Abergavenny Food Festival
I’m really looking forward to the Abergavenny Food Festival in mid-September.
On Saturday 17 September I’ll have the pleasure of interviewing Henry Mance about his book How to Love Animals. Mance is chief features writer for the Financial Times and I’ve long admired his writing and witty interventions on Twitter. I bought and read his book when it first came out and have returned to it many times since to find various references. I’ll be asking him about his journey from vegetarianism to veganism and the experiences and evidence which led him to change his diet.
On Sunday 18 September I’m part of a panel discussing the dismal state of our rivers (particularly the local Wye and Usk) and what we can do to clean them up. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two years researching pollution to the Wye, particularly from agricultural sources, including the 20 million chickens in the catchment – so it will be interesting to share the stage with a representative from Avara, the company responsible for the majority of those chickens.
Off-stage, aside from sampling lots of delicious food and watching great chefs at work, I’m most excited about watching Saturday’s debate ‘Meat: Should we still be eating it?’ as I think it’s one of the biggest questions we face. Having read Mance’s book (and others, including Regenesis by George Monbiot and We Are The Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer), I’m pretty persuaded that the answer is ‘No’ – but I’m always interested in counter-arguments and this event has an excellent panel.