Butchers v vegans: Is it moral to attack meat businesses to save animals?
Is it possible to stop people eating meat and make them turn to veg instead by attacking slaughterhouses? Should people’s choices be respected? Follow this RT story from France, where vegans defy traditional meat-eating habits.
Animal welfare activism under banners declaring “Meat is murder!” and “Stop speciesism” is becoming increasingly aggressive in France. Attacks on slaughterhouses, fake blood and anti-meat graffiti daubed on meat shops – 2018 wasn’t the best year for the country’s meat industry.
Butchers say their businesses are suffering due to intimidating and violent vegan campaigners, who have been increasingly turning their rhetoric into action. “I believe these people should be punished. Why don’t they attack large corporations? They only attack small businesses because it is easy,” Karl Pitel, a butcher from Jouy-en-Josas commune, 16km from Paris, told RT. Pitel’s meat shop was also attacked by vegan activists earlier this year.
He believes that people will continue to eat meat regardless. “Why would everybody start eating vegetables just because these activists want them to?” he asked, adding that everyone “has their own preferences and we must respect people’s choices.”
Many vegans think that morality is more important than obeying the law, Yves Bonnardel, an animal rights activist and philosopher, explained to RT. “These activists think that animal rights should be protected as human rights,” he added.
Watch more on RT about the consequences of ‘militant’ veganism and people’s choice of eating habits.
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