Paul McCartney Shared the 1 Exception to His Devotion to Animal Welfare: ‘I Have My Parameters’

TL;DR:

• Paul McCartney became a vegetarian in the 1970s.
• He doesn’t even like to hurt flies, though he has one exception.
• Paul McCartney helped publish a vegetarian cookbook of his late wife’s recipes.

Since the 1970s, Paul McCartney has been a vegetarian and has dedicated himself to the protection of animal welfare. While he wouldn’t try to convert anybody to vegetarianism, he said that he feels ashamed of some of his past behavior involving animals. These days, he says, he wouldn’t even hurt a fly. There is one exception to his rule of protecting animals, however. 

Paul McCartney has been a vegetarian since the 1970s

McCartney grew up eating meat, but stopped in the mid-1970s when he sat down to dinner with his wife, Linda. In the middle of a roast dinner, the couple looked out the window and saw lambs roaming their property.

“It was like, the penny dropped,” he told The Guardian. “The light bulb lit up. We thought, we might just give this up.”

Since then, he has worked with the UN to promote vegetarianism to help the planet. He explained that he wouldn’t want to tell people to give up meat entirely, though.

“I wouldn’t want someone to be bossing me, saying, ‘You should be a Buddhist.’ I’d say, ‘Lay off, I’ll make my own mind up, thank you!'” he said. “Similarly, I don’t want to go laying it on people — ‘You really should be vegetarian.’ I like them to come to it themselves.”

He shared the one animal he doesn’t mind harming

McCartney shared that long before his switch to vegetarianism, he killed frogs as a way to prepare for military service. It’s something he still feels ashamed about. 

“I was very aware that I would soon be joining the army, because all of us were called up for National Service,” he told GQ in 2018. “I was probably about 12, I was looking at being 17, which is kind of looming — it’s going to happen fast — and the one thing that I thought is: ‘I can’t kill anything — what am I going to do? Get a bayonet and hurt someone? I’ve got to kill someone? S***, I’ve got to think about that. How do I do that?’ So I ended up killing frogs.”

He tries not to think about this part of his life and now avoids harming any animals, even flies. 

“I still try and block that,” he said. “Because I’m now devout animal welfare, wouldn’t kill a fly.”

Still, he has one exception to his animal care rule.

“[I] rescue flies,” he said. “But mosquitoes [I] will kill, because they’re attacking me. So, you know, I have my parameters.”

Paul McCartney and his children published a vegetarian cookbook

In 2021, McCartney and his children, Stella and Mary, published the cookbook Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen: Over 90 Plant-Based Recipes to Save the Planet and Nourish the Soul. According to the Amazon blurb, there are “nearly 100 sustainable, plant-based recipes to save the planet and nourish the soul, in this deeply personal cookbook from Paul, Mary, and Stella honoring their late wife and mother, Linda McCartney.”

The book features a number of classic recipes and aims to make vegan cooking straightforward and simple.