Debunking the "Veganism is Compassionate, Ethical & Environmentally Friendly" Myth: Part 1

UK Celebrity Big Brother contestant Chantelle Houghton, dressed in lettuce for a PETA publicity stunt. Her antics exemplify the level of intelligence required to promote a self-proclaimed ‘ethical’ organization that routinely kills perfectly healthy and adoptable animals.

My recent article on fad diets, which discussed the high rate of attrition among vegan 'influencers', garnered the comment below from a Michael Corthell of The Vegan Dispatch Substack. In the blurb for his Substack, Michael describes veganism as "the global movement towards a compassionate and sustainable lifestyle." We'll discuss just how true that is in a moment, but first, let's take a look at Michael's comment. My response follows.

Michael writes:

Good writing. However, your critique of veganism overlooks the comprehensive research and ethical considerations motivating veganism. Vegan diets, when properly planned, provide all necessary nutrients, including vitamin B12 through supplements or fortified foods.

The assertion that veganism lacks scientific backing ignores numerous studies highlighting the health and environmental benefits of plant-based diets. Contrary to being "untenable nonsense," veganism represents a conscious choice towards a more sustainable, compassionate lifestyle.

Rebuttals to veganism often misrepresent its rationale, reducing a complex decision to simplistic caricature.

Be well!

My response:

Hi Michael,

thanks for reading, and thanks for not coming off like a textbook classic militant vegan sociopath in your comment.

Now comes the bit you won't like.

I'm sure you are earnest in your beliefs, but pretty much everything you've said is highly debatable at best, and flat out incorrect for the most part.

You cite none of the alleged “comprehensive research” in your comment. You provide no factual rebuttal to anything I said. Instead, your comment is replete with all the usual vegan bromides about ethics, compassion and environmental friendliness.

You begin by repeating a time-honored piece of vegan rhetoric:

"Vegan diets, when properly planned, provide all necessary nutrients, including vitamin B12 through supplements or fortified foods."

That statement is based on an entirely false premise.

When are vegan diets "properly planned"? What, exactly, does it mean to have a "properly planned" diet that deliberately omits the most nutrient-dense food known to humankind - meat?

Animal foods contain key nutrients either unavailable or found in exceedingly small quantities in plant foods. To describe a diet that intentionally omits them as "properly planned" is a contradiction in terms.

What vegan proponents really mean when they say "properly planned" is "an attempt to compensate for the inevitable deficiencies of a vegan diet."

And what you might consider “properly planned” on paper doesn’t necessarily translate to nutritionally adequate and healthy in real life. In a typical finding, when German researchers analyzed the diets of German vegan women, mean iron intakes were above the recommended level. Sounds great, until you read the blood test results. Some 40% of the younger women under 50 and 12% of the older women were iron-deficient. That’s because many nutrients found in plants - including minerals like iron and calcium - have very poor bioavailability when compared to animal foods.

The Optimal Diet for Humans is Not One to Which They Are Ill-Adapted

Do vegans and vegetarians ever stop to consider the most fundamental implication of adopting a diet which is so deficient in vitamin B12 that supplementation is not an option but a necessity?

It means embracing a diet for which humans are naturally unsuited. A diet that, prior to the historically recent advent of nutritional supplements, could not even begin to fulfill the most basic of vitamin requirements. That's why vegan and even vegetarian diets are unheard of in hunter-gatherer societies, where the survival value of PETA propaganda and wokeness amounts to a big fat zero.

By the way, nutritional supplements and food fortification are a product of industry, which causes 'carbon emissions' which, according to those who loudly profess environmental concern (while flying to globalist conferences in their fuel-slurping private jets), is the primary cause of 'athropogenic global warming'.

So as vegans turn to highly processed soy protein in supplemental powders, bars and foods to replace the high-quality meat, egg and dairy proteins they're no longer getting, take a moment to think of the environmental consequences of growing ungodly amounts of soy, most of which is genetically modified to accept extra applications of pesticide.

Plants don't grow out of thin air, Michael. The kind of plant agriculture required to feed a planet of billions entails gargantuan amounts of energy consumption and water use. It requires massive transport and storage chains. It often has severe impacts on soil integrity.

