Someone once sent me a Christmas card with a picture of some turkeys on the front. Inside it read, ‘Happy Christmas, from your biggest fans’.

I haven’t eaten turkey for 25 years, since I gave up meat overnight. I’ve never missed it, although I still have a soft spot for the aroma of sizzling bacon.

I know it’s natural to eat meat and I don’t mind cooking it. And I think if an animal is going to be killed for its meat all of it should be eaten – not just the bits wrapped up neatly for supermarket shelves.

I stopped eating meat because I regard intensive battery farming as inhumane and unnatural. There are many arguments supporting vegetarianism, but for me it comes down to compassion.

Where animals are concerned, compassion has been in short supply in Bradford lately. Over the past couple of weeks, the T&A has reported on a puppy abandoned on the M62, another one found in a bin, the deaths of two loose horses which collided with a vehicle on the M606, and a court case involving the horrific killing of several domestic kittens.

Then there was Mr Frisky, the pet turkey stolen from a Wrose family days before Christmas. The bird had lived on their farm for several years, after he was rescued from slaughter, and his disappearance left the family’s young children distraught.

If you’re still scoffing leftover turkey you won’t lose any sleep over Mr Frisky, but those children will probably never forget the Christmas their pet was stolen.

The post-Christmas period is generally a tough time for animals. Charities and rescue centres are bracing themselves for the dumping of unwanted pets, and traditionally it’s the season for blasting birds out of the sky – which isn’t as pretty as it looked on Downton Abbey – and chasing exhausted foxes.

As a country reporter in the Midlands, I once covered a Boxing Day meet, shortly before the hunting ban was introduced. Clutching my notepad, I tried to avoid being kicked by horses as I spoke to huntsmen and women who were knocking back port, enjoying the attention from onlookers and generally looking very pleased with themselves.

That went on for two hours, until the horn finally sounded and the sozzled unspeakable set off in pursuit of the uneatable.

A local farmer later told me he loathed the pomp and ceremony of foxhunting, and could protect his livestock more efficiently without it.

Having endured the company of those puffed-up Boxing Day thrill-seekers, I’d already suspected that hunting was less about culling foxes and more about guzzling port and chasing blood.