Did hard rock has-been Ted Nugent accuse his vegan son of being “responsible for the most death possible”?
Outspoken musician Ted Nugent has a history of expressing controversial opinions, whether it be to call Obama a “subhuman mongrel” or argue that the US should have done to Iraq what it did to Nagasaki. Now the avid hunter has invoked the predictable anti-vegan crop deaths argument once again, despite the fact that his son and close friend are both vegans.
In an awkward zoom interview with Tuscon radio station KLPX, the hard-rocking has-been Nugent - who does still enjoy something of a fan following - decided once again to point the finger at vegans for causing the most animal deaths (reminding us of his infamous appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2018):
“If you wanna be responsible for the most death possible, become a vegan. Because behind that tractor and that plough and that disc, unless you hide and deny it, are crows and seagulls following that tractor growing your tofu because the plough and the disc dismember and mutilate everything in those gazillion acres - every squirrel, every ground-nesting gopher, every ground-nesting bird, every snake, every turtle, every animal in that field that’s turned into tofu is slaughtered by the gazillion.”
Tofu isn’t grown, it’s processed bean curds, but we can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he means soy or rather any crops in general. The US Department of Agriculture says that while approximately 77 million acres of land in the US are used to grow crops for human consumption, more than 127 acres are used to grow crops that are turned into animal feed. More on that later as we still need to establish a little background about Nugent to understand his tirade against the compassionate.
Nugent is an outspoken ‘gun rights’ and hunting advocate, and his right-wing conservative views have very often bordered on hate speech - in 1990 he said that South African apartheid wasn’t “that cut-and-dry”, and in 2014 he took back an apology he made after referring to Obama as a “communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel”. Charming.
It’s no surprise then that Nugent is also not a huge fan of the animal rights movement. In 1992, Nugent was fined $75,000 after asking in a radio interview “who needs to club a seal, when you can club Heidi?”, referring to Heidi Prescott, now Senior VP for Campaigns at the Fund for Animals.
In a famous clip taken from his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Nugent’s enthusiasm for hunting and all the wonderful things he does - like feeding homeless people the venison he doesn’t want to keep for himself, sending jerky to warzones, and blowing his own trumpet - plus his knowledge and experience in advocating for hunting versus factory farming versus veganism, makes him sound at times quite convincing. But we mustn’t forget some of the other things he’s done for and to animals that he probably wouldn’t enthuse about with Joe Rogan, such as defending the killing of Cecil the Lion; owning and running a 34-acre “high fence hunting” ranch where the animals are fenced thus violating the principle of fair chase; and being found guilty of illegally killing and transporting an American black bear.
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Obviously, fed-up with the criticism he receives from those who oppose hunting, Nugent when speaking to KLPX this week recounted the following grape-related anecdote:
“I’ll never forget, this guy said, ‘Well, we’re going to a vineyard to protest hunting.’ And I go, ‘Wait a second. Do you know the vineyard operator? Because I do. And you know what the vineyard operator does to protect those grapes? He kills everything - everything that sneaks in, everything that walks in, everything that flies in. The vineyard operator, to grow your wine, to protest hunting, kills everything that threatens those grapes, you jerk.’”
Surely, a proud ‘gotcha’ moment for Nugent despite it not really making much sense. If what he says is true, nothing says all vegans have to drink wine. This is the same sort of argument as avocados not being vegan because of the use of migratory beekeeping - it’s an unavoidable necessity of their production, but we don’t have to eat them. Drinking wine and eating avocados aren’t requirements of veganism, or in other words, if someone says they’re vegan it’s not a given that they’re guilty of supporting bee exploitation and vineyard massacres.
As to the title of this article, did Nugent accuse his son of causing the most deaths to animals? In a sense, yes. In the Joe Rogan interview, he revealed that his son Rocco was in fact vegan - so groundbreaking a revelation it seems that it became the video’s clickbait title. Furthermore, he admitted that Rocco had chosen to stop hunting, though he couldn’t quite get the words “ethical vegan” out. That would have been going too far. In the KLPX call, he again talked about “how some of his best friends are vegan” and referred to his son’s excellent lifestyle choice, as if this somehow makes him more considered and balanced with his ravings. What’s important to observe, however, is that even though his son went plant-based for digestive issues - and remained this way for at least three years between speaking to Joe Rogan and KLPX - Rocca has chosen not to hunt, even under the guise of conservation and wildlife management. This sounds very much like an ethical choice, making the good son Rocco a card-carrying vegan. You can see the moment early on in the Joe Rogan clip when Nugent stops short of bringing his son’s ethics into the discussion because he knows that doing so would have effectively meant also accusing his son of causing more animal deaths. Instead, Nugent simply says he respects Rocco’s choice not to participate in the “harvest” - clearly, he has an odd definition of respect.
Back to Nugent on KLPX: “My son’s a vegan, my buddy Michael Lutz [of] Brownsville Station, my co-producer, he’s a vegan for health considerations, for digestive considerations. That’s perfectly legitimate. I’m not knocking veganism. But don’t think for a minute that there’s a reduction in animal deaths because you have a tofu salad. Just the opposite takes place. And denial is such a convenient lie. So all you vegans, just keep eating your vegan salad because I love when you dismember all those animals and the crows and the seagulls pick up on them as they’re writhing in horror and being tortured so you can have a nice ‘blood-free’ salad.”
Except that his assumption of more deaths from crops than animal agriculture is based on questionable science, specifically, articles published in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, the first in 2003 by Steven Davis - a professor of animal science at Oregon State University - and another in 2018 in which its authors admit overestimating. In both articles, the numbers don’t add up and actually create more of an argument for veganism than against it. (For an in-depth debunking of the science, we refer you to Ed’s article and video linked below.)
As for vegans enjoying “blood-free” salads, we know that we don’t. Veganism isn’t about being perfect, but trying to cause the least harm possible to the best of our knowledge. Just because we inevitably and unavoidably cause some harm to wildlife, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to not cause harm to farmed animals by intentionally paying for their deaths at the hands of slaughtermen.
The fact is that we have to eat something, and veganism really does result in fewer deaths as Surge co-founder Ed Winters explains in his DEBUNKED: Do vegans kill more animals through crop deaths? article and accompanying video. In Nugent’s own words, “denial is such a convenient lie”.
Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.
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