To deride meat consumption as harming the planet while portraying veganism - which would necessitate a massive upscaling in both crop agriculture and the industrial production of supplemental proteins, nutrients and fortified foods - as an environmentally-friendly activity is, to use your very own words, reducing a complex decision to simplistic caricature.

Actually, it goes way beyond that. It is a claim so fundamentally absurd that I struggle to understand how anyone can mutter it while keeping a straight face.

To quote Rich Roll (a vegan):

“I’m going to tell your audience something that not many farmers would ever admit. This happens on all farms. If you like eating avocados, for a farmer to grow avocados financially, especially biodynamically, where we’re enhancing the ecosystem and helping nature, we have to grow at least 20 to 40 acres of avocado, and we have to be able to sell those directly to our market, to our consumer.

“So here I am, farming 20 to 40 acres. That’s going to require me to kill at least 35 to 40,000 gophers to protect those trees. Humming birds, accidentally when I spray non-synthetically-derived organic spray, accidentally killing bees, accidentally killing ladybugs, and intentionally killing ground squirrels. So there are 50 to 100,000 deaths that happen just to grow avocados.

“And my point is that none of us are getting out of this without blood on our hands. It’s just at what point and how connected are you to the process, but that doesn’t excuse you from the reverence and the responsibility of life.”

Another vegan, Charlie Knoles, writes:

"A lot of animals are killed in all kinds of agriculture. I'll never forget the first time I saw a combine harvester go through an organic soybean field and kill all the animals that had made that field their home. Among the many animals that died that day were baby bunnies that were skinned by the blades and were then eaten alive by hawks. The hawks followed the harvester through the field looking for an easy meal. I knew that the farmer had contracted his crop to an organic tofu company and that most of the people eating this food would be vegans and vegetarians. The irony of this situation was enough to stop me from going vegan for many years afterwards. I would frequently bring up this anecdote when I would argue with vegan friends. It still annoys me when my fellow vegans act as though their lifestyle is 100% cruelty free and that no animals die in the process of making their food. It speaks to an ignorance of the realities of farming and rural life."

Despite this, Knols still believes veganism to be the more environmentally-friendly option, writing that "A farmed animal consumes approximately 10 calories of grain for every 1 calorie of meat that comes from its body."

The obvious flaw in that argument is it blissfully ignores the indisputable fact meat provides far more nutrients to humans than the equivalent caloric amount of grains could ever dream of. It's not just that a serving of meat provides ten or more times the amount of nutrients than a serving of grains - it provides essential nutrients that are not found at all in grains nor other plant foods!

Anti-meat commentators incessantly frame the environmental argument in terms of grains versus meat, but man cannot live on bread alone. If he tries, he suffers for it.

The archaeological record shows societies that abandoned the animal-based hunter-gatherer diet and adopted cereal grains as their new staple typically experienced a characteristic reduction in stature, an increase in infant mortality, an increased incidence of infectious diseases, an increased prevalence of iron deficiency anemia, an increased incidence of bone disorders, and a jump in the number of dental caries and tooth enamel defects. Extensive review of the archaeological record concludes that the shift from a hunter-gatherer diet to a grain-based diet was accompanied by an overall decline in the quality, and even the quantity, of life.[1-3]

Farmer and writer John Lewis-Stempel notes:

"At Abu Hereyra in Syria, archaeology records this shift: when the occupants were hunter-gatherers, they consumed 150 wild plants; as arable farmers, they ate just a handful of crops. Human health deteriorated; the human body changed. Singularly, the jaw shrunk, since the new wheaty diet required less chewing than meat. Human teeth did not reduce proportionately to the smaller jaw, so dental crowding ensued. The diet of starch — wheat’s principal component — caused cavities. And the dietetic value of wheat, which was anyway only modestly nutritious, has declined by as much as 30% under contemporary industrialised agriculture."

