A marketing strategy implemented by a butchers shop in Edinburgh in the UK has raised eyebrows, with some branding it as “ignorant.”
W.M Christie, a family butchers established in 1889, placed a chalkboard sign in its store in Bruntsfield that took aim at vegetarians.
“Everyday thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians,” the sign read. “Help end the violence. Eat meat.”
An amused shopper posted a photo of the sign online, causing a stir among animal rights advocates.
“Jeez, the ignorance is astonishing. Plants are not sentient and exist in synergy with humans and animals as a food source,” Kevin Thomson commented, per Edinburgh Live.
“You just can’t say I murdered a carrot. People will cling to all sorts of nonsense to justify murdering animals… animals that have exactly the same fundamental wishes as us – to be happy, safe, and free from suffering.”
Other social media users pointed out that animals bred for human consumption also require the “killing” of crops.
In fact, only around half (55 percent) of the world’s crop calories feed people directly. And for some crops, a vast majority is fed to livestock, not people. For instance, 77 percent of the world’s soy is fed to livestock.
Furthermore, calorically speaking, the system could be considered inefficient, given that it takes 100 calories of grain to produce just 12 calories of chicken. The conversion is even more dire for other animal-based foods; 100 calories of crops produce just three calories of beef.
‘A simple joke’
Willie Christie, who runs the butchers alongside his brother, defended the advertisement. “As it’s Veganuary, isn’t it fitting it could be Meatanuary too? It wasn’t malicious in any way, just a simple joke and banter,” he said to Edinburgh Live.
“People have taken it wrongly. we are surrounded with people telling us to go vegan and vegetarian, yet my business is a butchers. We sell meat and I’m promoting my business.
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I respect that, I’m just expressing mine. And it seems to have worked, given the attention my butchers has now received.”
Pro-meat campaigning
W.M Christie isn’t the only meat-centered company poking fun at the Veganuary campaign – the month-long pledge to go vegan for January.
This month, a coalition of animal agriculturalists are pushing their own take on Veganuary. The Regenuary campaign encourages shoppers to seek out meat and dairy produced by regenerative farming methods.
The campaign notes that vegans and vegetarians can still participate by being more mindful about where their food is sourced. However, the Ethical Butcher website notes that Regenuary was launched as “a response to Veganuary,” and was borne out of “frustration” at the “misleading messages around veganism and its effect on the environment.”
Tangentially, in November, an anti-vegan lifestyle brand launched to allow meat-eaters to declare they are “proud to not be a vegan.”
The company sells tongue-in-cheek merchandise, such as mugs with the statement: “Doubled my meat intake to cancel out someone who turned vegan.”
“We’re here to stand up for the vast majority of people who eat meat,” the brand, called Not Vegan Friendly, says on its website.
“If you’ll excuse the pun, but a lot of people are fed up with vegans ramming their beliefs down our throats so it’s time to speak out in favour of our different and perfectly valid choice to eat meat.”Butchers Encourages Shoppers To ‘End The Violence’ Against Plants By Eating Meat
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Carnism is a cult based on the beliefs that humans raising, killing and eating animals is “normal,” “natural,” and “necessary.” We must be doing something right if we’re being attacked by the losing side.
If you didn’t live in a pampered modern society which supplied you with a vast array of imported foods and pharmaceutical supplements, you may well find that eating animals is “normal” “natural” and “necessary”. The way we produce them and the size of the population eating them isn’t.
Eating meat is entirely unnecessary. Individual societies decide if it’s normal. The term “natural” is an even more problematic.
No Matt individual societies don’t make the decisions on what people eat, tradition and in rural communities the condition of soil, latitude, weather etc. are the deciding factors. It would in most such cases be fair to say that the use of animals is not just “normal” “natural” and “necessary”, but ESSENTIAL.
The term “natural is somewhat overused and taken out of context, however a food which has been used throughout the evolution of a species for over 6 million years could reasonably be referred to as “natural”.
PS, That doesn’t mean you have to eat it! If you think you can gain the same nutrients elsewhere. But a little tolerance wouldn’t go amiss.
Humans are the great adapters as a species. We adapted to almost every ecosystem on the plant that is for sure. Considering our existing global population the best thing for highly developed civilizations to do is switch to a plant based diet. If populations scratching a living off their environment need meat to supplement their diet, fine. But in the global north we need to end animal husbandry, industrial fishing, and dairy production. That’s the best way for us to reduce overall plant deaths. 😉
It’s really crazy that Not Vegan Friendly declares, “…a lot of people are fed up with vegans ramming their beliefs down our throats.”
Yet all of us (except children of vegans) have had meat & dairy literally rammed down our throats by parents, other relatives, hospitals, school lunch offerings, summer camps, scout leaders, etc. from our infancy into adulthood.
And an entire culture that worships meat & dairy has branded us vegans with all sorts of insults and negative stereotypes since we dared to exit the dystopian milk- & corpse-eating cult decades ago.
But it’s meat-eaters who are the victims here?? Gimme a break!
Of course the real victims in the ongoing holocaust are the innocent, vulnerable animals, whose ongoing utter misery never seems to penetrate the heavily armored hearts of self-indulgent omnivores.
Beautifully stated. Couldn’t agree more ??
That a good description of meat eaters who demand they have the right to killed innocent animals and shoved the dead flesh down their bloody mouth…………..HEAVILY ARMORED HEARTS !!!
They do this because they are mocking the sanctimony of *some* vegans and vegetarians. We all know this. The best thing you can do is not give them the attention, they are relying on a backlash because any attention is good attention. You start wagging fingers and lecturing and they will push back because they think it’s funny to wind you up, whereas back off and the butcher’s don’t get their free advertising from all the people who would’ve shown up to engage in the spectacle. Really caring about a cause sometimes requires the strength to pick your battles.
Genuine question, and I really am not trolling..so please do not be offended (This is a genuine discussion I have been having with vegetarian wife) How do you reconcile your beliefs against the millions of insects that are killed every day by the insecticides and pesticides that are used to produce your food? Even the very best organic growers have to control pests including slugs, rats etc. Unfortunately, I do feel that some vegetarians only see cute furry animals as legitimate – they are less interested in the lives of creepy crawlies (Personally, I do eat meat, but almost exclusively wild and on the very rare occasions I do buy farmed, it is from a local Demeter farm, for my own personal ethical reasons)
Because even more creatures are killed by the production of meat. Veganism isn’t perfect. It simply strives for the least possible deaths. There also is a hierarchy of sentience to consider. The ultimate goal would be to grow plants in vertical farms free from insect or rodent deaths, but this is simply not practical right now.
Obviously significantly more plant deaths occur when a human eats meat. Up to 90% more. What do they imagine the cow is eating?