Michael Eavis, the dairy farmer who turned a small concert on his property into the big boss of European outdoor music shows, Glastonbury Festival, is hiding a dastardly secret. He’s an “animal hater,” according to Morrissey.
Eavis, who has earned some of the music industry’s highest honors and received recognition from the Queen, is Morrissey’s quarry in a rant which drills into commercial-scale milk production, the “rape” of cows, the role of factory farming on climate change and in which Moz poses the big question, “If a dog is not food, then why is a pig?”
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Morrissey’s 1,300-word plus essay is posted at the True To You Website under the headline “Glastonbury Festival is not animal friendly”. As always, the former Smiths frontman has produced an informative, emotional rant which stays true to his animal activist roots whilst torpedoing his target.
Meat is Murder. Milk is murder too, if you believe Morrissey.
“I assume that the dairy cows at Glastonbury who no longer yield milk are brought into the home of Michael Eavis and allowed to sit down and watch Emmerdale until they gently pass away in their later years, because, after all, Michael insists that Glastonbury cows are ‘very happy,’” writes Morrissey. “In truth, of course, as soon as a cow is a substandard producer of milk, she and her friends are sent off to have their throats slit. We can easily imagine Michael Eavis waving the cattle truck off, and we can see his cows being ‘very happy’ about that, and waving back to Michael.”
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Morrissey also claims his onstage visuals for a Glastonbury show were tampered-with. “In 2011 I played Glastonbury and attempted to sing the song ‘Meat is Murder’. Behind me, a screen that usually shows the many evils of factory farming remained blank. I was told that Michael Eavis had stopped the screening of the film because it wasn’t indicative of how his dairy farm operated.”
The Glastonbury founder is used to bouquets, not brickbats. He was inducted into the Music Managers Forum Roll of Honour gala in 2006, he earned a Gold Badge Award in 2007, and a Midem Green World Award in 2009. He was the recipient last year of the prestigious Music Industry Trust’s Award. In 2007, he was awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to the U.K.’s live music industry and many charitable causes”.
Kanye West and the Foo Fighters are among the headliners for this year’s Glastonbury fest, which runs June 24-28 and is already sold-out.
Eavis hasn’t responded to Morrissey’s claims.