In more recent times, the dramatic contrast in health status of primitive populations subsisting on diets comprised almost entirely of animal foods, with that of societies living almost entirely on cereal grains, further highlights the asininity of the grains-versus-meat argument. Populations deriving virtually all of their caloric intake from cereal grains are, without exception, riddled with malnutrition, retarded growth, and degenerative disease. Deficiencies of zinc, calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin A render the inhabitants of such populations prone to rickets, pellagra, blindness, infectious disease, stunted physical and sexual development, and early death.[4-6]

So the meat versus grains comparison is a highly disingenuous one. Yes, you can divert all grain straight to human mouths instead of allotting some to animal husbandry, but the inevitable result will be a decline in human health. Vegans may think that's ethical - I don't. Nor, evidently, do billions of others who value their health above fervent and misguided dogma.

The reality is that grains alone cannot satisfactorily fulfill human nutritional requirements. Period. Any attempt to compensate for the lack of animal foods in a diet will inevitably require a variety of plant and fortified foods. For those with increased caloric and protein needs, such as manual labourers, avid exercisers and athletes, this requirement is amplified.

You can't pick and choose your environmentally unfriendly industries, Michael. Either you're opposed to unnecessary 'pollution' and waste, or you're not.

Well, there is a third option: Cognitive dissonance, which is rampant among dietary sectarians, and vegans are certainly no exception. More like an exemplification.

But I digress.

Han recently wrote:

"Vegans, in particular, are at risk of deficiencies in several vitamins and minerals, including vitamin B12, riboflavin, iron, zinc, and calcium. The NuEva study, which compared nutrient intake and nutritional status among omnivores, flexitarians, ovo-lacto vegetarians, and vegans, found particularly insufficient dietary intake of selenium, zinc, potassium, iron (in women), calcium, vitamin B12, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and vitamin D with vegetarian and vegan diets."

Han 2023

O'Keefe et al also emphasize the nutritional inadequacy of vegan diets in a 2022 paper:

"... veganism is without evolutionary precedent in Homo sapiens species. Strict adherence to a vegan diet causes predictable deficiencies in nutrients including vitamins B12, B2, D, niacin, iron, iodine, zinc, high-quality proteins, omega-3, and calcium."

O'Keefe et al 2022.

Yes, if you are a vegan, you can supplement or eat foods fortified with B12. As you attempt to make up for what you're not getting from an omnivorous diet, you can also supplement with the rest of the B-vitamins, carnitine, carnosine, creatine, taurine, essential amino acids, Co-enzyme Q10, vitamin D, long chain omega-3 fatty acids, retinol, zinc, calcium, iron (in premenopausal women), etcetera - all of which are either found in low amounts or entirely absent from plant foods.

Or you could just admit that veganism runs entirely counter to our evolutionary-determined nutritional requirements and eat animal foods.

While awareness of B12 deficiency has resulted in increased use of B12 supplements, many vegans have clearly missed the memo on other nutrients like calcium. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis of calcium intake - analyzing 74 studies encompassing 7,356 vegan, 51,940 vegetarian, and 107,581 omnivorous participants - found vegans showed a substantially lower calcium intake than vegetarians and omnivores.

This, along with subpar intakes of other nutrients like vitamin D and high quality protein, would help explain why vegans consistently have higher risk of fracture at multiple bone sites, especially at the hip.

Calling a vegan diet "properly planned" is akin to praising a car with no engine as "well designed" because, hey, if you get a 'supplemental' vehicle to tow it, it can still get you from A to B.

Unethical and Unfriendly

The environmental argument, which I'll further dissect in Part 2, is clearly sheer nonsense. Unless you are a hunter-gatherer living in a naturally bountiful, low-populated environment (which nowadays is almost no-one), then every time you put something in your mouth, you are consuming a product that has extracted an environmental toll. It doesn’t matter whether it’s chicken breast or lettuce leaves, both have an environmental impact. And for those of you thinking, “yeah, but of course the lettuce will have a lower environmental impact, dummy!” … um, no. Stay tuned for Part 2, folks.

To paraphrase you again, the claim that veganism is good for the environment is a textbook classic example of reducing a complex topic to simplistic caricature. The animal welfare argument is seemingly more nuanced, but ultimately boils down to the question of whether one agrees it is more 'ethical' to compromise human health in favour of not killing animals for food. Many folks, including myself, do not agree that is the case at all. Especially when kids are involved.

