Someone really needs to give the Ethical Butcher - champions of so-called ‘ethical meat’ - a lesson on how to handle their social media because the cracks are showing. From the defensive and the passive-aggressive replies to actually going on vegans’ Instagram posts and being downright snarky, the #Regenuary gang are outraged... and we know why.

We’ve all seen it a million times. People set out to change the world and prove a point, often investing a great deal of time and money, and when things don’t go quite as well as they’d hoped they get all het up and make some questionable public relations choices.

Thanks to a tip-off from a supporter, we can see that the Ethical Butcher could well be at the precipice of just such a slippery slope. No one likes criticism - and heaven knows they’ve had it all from vegans and farmers who don’t go in for marketing-friendly ethicalism and pseudoscience - but the answer isn’t to get defensive. For a brand that’s trying to portray itself as “ethical” and conscious-minded, responses like the ones they give to critics on their own posts tell us that they’re not really open to a discussion.

When they put out a post about rejecting labels then get irked when people point out that they’re the ones labelling themselves ethical and that “Regenuary” is in itself a gimmicky term, giving as good as they get is one thing. But we get it - after the hundredth person has pointed out the flaws in one’s logic, the holes in one’s science, anyone would get the hump and resort to insults. But to actually go onto a vegan’s Instagram account, stalk their pictures and leave little snarky comments, that’s just sad.

There is a point to where we’re going with this and it isn’t just tit-for-tat. For every outraged reply from the Ethical Butcher’s social media flunky, however curt or purposefully obtuse, each is a window into deeper issues related to their approach to food production, their ethics concerning non-human exploitation, and their flawed beliefs in regenerative agriculture using grazing animals.

Outraged about... health

Why not take an extra minute to explain the problem with PUSFA and seek to educate, rather than score a point against those pesky vegans? They surely can’t be too busy if they have time to go through a feed and leave no less than five similarly snotty comments. That being said, while polyunsaturated fatty acids are present in greater proportions in plant-based alternatives than in dairy butter and are associated with inflammation, a moderate intake of some PUSFA - which includes Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids - is recommended as part of a healthy diet. What isn’t recommended in any amount is extra dietary cholesterol, of which there is plenty in dairy and absolutely none in plant-based foods.

Outraged about… unethical cats

We’re not sure where to start with this comment, but it perfectly illustrates their ethical stance in that it’s all relative. Because we as humans don’t torture and play with non-human animals before we kill them for food, that makes us better, therefore it’s ethically ok to do. However, we wouldn’t want to take this comment out of context as it was a reply to the caption that quoted Mark Twain:

"Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he's the one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

Still, we can’t help but feel that Ethical Butcher has intentionally missed the point or failed to grasp the concept of moral agency - we possess it; cats do not. We can override our base instincts and apply systems of morality; cats cannot. They don’t play with their prey because it’s fun in the way we would understand it, they do so because it’s instinctive, they can’t help it. Cats are also obligate carnivores, not omnivores, and therefore have a greater need to consume other animals, so even if they did have the capacity to act upon a sense of morality, the survival argument could make taking life more justifiable than it would be for us humans who can thrive on a properly planned plant-based diet.

Being “by far the most ethical” is also not a justification for doing something ultimately and objectively unethical. We do not need to consume animals when most of us in the developed world have access to a sufficient variety of plant-based foods, therefore depriving a sentient being of their right to life is unjustifiable. Surge co-director Ed Winters explains this all very well in a recent video:

It really says something when those who profit from the slaughter of animals must point the finger at cats to justify their immorality.

Outraged about… fitness

Carl Lewis, Kendrick Farris, Novak Djokovic, Lewis Hamilton, just imagine how much more they and other famous plant-based sporting personalities could have achieved as omnivores. Granted, they weren’t always plant-based throughout their careers, but all have achieved greatness while also abstaining from animal products. Surely they can’t be referring to sporting or athletic achievement, but if they’re referring to scientific ignorance, the folks at Ethical Butcher take first prize....

Grazed and very confused

In 2017, the University of Oxford-based Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) released a report called Grazed and Confused that examined environmental claims made about grazing systems, in an attempt to answer the question of whether grass-fed beef is good or bad for the climate. The study was substantive and large in scope, with lead author Dr Tara Garnett having this to say on the matter:

“This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use. Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.”

In the interest of balance, we’ll include a link to the Sustainable Food Trust’s response to Grazed and Confused, which the Ethical Butcher has used on occasion as a blanket response to anyone who brings up the study rather than explain things in their own words. What Ethical Butcher fails to also respond with is Dr Garnett’s subsequent reply to the SFT’s critique, which we encourage you all to read as well.

Other scientific and environmental “zingers” claimed by the Ethical Butcher and other advocates of regenerative agriculture through managed grazing include an attack on vegans for eating avocados and foods that need to be imported. All of them can be roundly debunked, and it’s disappointing to have to keep doing so after so many years. But for a quick crash debunk, take a look through the following Instagram post on Ed’s account.

We haven’t even touched on the oxymoron that is their very name - Ethical Butcher - for how can one ethically butcher someone who didn’t want to die. They freely admit that slaughter is not something they can control, yet there is no butchering without slaughter. By their own admission, Ethical Butcher is a contradiction, a confusion of words ignored in order to legitimise and position the sale of animal carcasses and secretions as moral in a world that is moving towards conscious food choices.

But the claims don’t quite hold up to scientific scrutiny, and the only people buying the illusion of ethics are those who are desperate to continue eating animals when Red Tractor, RSPCA Assured and other ‘high welfare’ labels have all but lost their credibility. The Ethical Butcher is trying to fill that void, but in doing so has placed itself under enormous pressure to say whatever will sell their lie or risk losing their market, and without a market, there’s no profit to be made.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager at Surge.

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