Kirsty Bosley: Creatures great and small are worth compassion and respect

This super-intelligent species – more intelligent than us – has travelled across galaxies for one reason: they really like the taste of human meat and have noticed that they have seven billion of them to choose from.

We're like a big, ready-made farm, and some of us are really plump and juicy – delectable, and particularly delicious served on sandwiches with ketchup.

Those meaty, chunky people (of which I'd count myself as one) are the people that are killed for kebabs first. Or whatever alien culinary preferences are. I don't know, this is a sci-fi story.

OAPs are being killed immediately, because they can't be sold on for their wrinkly, old flesh. Alien supermarkets only take young meat.

Fertile women are probed en masse to impregnate them, and their babies are often snatched away at birth. Once the woman is healed and physically ready, she's forcibly impregnated again. It doesn't matter who fathers it, all that matters is that it's a big, healthy baby.

Babies are born and tonnes of them are slaughtered for alien pet food – they only need to keep the strongest and best. Adults are penned up together in cages and don't have enough space to properly feed or care for the children that survive. Family means nothing.

In facilities all over the world, people are injected with growth hormones to make them fatter and juicier. Before they reach maturity, hordes of humans are sent to the abattoir; hung up by their ankles, shocked and then stuck with a knife through their throat to bleed out.

They can see those up ahead of them being murdered, and panic sets in. It doesn't stop the aliens though, all that matters is the quality of the end product.

Some aliens are better about the whole 'human meat' thing than others. Thirty per cent of people are allowed to live semi-normal lives before they're killed. The other 70 per cent are farmed intensively, forced to live entirely indoors, unable to move freely and not allowed to go about any of their normal, natural business.

Now swap the alien perpetrators for humans, the victims for animals, and the story changes from a far-fetched fable about extra-terrestrials and becomes the normal UK meat industry.

It's this kind of thing that I think of any time anyone asks me why I'm a vegetarian. OK, so maybe not the aliens bit, but the rest of it. The core point is still the same: why would anyone treat any other living being so abysmally? For something as simple as food? When we have a wealth of vegetables, pulses and fruits to choose from, why would we treat animals that way? Particularly intelligent animals such as pigs who will recognise their name if given one and enjoy a snuggle, just like the rest of us. Pop one in front of a mirror and place a bowl of food behind it. A pig is smart enough to know that the food isn't behind the glass. It's more intelligent than your pet dog, and you'd never dream about grilling him on your barbecue.

For more than 20 years I ate meat, because I really liked crispy shredded beef and my nan made a good pork dinner. I loved the stuff, and no one devoured a KFC quite like me, you can trust me on that.

But one day, when I moved out, I decided I didn't want to eat it any more. It just felt like the wrong thing to do. The more I've learned about vegetarianism, and the more delicious meat-free foods I've discovered, the more I've realised that it was entirely the right thing to do. For both animals and me.

Two million land animals are slaughtered daily in the UK. Seventy per cent of pigs are farmed intensively and aren't allowed to do natural things, like forage or build nests. Sows often cannot even turn around to suckle their piglets. How frightened must they be? And all for 10 minutes of me being greedy with a bacon sandwich? I couldn't allow this to happen, not in my name.

The environmental impact that the meat industry has on the planet isn't great either, but let's not get into the specifics of our carbon footprints – that one's for another column.

Many people really dislike vegetarians, I've learned. Well, I think it's more a dislike of those with strong opinions that they're not afraid to share – particularly when it clashes with their own.

In many restaurants, the choices for me are very limited, and I spend quite a lot of my life eating frozen vegetable lasagne while my friends eat slap-up, fleshy dinners. I rarely complain, because my vegetarianism is my personal choice.

What anyone else eats is not my business. I normally don't force my views on others. Sometimes they'll ask if it's OK to eat flesh in front of me, and I of course have no right to moan otherwise. Why would I, I ate meat for years.

But similarly, when I have a platform on which to share my thoughts and opinions, why wouldn't I talk about this? Animals deserve better, and if they can't talk for themselves, then maybe we should be their voice?

It's 2015, and for humans, the food-chain is irrelevant. I get all of my nutrients from non-animal products and the doctor has confirmed that all of my blood levels are entirely normal. I don't need animal protein and I don't – ever – fancy a bacon sandwich.

Omnivores argue that this is why we have canine teeth – we're made to eat meat! But I argue that we have knives and forks, mincers and pastes. Meat eaters don't need canines either. With technology, the world has evolved a lot faster than humans have. Why eat meat at all when there are healthier, more animal-friendly alternatives?

If you read this and feel that eating meat is a bad choice, I'd suggest visiting the Vegetarian Society website to see how easy going meat-free can be.

If you read this and think it's a load of old rubbish, then I respect that too. But before getting frustrated about it, just remember the root of my decision – compassion and respect for other living beings.

If you don't have that, you don't have anything.