The Ethics Charade

The 'ethical' benefits of veganism, apparently, include spreading fallacies about nutrition.

Is it ethical to lead people to believe this way of eating will help them avoid diseases like CVD and cancer, and improve their longevity odds, when research by non-partisan researchers would suggest the exact opposite?

I linked to these studies in the previous article, and you ignore them. Sadly, this “hear no evil, see no evil” approach is common among people who are committed to a particular ideology.

So let’s look at them again, and in more detail. Here are the key excerpts:

From Claude-Chang 2005.

From Blackie et al 2023.

As you can see, Chang-Claude et al 2005 (The German Vegetarian Study), found a notably higher risk of all-cause mortality for vegans over a 21-year period (rate ratio = 1.59).

Blackie et al 2023 detected a smaller risk increase for vegans over an average follow-up of 18 years (hazard ratio = 1.27), despite participants in the omnivorous diet group being more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, be overweight and less likely to have completed college education. However, the difference in mortality risk was not statistically significant. This may have been due to the fact that both studies had a similar number of vegans, but due to the marked difference in the size of the studies, vegans made up a far higher proportion of participants in the German Vegetarian Study.

There’s an important aspect of these and similar studies that is routinely overlooked, and that is the likelihood that they greatly underestimate the true mortality risk of following a long-term vegan diet. Like most prospective epidemiological studies, the above studies involved dietary questionnaires administered at the start of the studies; these were the questionnaires used to determine whether a participant was classified as omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, etc over the following 18-21 years.

A big problem with that approach is that the majority of people who adopt a vegetarian/vegan diet will end up abandoning it - often due to its adverse health effects. A 2014 study found 84% of vegetarians/vegans abandon their diet, usually within 12 months. A hefty 53% quit within 3 months.

Many respondents gave multiple reasons for quitting, with 26% citing health as the primary reason.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize what would happen to people who experience adverse health effects from a short-term vegan diet, but doggedly persist with it instead of abandoning it for a more balanced approach.

They’ll end up like raw vegan influencer Zhanna Samsonova (aka Zhanna D’art), who died last year at only 39 years of age. Despite her clearly deteriorating health, and despite the pleas of family and friends, Zhanna stubbornly persisted with her vegan diet. It cost her her life.

Participants of the studies above who really did follow a vegan diet for most or all of the follow-up duration are not a realistic representation of veganism for the masses. They are the small selection of people whose constitution somehow allowed them to tolerate the diet for longer periods of time than the average person. It’s like pointing to all those people who somehow make it to a ripe old age despite regular boozing and smoking, then claiming boozing and smoking are good for your health.

So you really need to stop claiming “comprehensive research” shows vegan diets to be healthy. Research by non-partisan researchers - not to mention commonsense - suggests they’ll shorten your life, which is hardly what I call a health benefit.

Omnivorous and Carnivorous Animals are 'Unethical'?

As for it being 'unethical' to eat animals, says who? People who are woefully ignorant on the most basic fundamentals of human nutrition?

Would you tell a lion it is unethical to eat gazelles, or a shark it is unethical to eat smaller fish, or a honeybadger it is unethical to eat snakes?

If not, why tell humans it is unethical to eat other animals? Especially when the evidence clearly shows we've been consuming meat for literally millions of years and when the evidence shows meat contains essential nutrients that we rely upon for good health, in amounts that plants can't even begin to match?

Would you tell hunter-gatherer populations, in a fit of pompous Western colonial arrogance, that they are being 'unethical' when they hunt animals for sustenance?

Is it 'nice' to kill an animal? Of course not. It's not 'nice' when a fox catches a hare and literally begins tearing it up while it is still alive, either. When I watch nature programs and see a larger predator rabidly chasing a smaller animal, I'm invariably on the edge of my seat rooting for the underdog, and the dialogue usually goes something like this:

"C'mon baby deer, you can do it! Go, go, faster, faster!"

"Ah, sh*t ..."

