To ask what you think about these vegan protests

[Pontingss]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6589687/Vegans-storm-ethical-grocery-store-protest-hurl-abuse-customers-staff.html

Sorry don’t know how to do a clicky link. I admire vegans but don’t have the willpower myself to give up cheese and fish and realistically never will. Witnessing this kind of protest would irritate me though, especially if I was trying to get on with my shopping. What do you think, admirable or annoying?

DeepDark: vegans don't believe in keeping animals as pets.

Source: my boyfriend, who is a hardcore vegan and has been for many years.

They remind me of anti-abortion protestors who try to harass women outside of clinics. They don't reduce the numbers, they're just there to intimidate.

^This.

I had a “heated debate” with an evangelical vegan a few weeks ago. The ridiculous thing was, that despite believing that everybody should immediately turn vegan or they are evil animal haters, they had not given one second thouht about what would happened to farmed animals in both the long and short term, should this happen. Where would they live, how would they be fed etc. You can’t just release semi-domesticated animals back into the wild without acknowledging that it’s going to be pretty shit for them. The alternative is to carry on tending them but SuperVeganAnimalLover had no answers as to where the land, money, manpower would come from to do this.

I have big issues with industrial farming and wholeheartedly am on board with changes that positively impact the environment and animal welfare, but some (not all by any means) vegans I know are simply virtue signaling, eating disordered dimwits with a superiority complex.

deepdarkwoods I wonder the same about pets.

@StoatofDisarray are you vegan yourself? If not, does your boyfriend give you a hard time about it?

My dog walkers are vegan and have pets too. I wonder if they just don't consume any animal products themselves because they love animals so much,not because of strict vegan views. I know they definitely have a dog.

I expect anti-slavery protesters faced the same backlash at some point.

I'm not convinced that rearing animals for the purpose of eating them or their produce (e.g. eggs) and the slavery movement is the same thing, sorry. E.g. eggs. I was having a chat with a vegan recently about their view on eggs, as healthy chickens will produce them.
I asked if I bought a handful of hens and a nice big open field for them to roam free in, fed then daily, gave them nice sleeping conditions, then would it still be wrong of them for me to eat their eggs. They said yes it would, because eggs are unhealthy.

Eggs are not unhealthy unless you consume stupid amounts of them and fry them. So this logic was backwards. As from a welfare perspective, this situation would be fine.

Another thing that irritates me about vegans and vegan activists is the degree to which their philosophy is in fact unsustainable.
For example vegan clothes of man made fibres release millions pieces of microplastics into the water supply with every washing machine load. These enter the food chain.
Vegan leather is just plastic, as a lot of vegan alternatives are. This is not sustainable of the entire world were to just switch to them over say leather, wool etc as vegans would claim is the way forward.
Wool is in fact the most environmentally friendly and sustainable material for clothes, and most sensible people would say shearing itself doesn't harm a sheep.

As pp have said, annoying that they continue to ram their stupid views down everyone's throats ... Bw began all day long for all I care, just piss of trying to tell the rest of the world they have to do it too!

Although I noticed they have a sticker on their van about no dairy being cruelty free or something so must be pretty in to it. Maybe they are vegan because they dont like the dairy industry. Sorry I'm rambling now but they definitely have pets.

People like that make me want to eat more meat, not less.

vegans don't believe in keeping animals as pets.

All the ones I know have cats.

Also the most common vegan substitutes, eg soya, are also the most common food allergens. So pretending a vegan diet is an attainable goal for every person is silly.
Plus rocketing demand from vegans in the developed world have lead to quinoa being unaffordable to the people who actually grow it and for whom it is their cuisine's staple food.

Yup I know an (ex) vegan cat owner and hose rider.

I’d be scouting their ranks for a single leather belt or shoe and be on them like a fly on poo. I’d also ask if they were sure that their cosmetics and hair dyes are definately not - and never have been - tested on animals.

I really can’t be bothered with a bunch of self riteous smug bastards bullying people as they go about their everyday LEGAL activities or disrupting a business.

