There are several types of vegetarian. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy products but not eggs. Ovo-vegetarians eat eggs but not dairy products. Ovo-lacto-vegetarians eat eggs and dairy. But vegetarians who have chosen to forego meat in order to avoid the killing of animals may find that they are.

Quail for Christmas? Recipes are plentiful. These birds are the smallest European game bird. But those for the table have never been wild and they have not been shot for sport. Rather they are - as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has described them - factory farming's most recent and smallest victims.

Every day, all over the world, animals arrive at slaughterhouses by the truck, train and ship load - around 65 billion every year. That number is predicted to double by 2050.

Factory farming is all about maximising profit to produce cheap food - hence the breeding of animals that have become grotesque parodies of their natural selves: malformed mutants, pushed to the limits. This is farming on a vastly cruel scale, the profit motive overwhelming any meaningful consideration of animal welfare.

The unpalatable truth is that the overwhelming majority of the animals used for food are reared intensively, that is, on an industrial scale, on farms that are of an entirely different type than those that belong to farmers who welcome school children.