A more uplifting and absolutely epic moment in the unforgiving wild. Just when you think this baby buffalo has been handed a one-way ticket to Destination F*cked, something pretty amazing transpires. Check out the studly unit who starts chasing and flipping lions like a coin, and how the rest of the herd responds - remarkable things can happen when just one bull remembers he has balls (there's a lesson in that, gentlemen).

But that is how these creatures have evolved. Carnivorous and omnivorous animals hunt other animals, not because they are thugs or bullies or sadistic cartel members, but because they need meat to survive and thrive. Ethics and morality do not even enter the equation - they are simply doing what nature designed them to do. They are doing exactly what they have to do to meet their nutritional needs. A jaguar that declared "I'm going to stop killing anacondas and crocodiles because it's unethical!" would promptly find himself removed from the gene pool.

A major difference between humans and the rest of the flesh-eating animal kingdom is that we have more humane ways of killing animals for food. We don't tear up animals with our fangs while they are still alive. In the human realm, cutting and shredding creatures while they are still alive is Latin American cartel-level behaviour that most people find horrifying and sickening.

This is where we should focus: On eliminating cruelty and unnecessary pain from the hunting and food husbandry process as much as possible - not on hysterically shaming and attacking people for eating in accordance with their evolutionary determined requirements.

The Compassion Whopper

Michael, I honestly don't know how anyone can even begin to keep a straight face when claiming veganism leads to a more "compassionate" lifestyle.

I mean, seriously?

The Cult of Vegan is notorious for being the most militant, hostile, and vitriolic of all dietary sects!

Patting yourself on the back and telling yourself what a wonderful person you are because you don't eat animal foods is all well and good, but carrying on like an angry terrorist just because someone doesn’t agree with your dietary paradigm does not constitute “compassion.”

It constitutes a mental disturbance.

Michael, if you ever decide to drop veganism (and the stats indicate there's a good chance you will), and you choose to be upfront with the world about it, you can fully expect your fellow "compassionate" vegans to bombard you with virulent abuse and even death threats!

Interestingly, I mentioned this in the article, and again you blissfully ignore it.

Not to worry, I'll present some more examples right here of heart-warming vegan "compassion" for your edification.

Have you ever heard of Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone, aka the Biggest Prick in Australia?

If not, here are some articles to help you get acquainted with him:

The Ugly Truth About Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone

Six Reasons Why Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone is an Evil, Worthless Troll

I'm not sure how relentlessly cyber-stalking people, falsely accusing others of using steroids and buying drugs from you, threatening to release people's books onto pirate sites, trying to intimidate witnesses who saw you cause an accident from giving evidence, trying to steal a temporary replacement bike from then Trek Australia distributor Pacific Brands, hitting your girlfriend, colluding with your criminal buddies at sleazy South Australia Police to press false charges against someone, promoting raw veganism as the ultimate diet while neglecting to mention the time your fruitarianism f*ckwittedness landed you in the emergency ward with hyperkalemia, threatening to slash people's throats after they call out your BS, calling a genuine cancer victim a "scammer" as she engaged in a very real and desperate fight for her life, raucously calling a battered and bloodied domestic violence victim a "dumb bitch" and "f*cking doormat loser", and pressuring (and allegedly raping) young girls into sex qualifies as "compassionate"?!?

Please, enlighten me. I'm all ears.

Forcing the vegan "lifestyle" and its accompanying nutritional pitfalls upon your children isn’t very “compassionate” either. That’s exactly what Sheila and Ryan Patrick O’Leary did, with disastrous consequences. They made their family eat only raw fruits and vegetables, although toddler son Ezra was also fed breast milk (presumably from his vegan mother, who was likely deficient in a raft of nutrients). Vegans may think this is ethical, but a Florida court wasn't impressed. The 18-month-old Ezra weighed 17 pounds (8 kilograms) and was the size of a 7-month-old baby when he died in September 2019. Sheila was convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, child abuse and two counts of child neglect and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Her husband faced additional charges of sexual assault on a victim younger than 12 and lewd and lascivious behavior/molestation on a victim younger than 12. The filthy grub was sentenced last February to 30 years prison for one count of Aggravated Manslaughter of a Child, and 30 years prison, followed by lifetime Sex Offender Probation, for one count of Lewd and Lascivious Molestation. He is also now designated a Sexual Predator.

