Letter from Priscilla Feral of FoA to the publishers of VegNews regarding “animal compassion” promotions (Feb. 2008).
26 February 2008
To: Joe Connelly and Colleen Holland, publishers, VegNews
Cc: Jill Petzke, Advertising
Dear Joe and Colleen,
From time to time, and more frequently as time goes on and so-called compassionate animal products grow trendier, a long-term donor will pull support from Friends of Animals expressly because we refuse to support supposedly humane eggs or dairy and flesh products. We are becoming almost a lone voice for other animals’ right to simply be let alone.
How aggravating it is to see your March/April issue’s feature piece "From Hippie to Hip," which does its best to mute our voice.
Of course, no one -- VegNews or anyone else – can really move us to the margins. Animal rights, which means taking a stand for what’s best in vegetarian values, is the base of this movement. Campaigning to change KFC’s slaughter methods is not. Nor are people who sign onto letters promoting Whole Foods Market’s ludicrously named Animal Compassion Standards. And no, to borrow from Einstein, you can’t simultaneously prevent and prepare for meat.
Moreover, Joe and Colleen, your article sidelined Friends of Animals after we have made an effort to support your publication. Thirty years of plant-based progress? Why did you start counting then? Maybe it’s time for me to toot my horn, folks, because you’re re-writing history. I myself have worked in the movement longer than 30 years, developing and refining the strongest argument in the animal-advocacy movement to expose and opt out of animal agribusiness, and Alice Herrington opposed so-called humane slaughter even before that. And today, we unequivocally do the work your magazine set out to do: promote vegetarianism!
Our 2005 vegan cookbook bridged the vegetarian and animal-advocacy communities in a way that respects the former and doesn’t try to corrupt it with the consume-animals-nicely message. But did you give it attention? Didn’t that merit a picture more than a KFC protest - which has nothing directly to do with vegetarianism in any form?
Lee Hall received only personal questions about veganism and had no idea of the true overall context of the article, which had much to do with promoting groups as meaningful to vegetarian history. Then, Lee answered in detail -- but was overlooked, except for a token gesture, while newer groups that have worked as the egg police are feted in Mat’s article.
The bitter irony is that VegNews could bypass the whole animal-treatment issue, as all vegetarians can avoid causing harm to animals simply by objecting to eating them. That is the message your publication should be projecting without competing messages. But VegNews prefers to act as though John Mackey – once a vegetable vendor who is now a multinational purveyor of pigs’ and cows’ flesh, goat cheeses and Chilean Sea Bass – has status in the vegetarian movement. The photo essay is quite telling: Many people you deem leadership (and this goes for other prominent material in the same issue) are people who agreed to promote John Mackey in some way. Your message to the movement? In our view, it looks like “pandering pays.” And we’d be paying for it if we continue with our advertising collaboration. We won’t do that any more.
Anyone following vegetarian and animal-advocacy issues knows we have been writing about the Animal Compassion Standards racket this for more than three years now, and recently Lee Hall went to Britain to warn people there about the danger Whole Foods Market poses to animals and animal activists (you really should carefully read Lee Hall’s speech at the recent London Vegan Festival in Abolitionist Online (Issue 7; Feb. 2008) and Passionate Meat and Poultry Providers, Coming to a Town Near You in Arkangel (April 2007) ) .
For icing on the cake, this same issue printed a letter by our Canadian Correspondent Dave Shishkoff, a letter that said essentially all the same things I’m saying to you now, sent in on the 1 st of November 2007 under the subject “Letter to Editor re: HSUS Monopoly.” A letter which you neutered with a bland header, edited freely and without consulting Dave or FoA, and which your editors stripped of its organizational signature bar so that it appears to be personal correspondence when Dave expressly wrote on behalf of all of us here – and indicated that in the signature and inside the text which you gutted.
Let me repeat a paragraph from that letter right now (which didn’t get printed, but should have):
Given the state of the planet, promotions of so-called sustainable and humane animal products have become environmental malpractice. Most of us are now aware that animal agribusiness accounts for more excess greenhouse gases than the entire transport sector. Yet hardly a week goes by without a news story about a lapsed vegetarian who has found some form of "ethical" animal agribusiness to support. Enough is enough. VegNews needs to stand up and be a voice of reason. That means promoting a vegan message. It's time to teach reverence for life before life as we know it is gone.
VegNews is promoted as “ North America's Only Vegetarian Newspaper” and I earnestly hope it will prove serious about that mission and we can resume a relationship. But it’s important to add here that global warming and the needless slaughter of animals is happening now, this minute. Writing the John Mackeys of the world into vegetarian history is regressive, dangerous, and ethically unacceptable.
Please, effective now, cancel our advertising contract. We currently do not plan to place or pay for any future advertising in VegNews.
Very truly yours,
Priscilla Feral
President
Friends of Animals
