'Become a vegan' advert

[Thoughtsonallsorts]

I don't know if the vegan advert depicting a live piglet being delivered to the door of a young couple who ordered a meal delivery is new, or I only saw it for the first time yesterday. If you have seen this 'become a vegan advert' thoughts would be interesting.

It's the 'Viva just meat' advert.You can see it on YouTube. I've now found out its an old advert that's been recently launched again on channel 4

I have seen it and I think it is clear to a vegan or a vegetarian but I have no idea what a meat eater would think.
They seem to think that animals are born to be food and that they live a happy life before being humanely killed.
They are so wrong.

No problem with it. I think people SHOULD be shocked out of their cognitive dissonance and see where meat comes from.

I think it’s fine, some people don’t really think about where their food actually comes from. What are your thoughts on it OP?

My immediate thoughts were it's making a point about the fact the pulled pork ordered is from a pig which is obviously abhorrent to a vegan. The way it was depicted with a man standing at the door with a cleaver in his hand is designed to shock & it did. Would it encourage me to go vegan absolutely not. It did make me shudder at the idea of opening the door to a man with a cleaver in his hand & putting it in an advert children could be watching.

Videos like that make me more anti vegan. Do you really think meat eaters don't know that meat is from animals?
I'm not vegan but I am veggie , there is something about the militancy of it that makes me want to go and shove a leg of lamb in the oven
Far far better ways of encouraging people not to eat meat

I know exactly where my basin, lamp chops and chicken come from. We are not stupid and I choose to eat a mixed diet as it's best for my body, humans are naturally omnivores. I care about animals husbandry but vegans need to realise those animals would not exist if we didn't eat them. For me ethical eating is local eating, I have salt marsh lamb for tomorrow raised 15 miles away, yum!

Exactly this. I will never give up meat, or fish, eggs, or dairy, but I always try to buy the best and local. I can hear the chickens that lay my eggs, I can see some of the "meat" roaming around the fields from my bedroom window. I regularly go and have a chat with them. They DO have a lovely life compared to their wild cousins and I have no issues with them being slaughtered for my consumption.

You will never convert large numbers of people to being vegan.

I do agree that brutal cruelty is entirely inbuilt into the industrial scale slaughter of animals raised for meat.

Personally, I care more about buying less meat from sources that I know rear their animals well, that don't travel miles in trucks to the abbatoir, to stand on holding pens in fear with the smell of death all around, but are handled by small local abbatoirs, where the death is as swift as can be.

I have even visited the places I talk about and because there is a direct connection between the abbatoir staff and the person who raised the animal there is a care there which the desensitised people who work on the massive production lines of death don't have.

I realise it is still death, but I don't have a problem with that, everything eats something to survive. I do have a problem with protected awareness of what is happening and drawn out terror, or slow and painful when you can do swift and over.

I'm lucky to live somewhere where I can access food in line with my ethical preferences.

I would like to see more societal push for a better death as I think that is more possible than coverting people to veganism (on a bigger picture societal level that is).

I don't think the advert is unsuitable for children to see, as the connection between the cleaver and the pig is only implied and it's not graphic at all.

My main issue with the advert is that it doesn't seem entirely clear as to what it is trying to achieve - it starts off appearing to encourage omnivores to try a vegan dinner instead of always choosing meat, which also fits with the "try vegan" message at the start and end.

But then the message of the pig delivery part in the middle is clearly about how gross/cruel/hypocritical it is to eat meat instead, which is a completely different message. It's not "vegan food can be just as satisfying" but "eating meat is gross and you should only do it if you're prepared to actually slaughter the animal yourself". It felt like either two marketing teams had different ideas about the advert (and one team had already hired the pig), or they just wanted to throw all their arguments into one advert regardless of the weird mixed messaging it produced.

Also, I do find it a tad hypocritical for vegans to be calling out meat-eaters as hypocrites while hiring animals to repeatedly perform tricks in a tv studio and condoning dog ownership as normal. Is the judgey dog also vegan?

Not going to stop me eating meat

I don't think the advert is shocking or unsuitable for children etc. I also don't think it's effective. I know where meat comes from, and I also know that I don't want a live animal delivered for me to kill, prepare, cook, and eat. I still eat it. I eat less now for health, environmental, and financial reasons.

How do you find out this info? I worry that if I ask the questions, at eg farmer markets I’d just be given a load of flannel and be paying more for the same meat. I’d like to be buying meat from animals that were treated better.

Why even this place is full of defensive meat eaters? Can you go and be disgusting somewhere else? Is it not enough that you shit on us on every other discussion board? 😐

There is the risk of having smoke blown up your bottom of course.
To be honest though a lot of farmers also feel very strongly about this and are delighted to have customers who care too, sometimes that shared value can lead to interesting conversations.
For instance one local farmer was happy to let me come and see his own abbatoir (farms with their own abbatoir on site are pretty rare as the environmental health requirements are pretty steep), so I went and he showed me the process he used, and honestly I think the death he gave was as compassionate as possible.
The animals were dealt with very quickly, no animal saw what was coming (he didn't queue them) and all were fully stunned and unconscious before the mortal blow was given. I don't think you can do better.
One of the farmers I get meat from is a friend and neighbour and feels as passionately about a good life/death as I do.

In my area we are lucky as there are several small scale abbatoirs, which is not the case in many areas.

So I think, while you need to be wary of being spun a line you may also find the farmers have strong opinions on this too!

Sorry, the question rather drew in the meat eaters it being in the vein of 'what do you think about it as it refers to the death of the animal' I'll disappear now.

Ill*

You dont even realise how much you stink 😥

I understand what your saying but it's the man standing at the door with a cleaver & the look on the females face that a child could become disturbed with rather than the implication which is bad enough.

I know it’s not an original thought, but for me I can’t take vegans seriously unless they also care this much about humans who have made products that they use.

Clothing, iPhones etc which are made by human beings in inhumane conditions. Why care so much about a chicken living in awful conditions but not a child in a sweat shop in China?

A valid point. I'm ashamed to say I never considered this comparison but it's definitely food for thought🤔
No pun intended.

I'd like to add my reason for starting the thread was nothing to do with people who choose a vegan diet. People are entitled to eat as they please. It is the advert I admit objecting to & after seeing it I was interested in other views.

Vegans I know do care about those things too. You do know that it is possible to care about more than one thing at a time don’t you?

Unfortunately we have to exist in a non vegan world and none of us can exist without causing harm on some level. It is annoying when vegans are expected to do this impossible task and if they can’t, then apparently they’re hypocrites or something.

The vegan board is usually a nice board where posters support each other about vegan diets, products and issues, you’ve deliberately tried to start an argument and bring negativity here. I don’t think this is the best board to be negative about veganism and the fact you have posted here says a lot. At least one of the posters you have attracted here has been previously banned for their continued nasty posts about vegans and they’ve popped up again. What a surprise.

Nasty posts. Never been any nasty posts