The O’Learys reportedly had two other children who also were malnourished.

Yep, two more upstanding, shining examples of how veganism leads to a more "compassionate lifestyle", right?

Then there's that mentally unhinged outfit with the audacity to call itself People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, when in fact it runs a large-scale animal killing operation. PETA has been repeatedly called out for running an 'animal shelter' which is in fact a ruthlessly efficient animal eradication project.

Last year, of the reported 1,243 dogs in the "custody" of PETA's Norfolk, Virginia shelter, a piddling 18 dogs were adopted. One was reclaimed by its owner, while another 280 were handballed to other rescue and shelter organizations, their ultimate fate unknown. That leaves a whopping 944 dogs that were killed in PETA's custody.

The figures for cats are similarly dismal. Of 1,893 cats, only 20 were re-homed; 1,527 were killed.

The shelter killed 31 of 33 "Other Companion Animals", all 3 livestock in its custody, and 54 of 61 poultry animals.

For such a well-funded, high-profile organization that enjoys celebrity backing, these are truly appalling figures.

As WhyPetaEuthanizes.org points out:

"In the last 23 years, PETA has killed at least 46,364 dogs and cats, including healthy puppies and kittens; killed rabbits, guinea pigs, and other animal companions; killed “farmed” animals; and caused others to be killed by delivering them to kill pounds, defending kill “shelters,” and fighting shelter reform. The question of course is why?"

The answer is that PETA is fundamentally and ideologically opposed to pet ownership.

In a 1988 interview, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk said, "In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether." As Stanley Coren, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, remarked, "Apparently Newkirk believes that one way to help achieve this 'lovely' outcome is to destroy virtually all of the animals placed in PETA’s care before they can be adopted and become well-loved pets in any family’s home.”

From the radical outfit's website: "PETA believes that it would be in animals’ best interests if they were no longer bred to be dependent on humans."

"With so many animals in need of homes, there is no chance that we will “run out” of animal companions in our lifetimes," it claims.

So it doesn't even bother trying to re-home most of the animals it receives or steals; instead it kills them.

Ask PETA Why It's Hooked on Killing!

PETA loves murdering animals. Its shelter consistently maintains a truly disgusting kill rate that dwarfs the Virginia average.

Every day, an average of 4.7 animals die at PETA. That equates to a dog being killed every five hours in PETA’s shelter.

PETA's response to these startling revelations is to incessantly claim it is a "shelter of last resort." It claims it has such a high kill rate because it only takes in the animals no-one else wants - the highly aggressive, incurably sick, unadoptable cases that no other shelter will accept.

As the case of Maya demonstrates, that is complete and utter bullshit.

On October 18, 2014, Parksley, Virginia resident Wilbur Zarate came home to find the family’s Chihuahua, Maya, missing. Maya was a Christmas present to 9-year-old daughter Cynthia, who was devastated by the dog’s disappearance. When Wilbur viewed footage from his security camera, it showed a van marked "PETA" backing into his driveway. Two women - later identified as Victoria Carey and Jennifer Wood - got out of the van, seized Maya from the porch, and put her in the back of the van.

That was the last time Maya was seen alive.

Wilbur had originally called PETA regarding some nearby stray cats. As a letter from the Richmond SPCA to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, calling for an investigation into "the seriously troubling activities of PETA", noted:

"The PETA personnel had had numerous interactions with the Zarate family over the prior months and they were well aware that the dog belonged to the Zarates and was loved by them."

The PETA thieves could not possibly claim Maya was a stray, because she was on the family property when they stole her.

After Wilbur called PETA to find out what it had done with the family's beloved dog, the two women came back to his house three days later, bearing a fruit basket and terrible news - they killed Maya.

As it turns out, Maya – an adorable, healthy dog - wasn’t the only animal wrongly seized and killed by PETA that day. Records show PETA took four other animals: A six-month-old Rottweiler mix, a 1-year-old black Labrador mix, and two 4-month-old domestic shorthair cats.

