Demo @ Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage shop

Taunton Animal Rights Activists (TARA) | 20.03.2008 22:07 | Animal Liberation

Please join Animal Aid on Wednesday 26th March at 12 noon (for a couple of hours) outside Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage shop, to tell the celebrity chef and his customers that if they genuinely care about chickens and other farmed animals, they would go veggie.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall outside his River Cottage shop

Animal Aid will have a large chicken costume and a banner saying ‘Meat Kills! Go Veggie’ and will also be handing out veggie leaflets. We need people to hold the banner and help leaflet.

If you can help, please either email

kelly@animalaid.co.uk or call 07890136663.

Wednesday 26th March, 12 noon

River Cottage
Trinity Square
Axminster

Thanks

Kelly Slade
Campaigns Officer

Tel: 01732 364546 ext. 227
Web: www.animalaid.org.uk
Animal Aid, The Old Chapel, Bradford Street, Tonbridge, Kent, TN9 1AW

Registered in the UK as Animal Abuse Injustice and Defence Society.
Company number 1787309.

See our new 90-second film here:

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/f/CAMPAIGNS/blog//4//?be_id=50

Taunton Animal Rights Activists (TARA)
e-mail: tauntonanimalrightsactivists@hotmail.co.uk
Homepage: http://taraonline.tk

Comments

Hide the following 15 comments

Choice

20.03.2008 23:44

Going vegetarian or vegan is a personal choice, who the hell are you to go and shout at people telling them go to veggie?

(A)

But...

21.03.2008 00:50

...every decision is based on a variety of choices - this whole website is dedicated pretty much in trying to stop those who are making the choice to fuck the world over, be it through war profiteering, privatisation, racism and so on.

People object to these things because the actions one group of people/corporation/state are making, are depriving other people, be it of life itself, their jobs and so on.

So, I would say these people are just as allowed to "tell" people not to eat meat, because the appalling effects it as on animal suffering as well to the environment, just as much as people are allowed to "tell" people to not start wars, to stop driving big 4x4s or to stop producing nuclear weapons.

It's a complete slippery slope - all campaigning is trying to either change people's minds so they stop making the decisions they are, like our world leaders, or forcing them not to via direct action. Why is trying to tell people not to support the meat industry different in anyway whatsoever?

Answer

21.03.2008 01:02

As you probably have heard recently, Hugh and his chums and been busy promoting their "welfare" chicken, and even stepping on some toes on the way. For example; demonstrating outside Tescos to persuade people to not buy chicken that isn't free range and leafleting in a pub that raised some eyebrows for some (busy drinkers).

So as you can imagine, because the River Cottage gang are well accustomed to peaceful protests, it seems only fair that if Hugh and mates are allowd to propose their welfarist agenda towards other businesses, than other campaigning groups can do exactly the same - and protest their welfarist agenda of vegetarianism at their business. Otherwise their actions would be somewhat hypocritical one might say!

Seems pretty simple, logic and understandable to me. You would think that a load of animal loving people at the River Cottage, some of wom spend their time campaigning for the welfare of animals, might like the idea of vegetarianism.

Slow it down

RE: Choice

21.03.2008 09:18

To (A)

I totally agree with you I think you have made a most intelligent and well thought out comment!

After all fairs fair eh! The animals get a choice of being abused in a factory farm or abused whilst being free range, then they get a choice of which abbotoir and slaughter method and how long and painful the death may be and then whether they are made into nuggets or fillets.

A Vegan

Excellent

21.03.2008 13:27

While I completely disagree with the ideology behind your protest, I think you're inadvertantly doing something brilliant by harrassing this annoying, hypocritical prick who attempts to guilt trip the working class for enjoying the simple pleasure of good food (which has always meant a diet including meat throughout all of human history and civilisation). He disguises his class-contempt behind cowardly moralism, and a pretense of anti-capitalism which basically boils down to an impotent, faux-naive, apolitical plea for supermarkets to "be a bit nicer" and cut their profit margins. In fact, it's an indirect form of lifestyle marketing through class hatred.

Well fuck him and more importantly, fuck the lifestyle marketers who are the sole reason for his celebrity. Obviously factory farming is wrong, but it is also and simultaneously both the abuse of animals and the abuse of working human beings - both producers and consumers.

Please could you protest Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay next, thanks. I wish they would make programmes where rich people are force-fed a diet of donner kebabs and birdseye steaks, and poor folks wagyu beef and pink salmon. Just for the lulz.

anonymous

Shouting to go veggie

21.03.2008 13:31

"who the hell are you to go and shout at people telling them go to veggie?"

I can't remember the last time Animal Aid had a demo when they were shouting at non-vegetarians to go veggie. Never maybe? Read the article: Chicken costume, banner & leafleting. No megaphone - no shouting!

At least get your facts straight. As "A Vegan" said; look up the concept of CHOICE for EVERYONE and see what that entails.

Veganarchist

Soya

21.03.2008 14:01

Seems to me a little odd to be protesting this guys house. I can see that he's no saint but despite this he is promoting local production of ethical (if you believe meat can be) meat. However, the vast majority of vegans and vegetarians seem to have no issue with consuming soya products, the majority of which are grown in monoculture plantations where hundreds of species of plants and animals will have been destroyed to make way for it, before the product is shipped half way around the world.

Anon

Soya correction

21.03.2008 14:58

1) "Seems to me a little odd to be protesting this guys house."
Shop, not house. Look up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retailing for more information.