As a vegan, I find this kind of vegan annoying, probably more than non vegans do. I'd love more people to be vegan, but I don't push my opinions on people. I think things like this make it easy for others to dismiss vegans as crazy and pushy rather than actually gaining an understanding of why people feel that way.

I think they're awful. I wonder if they would go to a Halal processing centre ect.

It seems it's an easy target.

They seem to push how ethical they are while being abusive!

With you on that one Blooddiamond.I respect anyone's right to not eat meat / eat meat -personally I eat a lot less meat but buy only free range or highest welfare and as locally sourced as possible.However apparently the surge of veganism has led to a huge increase in the supermarkets jumping on the bandwagon of vegan products and ready meals ,and the associated packaging and plastic that go with it.If someone is vegan and buying as fresh and loose a product as possible and cooking from scratch I can admire them.If they are chucking ready meals in a basket and then screaming abuse or threatening violence at business owners or hard working farmers who care about their animals welfare as many do then I have no respect for them.

The ironic thing is that the grocery shop they targeted is the most right-on thing in the history of right-on-ness. It's all sustainable, organic, lentil-weavery. Before that they targeted Waitrose, also in Brighton. I notice they haven't been targeting the Brighton Lidl next to the big council estate, funny that....

@Pontingss No, I am a confirmed and enthusiastic meat eater. When I met him 34 years ago, he ate meat, then 2 years later he went veggie (properly veggie too, no cheese with animal rennet, etc.) then about 7 years ago he went full-on vegan. He was quite ill for a couple of years until he found out he had to take a daily supplement...

He is against animal cruelty and also believes animal husbandry is bad for the world. I see the logic in some of his arguments (eating animals is cruel, if you see farmed animals as fairly intelligent sentient beings, which they are) but it doesn't bother me to eat meat at all: I have shot, skinned and gutted game meat and fish in the past.

I do pay a lot for the best quality, most conscientiously reared meat (I spend about £50 per week on meat just for myself and I only eat meat once a day, so that will give you an idea of how expensive it is). I also only eat seasonal UK veg, so I know where most of the food I eat comes from (my local market is Borough Market), but even when I wasn't so careful about sourcing my food, he has never, ever had a go at me for eating meat, keeping meat around the house, or cooking meat and animal products.

They are entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to be threatening towards other people going about their daily lawful business.

Re: the vegans/animals thing, I don't know how vegans who share my boyfriend's opinions can conscientiously keep pets. There are many types of vegans, though, just as there are many types of omnivores.

I have a parrot, so I'm a pet owner. My boyfriend was appalled when he saw the parrot tucking into a shred of pork, but parrots do eat grubs and the like in the wild, so that was a learning experience for the boyfriend :-)

I wonder where they get their money from.

I expect anti-slavery protesters faced the same backlash at some point.

What a fatuous statement. Ridiculous whataboutery IMHO.

The vegans and the shopkeepers are both right about factory farming... it's an abomination. However, totally the wrong target for the vegans, I wouldn't expect any significant deeper thought from them though. They focus purely on the individual animals and not the whole ecological big picture. So palm oil is fine to them, because plant, even though the industry kills thousands of orang-utans and millions of other forest creatures from the apex predators down to the bugs in the soil. Monocultures of soy and wheat are fine, even though they kill off everything else except the crop species. It's basically biological cleansing of huge tracts of industrial farmland. And require tons of artificial fossil fuel based fertiliser (haber-bosch process).

Or you can have pasture/meadow based mixed farming systems, where the animals produce dung directly onto the soil, and it supports a thriving ecosystem of bugs, butterflies, earthworms and badgers and a plethora more wild species. It's permanent, circular and sustainable. Unlike cereal/soy based farming which is the backbone of the vegan diet.

Anyone who's interested, please have a watch of some videos with ex-vegans on Youtube, they're really enlightening and hair raising. So many mental and physical health problems and degeneration that went away as soon as they started eating meat again.

Stoat I respect your partners choice and anyone who is vegan but I think when people have to take supplements that must prove it's not really a humans ideal diet. I'm veggie and had to take iron when I was younger,I know it was through not eating meat. I just don't like meat, no real ethics behind me not eating it.