In keeping with its rabidly genocidal tendencies, PETA killed all five animals the same day, in clear violation of state law requiring shelters to wait 5 days before killing stray animals that do not have any identification like a collar or microchip.

The justifiably outraged Zarates launched a civil suit against the demented animal-killing outfit; in August 2017, PETA agreed to pay the family $49,000 to settle the lawsuit for theft and illegal killing of the family’s dog.

Adorable little Maya, who was murdered by the sociopaths at PETA. She's just one of many innocent animals gratuitously slain by the pet-hating animal killers at PETA's extermination camp in Norfolk, VA.

Another person who can confirm that PETA's "last resort" claim is sheer bollocks is veterinarian Patrick Proctor, of the Ahoskie Animal Hospital. The hospital handed over two adoptable kittens and their mother after being assured by a PETA employee a new home would easily be found for them. He later discovered to his dismay all three had been killed without any attempt to find them a home. The cats didn't even make it to the shelter; they were promptly put down in the PETA collection van.

"This is ethical?" Proctor hypothetically asked of a SFGATE reporter. "I don't really think so."

In May 2005, Ahoskie, North Carolina police were dispatched to a Piggly Wiggly Supermarket after officials noticed a strong odour coming from the shop’s dumpster and, upon investigating, discovered the body of an animal in a trash bag. When police arrived and rummaged through the dumpster, they found the bodies of twenty-one dead dogs in garbage bags.

On June 2, 17 dogs and 3 cats were discovered in the same dumpster, which bore a sign reading, “notice, private use only, violators will be prosecuted”.

One week later, on June 9, 2005, 20 more dead dogs were found in the dumpster.

A Bertie County animal control officer confirmed the dead dogs were the same ones PETA had obtained from the county’s animal shelter earlier in the week.

After a surveillance operation, detectives witnessed two PETA employees - similar to the one later used to abduct Maya - dumping another 16 bodies into the dumpster. The employees - Adria Joy Hinkle and Andrew Benjamin Cook - were arrested. Inside the van were boxes of trash bags, PETA manuals, and a tackle box containing syringes, needles and vials of liquid later determined to be ketamine and sodium pentobarbital, highly controlled drugs used in the euthanization of animals.

That wasn't all the cops found. Also inside the van were the bodies of eight more dogs and 12 cats, including the mother cat and 2 kittens picked up just minutes earlier from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital. One of the dead dogs was sent to Raleigh for an autopsy; the laboratory report determined the dog was healthy prior to being killed by the PETA employees.

During their trial, the pair admitted to killing the healthy cats. Ahoskie Animal Hospital employees described Hinkle’s promise to try and find the animals a good home after they told her the cats were adoptable. "We've socialized them, we've played with them, they've had their shots, everything's fine with them," one of the hospital staff told Hinkle.

The cats were killed and thrown in a trash dumpster less than an hour later.

Cook and Hinkle also admitted killing Happy, the personal pet of Bertie Animal Control Officer Barry Anderson, who had given the terrier to Hinkle because he was having trouble housebreaking the dog.

Anderson also testified that two Dalmatians named Toby and Annie - which he described as "just healthy, playful, and well-fed" - were among the animals he naively turned over to Hinkle and Cook on June 15, 2005. Anderson asked Hinkle if she thought the two dogs were adoptable and was told finding a home for the animals should be easy. Instead, Toby and Annie met the same fate as Happy – lethal injection, followed by an unceremonious toss into the trash dumpster.

This is the real PETA: An organization that rails against killing animals for the eminently necessary and natural task of fulfilling human nutritional requirements, but clearly gets off on murdering healthy, adoptable animals and throwing their bodies into dumpsters.

A photo of just some of the dead animals dumped in a supermarket dumpster by PETA sociopaths Adria Joy Hinkle and Andrew Benjamin Cook. This is what happens when you give animals to the 'ethical' PETA for re-homing.

The Biggest Vegan Wanker of All - Literally

No rebuttal to the absurd claim that veganism promotes "compassionate" and "ethical" behaviour would be complete without a mention of serial wanker Dan Hoyt.

