Alf Young (Comment, The Herald, April 25) rightly calls into question "the old certainties".

Staple foods such as grain are not simply an industrial raw material. Even before the current crisis, more than 800 million people went to bed hungry each night. Now food riots are spreading across the globe. Yet barely half of the world grain harvest goes to feed people. More than one-third goes to feed the burgeoning world herd of farmed animals. But most of the food value in grain - including the protein - is lost when it is eaten second-hand as meat.

The time has come to reject industrial animal farming, which is a food destruction process, not a food production process. Those of us living in rich countries should lead the way. A typical British diet uses land that could feed three vegans, including land in countries where people suffer from malnutrition. By choosing to eat a balanced, exciting plant-based diet, we can stop artificially breeding farmed animals. That will free up large quantities of food, so we can stop importing staple foods from abroad. The choice is between breeding and feeding farmed animals, or feeding hungry people.
Amanda Baker,
Acock's Green, Birmingham.