it comes to the crunch, so to speak.  I'm with Charlotte.

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