Meat is no more as Belgian music festival bags Morrissey

A Belgian music festival that has snared Sister Bliss, Primal Scream and Roger Daltrey reprising The Who’s rock opera “Tommy”, has taken prized horse-meat sausage off the menu to honour vegetarian Morrissey’s first appearance.

Jan Cools, who heads the volunteer organisers behind the 10-day Lokerse Feesten in Flemish northern Belgium, told AFP on Thursday they tried for years to land former The Smiths frontman Morrissey and “when we got the booking, we decided to offer that day meat-free.”

Morrissey did not ask for the gesture as a condition, he spelled out, but August 4, when the Manchester singer appears in Lokeren, will see food vendors ordered to remove their standard fare of sausage rolls and snails, to be replaced by vegetarian food only.

“Morrissey is a big vegetarian, it only seemed right to offer that because we were just so pleased to get him,” Cools said.

“Mind you, we have had quite a few angry reactions from fans who know about our famous sausages — but we’re not telling festival-goers ‘don’t eat meat,’ they’ll just have to get them off-site on the day,” Cools underlined.

The event, now in its 37th year, also features Joe Cocker, Thin Lizzy, the Heartbreaks and Paolo Nutini — running from July 29 to closing act Sister Bliss’s Faithless DJ set in the early hours of August 8.

The Smiths’ UK chart-topping second album in 1985 was entitled “Meat is Murder,” providing Morrissey with a platform ever since from which to espouse his advocacy of vegetarianism and animal rights.