2) "However, the vast majority of vegans and vegetarians seem to have no issue with consuming soya products, the majority of which are grown in monoculture plantations where hundreds of species of plants and animals will have been destroyed to make way for it, before the product is shipped half way around the world."

I guess there is a lack of education somewhere along the lines, probably the mass media?

Lets start back at the start.

Over 95% of the animals killed in the United Kingdom (for example) are chickens. The same percentage that are meat eaters in the UK.
Where do the overwhelming majority of chickens come from before ending up on plates? Battery farms, for multinationals, fed on SOYA.
So when chickens consumer well over 20 human meals worth of food....to supply a meal for someone, kinda explains where the mass demand for soya is coming from don't it?

95% meat eaters eating 95% worth of chicken fed on SOYA?

Vegan

Hitting the hard targets as ever

21.03.2008 21:50

I'm sure that there are more pressing targets than Mr F-W to concentrate your fire on, but going after them might actually require some intelligence and hard work. So I guess they'll have to wait, eh?

Niall

Hello Anonymous

22.03.2008 00:28

Some points:

A) Providing information improves people’s ability to make choices and lawful protests do not prevent choice.

B) As previously mentioned there isn’t any choice for the animals involved, the day animals get a choice in the matter is the day I’ll start to take the “choice” argument seriously.

C) Are you the same “Anonymous” that protest Scientology? Using your own logic are you not preventing people’s choice to support Scientology?

P.S. You seem to have a problem with viewpoints outside the norm is that part of the reason you are against Scientology? Or is it just for the free cake mentioned in your videos. lulz :-)

anima

Rock on

22.03.2008 10:47

Actually it appears that the timing of this demonstration is quite good, though, during the making of his programme may have been better. Hugh has consistently ignored vegetarianism, or more appropriately veganism as a possible alternative to ending the 'reliance' on intensive farming.

The pro choice argument appears irrelevant, it is just the protection of one groups 'interests' to the detriment of another. We see this everyday in relation to people, animals and the environment, and this an incredibly skewed perception of liberty without responsibility.

For the class warrior, the commodification of animals, people, the environment are all particular aspects of our present society. Though humans have eaten other animals down the years, they have yet to treat them in anyway as appallingly as they do today. The use of animals (essentially as slaves) to support capitalist society is clear. It is also clear that people are responsible for their liberation from the system, they also bear a responsibility to liberate animals from the same system, all the more so if they are inherently supporting the exploitation of animals by making choices that perpetuate the present establishment.

Class analysis tends to sympathise with peoples 'need' to consume animals, and how it is incredibly unfortunate that they are left to pick up the scraps from the factory farming system. For such a sickening industry, it would be more appropriate, in my view, for solidarity with other animals rather than treating them as an underclass.

Hugh

re: Soya Correction

22.03.2008 11:44

"Where do the overwhelming majority of chickens come from before ending up on plates? Battery farms, for multinationals, fed on SOYA.
So when chickens consumer well over 20 human meals worth of food....to supply a meal for someone, kinda explains where the mass demand for soya is coming from don't it?

95% meat eaters eating 95% worth of chicken fed on SOYA?"

Thats certainly an interesting statistic, but not really relavent to this issue. I get the impression that Huge Furry Whipping-Stool is against battery farmed chickens, as am I, and the majority of the people that concider themselves to have some kind of morals and ethics.

The point I am making is that, in my opinion, it is more sustainable and infact less damaging to animal and plant life as a whole to eat non-intensive, organic local meat than it is to consume the soya substitutes.

Anon

Reductosoya

22.03.2008 12:10

I think there is a general misconception that vegans/vegetarians cram in loads of soya to replace meat.

I have met with arguments about locally/organically produced food, only to see people going to curry restaurants to eat intensively farmed chicken tikka, and to the local market to get apples from Australia. Obviously, people should try and eat as locally as possible, and perhaps for some that includes animals. But to be consistent is pretty important. Choosing not to eat animals is a fairly radical step, one of many that can help add resistance to this malign culture.

MrSoya

Sustainability vs Organic

22.03.2008 18:12

People think food that is unsubstantiable can suddenly become substainable, just by making the product organic. Take beef for example, people actually believe a cow that drinks over 2,000 litres of water to produce a pound of beef is substainable compared to grains, vegetables and so forth which use anything between 20-100 litres of water per pound of produce.

There's an overwhelming difference; which is noticed by the amount of food we are able to supply to starving children etc etc. Water shortage, poverty etc can no longer be ignored by people when there are obvious solutions. Distribute food to the maximum number of people possible.

People really just need to wake up and think extremely simplistically, for example....feeding people directly, or feeding an animal the same amount of food - thus feeding less people. It's merely a form of greed, class difference, discrimination and ignorance.

The real confusion

DEMO POSTPONED

22.03.2008 20:19

"Dear Friends

I’m afraid we are going to have to postpone for a few weeks the demo planned for Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall’s establishment in Axminster. We found out very late in the day that CIWF are also taking a giant chicken to Axminster the same week (though aimed at Tesco’s). For both groups to go would confuse the media and maybe encourage them to write negative stories about warring animal groups...plus local activists might be unhappy.

We will return and do the demo as planned and will seek your support. Sorry for any disruption the changed plans might cause you but we felt we had no choice."

Animal Aid
mail e-mail: info@animalaid.org.uk
Homepage: http://animalaid.org.uk