If vegans were just content with living their own lives, following their peculiar little diet and getting on with it, I probably wouldn’t be ranting about them.
Vegans plan new wave of protests against meat industry as they target takeaways, butchers and abattoirs in bid do persuade consumers to turn their back on animal products.
“Veganism has been around a long time,” Phoebe Frampton, who founded the Earthlings movement in 2013, told The Sunday Times. “It used to be a dietary and health issue but modern vegans see it as being about animal rights and animal liberation.”
The Earthlings protests are peaceful, with masked campaigners standing in circles holding laptops screening “horrific” films of abattoirs to spark public interest.
However, critics see their beliefs as extreme with modern veganism goes far beyond giving up meat, fish and dairy. It also means giving up honey, silk, leather shoes and even beeswax furniture polish.
Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), founded in the US in 2013, now has five “chapters” in Britain. One of them invaded a branch of Tesco in Brighton last month, with 30 protesters staging a “silent protest” in the meat aisle.
Some farmers dispute the claims of non-violence. John Wood, a Dorset farmer, set up the Facebook Meat & Greet site to promote lamb and beef, but says he was targeted by “frightening” militants.
“We have had animal liberationists turning up at our home and shouting abuse. Most of these people may be bunny-huggers, but some are dangerous,” he said.
So shoot a few, if you feel your life is being threatened. Oh wait… I forgot that this is in Britain, where you’ll get a prison sentence if you so much as look angrily at someone threatening your life. And good grief: if some oaf is shouting abuse at you, use an air horn on them at close range.
As for the Murkin DxE: try staging a silent protest in my local butchery while I’m buying my weekly supply of steak, boerewors and lamb, and your protest won’t stay “silent” for long*. That’s a promise.
I am so sick of smug assholes trying to tell me how to live my own life.
*Note to self: remember to take the sjambok with you to the butchery in future.
And yes: it’s made from the skin of a dead hippo. Why do you ask?