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Vegan group uses un-sourced footage, performer to disparage meat
Story Date: 12/14/2012
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Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 12/13/12
Farm Sanctuary, which promotes a vegan diet, has release an 11-minute video that uses footage from unknown sources of hogs, chickens, cattle production and slaughter narrated by vegan stuntman and comedian Stephen Glover to encourage people to stop eating meat.
The video creates stories around a hog, a chicken and a cow (which it assigns names and personality characteristics) that Farm Sanctuary “rescued” as a launch pad for its message that animal agriculture is cruel and viewers should choose a vegan diet.
Glover, who goes by the name “Steve-O” and starred in the movie “Jackass,” is popular with young, male audiences.
The video — titled “What Came Before” — also makes a case against eating fish, which it says are “unique individuals who can be highly social.”
The video also condemns eating meat from organic and local farms — a niche that has sometimes in the past been held up by activist groups as a better alternative to meat from traditional animal agriculture production enterprises.
“This is perhaps the worst/best case of selective information, visuals and a total disregard for the facts, science and truth of hog farming,” Steve Kopperud, executive vice president at Policy Directions and a founding member of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, told Meatingplace. “It’s obviously designed to raise money and further a political cause. Farm Sanctuary has hit a new low.”
“What is shown in the video is not reflective of the care hard working American farm families provide their animals, and the public shouldn’t be duped by the emotional exploitation of animal rights groups, such as Farm Sanctuary, which ‘dream of a vegan world,’” Animal Agriculture Alliance President and CEO Kay Johnson Smith told Meatingplace. “[I]t is somewhat ironic that television personality Steve-O, who is infamous for his crude and generally inappropriate behavior, would be chosen as the spokesperson for a video about animal care.”
The Alliance posts its own videos of farmers and ranchers and their commitment to animal care at www.realfarmersrealfood.com.
For more stories, go to http://www.meatingplace.com/
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