This time it was a particularly vehement vegan (VV?) who insisted that I was a rapist and murderer because I work in the animal science industry. It’s not the first time I’ve heard those claims – indeed, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a vegan argument flow chart out there (see below, click to enlarge), as all the conversations seem to follow the same pattern and use similar (if not identical) phrases.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that the power of my mighty tweets will help these hapless vegans see the light and immediately go out for a steak. I have absolutely no problem with anybody being vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, fruitarian, or whatever their dietary and ethical choices are. I respect those choices, even more so because I used to be a vegan myself (As a side-note, I was told by VV that it’s not possible to be an ex-vegan, so I obviously wasn’t a “real” vegan in the first place.) However, I do have an issue with being called a rapist* and murderer, particularly a murderer of “innocent animals”. So please, let’s stop the cute, fluffy, anthropomorphic nonsense. If somebody really thinks they know what it feels like to be a cow, maybe they need professional help, rather than arguments on twitter.

Yes, animals are killed to produce meat. If you have a problem with that then perhaps you should indeed consider being vegetarian or vegan. But are animals innocent? Not in the pure, clean-living, non-malicious sense of the word. Consider the billions of predatory animals who murder other (innocent?) animals every single day for food. Consider the penguin. Or more specifically, the penguin prostitute, who will offer sex to single male penguins in exchange for stones with which to build her nest. Consider the male mouse, lion, or hanuman langur (Old World monkey) who practice infanticide – killing entire litters of their mate’s offspring if they suspect that they are not the father. Consider homosexual necrophiliac ducks, who will repeatedly rape a dead male mallard. Even on the farm it’s not all peace and love – the top-ranking cow in the hierarchy gets first pick of the feed and the best mattress to lie on. Why? Because animals aren’t innocent. It’s a good marketing trick to show cute little baby animals that tug at our heartstrings and make us think twice about eating the cheeseburger, but animals are no more innocent than we are.

The ultimate vegan insult is one of “carnism” – literally the opposite of veganism (as in carn- or carne-, latin for meat), which includes the theory that that meat-eaters practice speciesism in considering themselves to be superior to animals. Yet by decrying the murder practiced by so many animal species, aren’t vegans the epitome of speciesism? On a higher plane by virtue of a cruelty-free life? Let’s get real. To quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Tho Nature, red in tooth and claw…” – a world where every life is sacred and cruelty does not exist is not a description of planet earth, and if it was, there’s every chance that we humans would have been wiped out eons ago.