A new book urging consumers to "vote with their wallets" to stop cruelty to animals was launched at Conservative Party Conference.

Campaigning MEP John Flack wrote Animals Can't Vote...But You Can, to highlight cruel abuse of animals in agriculture, tourism and entertainment.

It covers factory farming, inhumane caging of birds and livestock, live transportation, slaughter methods, circuses, tourism, and meat from pets.

He urges us all to use commercial muscle to shun entertainment or spectacles involving animal cruelty and to eat only ethically-sourced food.

The book calls for the current confusing patchwork of conflicting labelling initiatives to replaced with a single clear and simple regime to let people know just how animals have been treated.

Mr Flack, Conservative MEP for the East of England, is Vice President of the European Parliament's Animal Welfare Intergroup.

He said: "We humans have the votes and the power animals lack.  Not just at the ballot box, but in choosing what we buy and eat, what we wear and how we entertain ourselves at home and abroad.

"My book presents some hard-hitting snapshots of what is downright abuse by any civilised standards. They are there to make people stop and think. I want to ignite something in people's consciences and in their hearts.

"We must change what we are doing, for the animals' sake and for our own."