Vegan Christmas Advert: Cinema

[InAMess2023]

Had a lovely festive day out with the girls yesterday and went to see Love Actually (20 year re-release). Settled down to watch a film and an advert came on... it's a cartoon turkey (voiced by Jane Horrocks) looking at all the Christmas traditions and singing a jolly Christmas carol... no idea what the ad is for...

All of the sudden the turkey (still singing) is grabbed and thrown in a van...we then see the full journey of it being hung up by the neck, electrocuted, and the screen goes black just as it's killed. The caption? 'Kill tradition this Christmas. Not a Turkey - go vegan this Christmas' - it's an ad for PETA.

Now I have absolutely no problem with vegans, can understand the reasoning around it, etc. but I don't have a desire to be vegan. Probably am a bit hypocritical as I am an absolute animal lover but yes I do eat meat (although not a ton of it).

Just feel like the ad was really inappropriate for the cinema and especially what is meant to be a festive feel-good film! Do I complain to the Cinema Advertising Associates/ASA?

YABU it's an important issue and you shouldn't complain
YANBU totally inappropriate - make a complaint

Eating meat is a natural action for omnivorous species. Eating a vegan diet often requires additional supplementation with B vitamins to avoid deficiencies because it's just not natural for us.

The issue is that this has been the reality long before the concept of ethics existed. Minimising suffering to animals is a good thing, as is trying to reduce environmental impact, but the reality is that humans doing human things has negative impacts on other species of flora and fauna.

Veganism is an unnatural approach to a natural situation and whilst it no doubt works to an extent I don't think you can condemn people for being human. You can condemn humankind as a species but on an individual level none of us chose to be humans.

Not really the same thing but there was an advert a while ago that was literally advertising meat and dairy. No product in particular…just meat and dairy. I thought that was odd but I didn’t complain about it.

What a daft argument.

Contraception is unnatural. Penicillin is unnatural. Flying through the air in a metal contraption is unnatural.

Having to take additional B vitamins might be unnatural, but so what?

There used to be an all vegan diner near where I used to live called The Grumpy Panda. Not sure why I am sharing this but thought I would anyway 😊

I don't understand why Father Christmas is portrayed as committing the turkey murders in the advert - is it because he keeps (imaginary) reindeer and therefore doesn't represent 'true' veganism?

I felt like the ad was saying you shouldn't do the Father Christmas bit of Christmas too, which seems a tad odd if the point was supposed to be that you can keep some traditions and just get rid of the meat-eating aspects.

Spot on.

Was about to have the arguments with the 'thick as mince' poster upthread claiming arable farming is as bad as meat, and the idiot quoting b vitamins - you're getting these from bacteria.

Meats and milks of herbivorous ruminant animals are good sources of B12 for humans. Ruminants acquire the essential B12 through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria inside the body. Thus, we also depend on B12-producing bacteria located in ruminant stomachs.7 Dec 2017

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › ...
Vitamin B12 sources and microbial interaction - PubMed

I don’t understand how people can look at the animal on the left and then gladly have it killed and eaten.

This!

It isn't other people's views though is it. It's just reality. We are very good at denial of anything that makes our own lives inconvenienced/less pleasurable. Never mind the power of.love, denial is much more powerful.

Don't be ridiculous, you can't compare an advert that asks people to think about what they eat and the level of cruelty involved in its production with pornography and its quite frankly hysterical that you would do so.

Humans evolved to be omnivores but out current industrial agriculture practices are and mass slaughter and exploitation of animals is anything but natural or healthy for humans or the planet. But of course people just want their cheap food and don't care to know the details, its wilful ignorance. If you are at ease with your eating habits then it shouldn't bother you, if it upsets you then its obvious you have doubts.

Why?
If you think eating meat is fine surely you could explain 'they've made the animal seem like a person in that film but real turkeys in real life that we eat don't talk or sing or understand what is happening when they go to an abortoire' (can't spell it)

Many many more people have convinced me to try meat than I have for them to become veggie

Do you also object to David Attenborough planet earth discouraging us from plastic pollution? Or no to drink drive adverts? Or stop smoking campaigns?

😂😂😂

Always gotta be wary of someone who thinks eating meat is justified because our earliest ancestors did it (albeit far less frequently than modern man).

What else is ok because cave men did it? Anal rape for dominance? Cannibalism? Infanticide of rivals children?

Or I suppose if I were being generous I could view them as either hypocrites picking and choosing which behaviour to emulate, or not very bright rather than straight up psychopaths.

My understanding is that the B vitamin argument against veganism doesn't really hold much water.

B12 is created by bacteria, and we used to get B12 in water, and also in vegetables grown with raw manure, but now water is treated to get rid of the bad stuff, it has also got rid of the good stuff. Farmed animals also now have to get supplemented with B12.

So even the B12 that meat eaters get is through supplementation.

I say this as someone that eats meat.

Yes, your understanding is correct. Modern cattle get b12 injections partly down to how we've screwed up soil quality and partly because farmed animals don't actually spend another time outdoors before slaughter (timescales in farming are tight) to build up enough to benefit humans.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on b12 as your ability to absorb it lessens. Mines ok so far, my meat eating mother had to have injections but once you've had it it takes ages to deplete it so always worth a check as it's a quick fix.

Sadly I'm just tired due to no sleep or downtime so no such luck for me.

Because it tastes nice.

Because we are genetically built to eat animals.

Because they recognise the animal as livestock.

Because it has only been reared because it will be eaten.

Because it's just a lamb. It's quite stupid. It's not cognitively capable of processing its fate.

I appreciate that you won't agree with these reasons, but they're quite easy to understand, I think.

Maybe a better analogy would be a pro life advert. Maybe showing an adult looking tenderly at her kids. Then rewinding to her cutting her wedding cake, then to a happy youth, then a teen, then a kid, then a baby.

Eventually, we're at the stage where the subject is just a fetus in her mother's stomach. The film then starts to play forward again and as the camera pans out we see the mother walking into an abortion clinic and a message of 'she never got the chance to live' or something like that pops up on the screen.

Would we all find that appropriate before a feelgood movie?

B12 is naturally occurring in the digestive system of cows for example. For millennia we would've got it through eating them. The methods of modern farming are neither here nor there in relation to the evolution of humans.

Would you take your small children with you to watch Love Actually? Ridiculous comment.

Would you take your small children with you to watch Love Actually?
Only if they'd been really, really bad 🤣

But the examples you give are examples of behaviour not physical evolution. Like it or not humans have evolved as omnivores and changing our genetic makeup isn't as easy as changing our behaviour.

Most modern humans don't want to a anally rape people nor eat a diet of purely vegetables.

That turkey is such an annoying grinch, it really doesn't make for a very sympathetic character. Odd choice.

So are vegans actually saying we should just find more humane methods/better regulation around slaughtering animals? They don't want us to stop eating meat?