He's the raw vegan fanatic who achieved semi-fame when he and his ex-wife opened New York’s first raw-food restaurant, Quintessence, in 1999. The small eatery became so popular that lines formed out the door, and celebrities Woody Harrelson, Crispin Glover, and Lou Reed reportedly ate there.

Hoyt would later achieve much greater notoriety for engaging in one of his other longstanding passions: Exposing himself and masturbating in public.

That's right: Not only did the vegan pervert prefer beating meat to eating it, he insisted on jerking off in full public view.

His deviant antics first attracted media coverage in 2005, after a 22-year old female victim was subjected to one of Hoyt's creepy displays on a subway train. She began to reach for her mace but instead opted to photograph him. After reporting the incident to a disinterested policewoman, she posted the picture online. Hoyt was subsequently identified and convicted of public lewdness.

As it turns out, he’d had a similar conviction in 1994.

When New York magazine caught up with him in 2006, he was unrepentant. Hoyt told New York that if only he and the victim had met under different circumstances, she might really like him. “You know, she’d go, ‘That guy’s pretty cool. He’s got this restaurant, and he’s fun,’” Hoyt said. “She’d probably want to go out with me.”

Right. Because it's every girl's dream to go out with a guy who jerks off in public.

But the story doesn't end there. Oh no.

Hoyt struck again in 2008, and was arrested yet again in January 2016 after exposing himself on three occasions in Manhattan.

During one of the incidents, Hoyt, then 53, approached a 25-year-old victim shortly after midday on the downtown platform of the Eighth Street subway station, and asked if he could masturbate in front of her. When she said no, he pulled down his pants any old how. The victim called 911 and police found Hoyt nearby. After a brief struggle, he was arrested.

On New Year’s Day 2016, he exposed himself to a 24-year-old victim at the Eighth Street station. On January 2, he allegedly followed a woman onto the train at Union Square, and rubbed himself against her leg.

In November 2016, the vegan pervert took another plea deal for harassing a 25-year-old woman at his favorite haunt, the East Eighth Street and Broadway station.

In 2018, the disgraced vegan ex-chef was busted again after being caught on surveillance video tossing off inside the East Eighth Street and Broadway station, then exposing himself to a woman as she descended the staircase to the platform.

Not. Ethical.

Yes, I know, not all vegans are demented, stalking psychopaths like Harley Johnstone.

Not all vegans force their kids to eat raw food diets and suckle on their deficient breast milk, like Sheila O’Leary and her slimy pedophile husband Ryan.

And no, not all vegans kill animals en mass like the pet-hating megalomaniacs at PETA, nor do they repeatedly tug their twinkies in front of disgusted onlookers on subway platforms as Dan Hoyt is wont to do.

But to claim - in light of the examples above and the general militant lunacy for which the vegan arena is renown - that vegans are a "compassionate" breed is nothing short of absurd.

To the contrary, veganism is an extreme dietary philosophy that seems to attract a disproportionate volume of extreme, maladjusted people. The problem is hardly helped when these already-unbalanced individuals embrace a diet deficient in nutrients like vitamin B12 and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for proper cognitive and neurological function.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll further dissect the stupidly simplistic "meat is bad/veganism is good for the environment" argument.

Ciao,

Anthony.

Anthony's new book, Not So Fast: The Truth About Intermittent Fasting & Time-Restricted Eating is now available at at Amazon and Lulu.

References

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2. Larsen CS. Biological changes in human populations with agriculture. Annual Review of Anthropology, 1995; 24: 185-213.

3. Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. Eds: Cohen MN, Armelagos GJ. Academic Press, New York, 1984.

4. Chakravarty I, Sinha RK. Prevalence of micronutrient deficiency based on results obtained from the National Pilot Program on Control of Micronutrient Malnutrition. Nutrition Reviews, May 2002; 60 (5): S53-S58.

5. GM Berlyne, et al. Bedouin osteomalacia due to calcium deprivation caused by high phytic acid content of unleavened bread. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Sep 1973; 26: 910 - 911.

6. Carter JP, et al. Growth and sexual development of adolescent Egyptian village boys. Effects of zinc, iron, and placebo supplementation. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Jan. 1969; 22 (1): 59-78.