The Unexpected Way Vegans Are Reportedly Honoring Dead Cows

Perhaps few internet videos are as controversial as those that compare veganism and carnivorism. Case in point: a now-deleted TikTok that recently resurfaced on Reddit. It shows a group of people laying roses upon a grocery store's packages of beef to honor the cows that gave their lives to become meat. It then cuts to a man eating a steak dinner next to a rose in a vase. Though the original video is not new, as evidenced by another Reddit appearance it made last year, it evidently still sparks heated reactions from viewers. 

One such response begins with a person writing, "I wholeheartedly respect the principles of veganism. It's sad that the minority uses it as a tool to virtue signal and get so much attention." Other comments suggested that the roses were a pointless gesture designed to make protesters feel better about themselves. On the other side, Redditors admired the protest for being peaceful but effective, and some said that "vegan haters" are just as (if not more) annoying than the protestors themselves.

Mourning is a common form of activism

The rose video shared on Reddit is not the first example of vegan advocates performing a quiet protest (and inadvertently angering non-vegans). In 2018, Plant Based News shared a recording of farmers at a livestock market in Oxfordshire, who were aggressively responding to a similar vegan protest. "We were holding a vigil at a livestock market," explained Earthling Ed, a well-known vegan activist, "and as the auction was closing, we went to lay roses at the entrance, to honor the animals who would be sent to the slaughterhouse." Some farmers responded with foul language and even physically provoked the activists.

Similarly, Unilad reported in 2019 that an Australian vegan protester dressed as a cow to publicly mourn the death of other cows in the supermarket. It was an informal advertisement for "Dominion," a documentary about the dark side of the meat industry. You can watch the full film on YouTube, which shows tons of comments about people deciding to become vegan. In each of these cases, the point of these acts of protest seemed to be to grab people's attention no matter their opinions — and it appears to have worked.