How Black Pudding Throwing championships became the latest front in culture wars - Brian Monteith

We live in transformative times. Twenty years ago we were regularly cowering from politically correct muggings over our use of various words that allegedly caused offence. Renaming pubs like Linlithgow’s Black Bitch being a more recent example. Now we are waking up to woke interpretations of our history such as diminishing our role in fighting slavery or a Scottish Parliament legislator dismissing rape as merely a point on a spectrum of physical infractions.

While real tangible horrors are happening that we could exorcise ourselves about, such as the horrors of war, the organisation known as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) thought it clever to demand the organisers of the Black Pudding Throwing championships should switch to vegan black puddings rather than "have blood on their hands". It did this by issuing a press release which, on being reported, rather took the organisers by surprise as PETA had not bothered to contact them.

They never received a letter, e-mail request or "demand" from the militant vegan activists, it was just another manufactured cultural clash aimed at catching the eye of newsroom editors. If due diligence had been done or formal or informal contact had been made, PETA would have found that Paul Jenkins, the organiser of the Black Pudding Throwing Championship, already provides a vegan alternative to a genuine blood-sausage.

This misplaced stunt was no one-off but part of a growing catalogue of outrageous and surreal provocations. PETA also attacked the Mackerel Fiesta held at the small Welsh harbour town of Aberaeron, calling on its papier-mâché fish that is paraded through its streets be replaced instead with a giant papier-mâché cabbage. The campaigning charity previously served shoppers fake “Siamese and chips” in Whitby and proposed replacing Cromer’s World Pier Crabbing Championships with a “Crab Appling Championship”.

The cod humour serves a purpose – to demonise carnivore or pescatarian behaviour and raise funds, but it’s not to help animals directly. It has no care facilities in the UK, and its animal rescue centre in the Norfolk, Virginia, regularly euthanises cats and dogs to an alarming degree with over 50,000 animals killed since it opened its doors at the turn of the millennium.

If taken literally PETA’s demand for vegan black puddings would mean the chucking contest would no longer exist, for without pigs blood (most usually) there would be no Boudin Noir, Morcilla, Blutwurst, Soondae, Kaszanka or similar blood sausage to throw. One can see from the handful of varieties I have listed, that black pudding is not limited to the British Isles but a world-wide culinary delicacy.

The recipes and therefore the tastes and textures of blood sausages the world over are varied and worth exploring. Personally, I’ve enjoyed local varieties from Trinidad to Kazakhstan, I’ve never left a Scottish butchers without a few slices, and still harbour fond memories of the Boudin Noir entrée at Edinburgh Grassmarket’s Petit Paris. I can also recommend Black Pudding braised in cider with slices of apple, but I digress, for demonising Black pudding is not PETA’s real purpose.

The sub text to challenging these cultural events built upon our traditions of animal-based foods and the hard work of bringing it to our tables is to undermine our sense of community, identity, and the charitable process of helping each other, especially those disadvantaged, that is built around the pleasure of eating meat.

Why stop at Black Pudding throwing? What next, haranguing Haggis Hurling, the well-intentioned charity supporting but faux-traditional sport created by the late Northern Irish PR master Robin Dunseath? Although taken seriously by some, it was always a fun occasion with the aim of helping deserving causes.

The reason PETA targets various community festivals built around traditional work-based customs or tongue-in-cheek attempts to build a sense of heritage is not because it wants to advance animal welfare provision. It is not a traditional animal welfare charity. No, its purpose is to encourage donations to pay its activists to conduct yet more hectoring campaigns so we might abandon eating meat. It is essentially a political treadmill of grifting.

For me the question is not the personal choice of whether you like black pudding, but that people who choose to eat animals give full respect to the species they consume through adopting a nose-to-tail ethic. Individual items might not be to their own taste but others using the whole animal, be it pig, cow, sheep, fowl, game or seafood should be encouraged.

No parts of an animal should be seen as marginal – for if we are to respect and fully appreciate those animals we choose to kill to eat – then full use should be the norm, including the use of skin, hide and bone, and in providing food for other animals for whom it is natural.

Being militantly vegan, rather than about animal welfare, PETA wants to stop us eating the meat but intentionally targets what some people might think is peripheral and therefore can be abandoned with ease. We must resist that call; we should champion the eating and full use of an animal's whole body to dignify its importance. Survival expert Bear Grylls used to be vegan but now encourages his family to eat offal; he is the walking, talking riposte to chucking in black pudding consumption. Long may he throw.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and a spokesman for PETA-Watch