A vegan is reportedly ‘guilt-tripping’ shoppers with small stickers pointing out that meat is made from animals. Marc Gurney, 31, left pictures of animals around the meat and dairy aisles of local supermarkets, with captions reminding people that sausages are made from pigs and where milk comes from. For example one sticker, left in a shop’s milk section, reads ‘MISSING: Have you seen my calf? Stolen by humans so they can drink the milk I made for my baby’. He also pointed out which items in the supermarket were vegan with small labels that said ‘This is Vegan’.
He left one of the stickers on some sausages (Picture: Mercury Press)
Marc, from Brighton, told Metro.co.uk that he wanted to make people think about what – or who – it was that they were eating.
‘[The stickers] get into people’s consciousness,’ he said. ‘There’s often a lot of cognitive dissonance when it comes to this matter.
‘People believe harming animals is wrong, but haven’t made the connection between harming animals and eating meat yet.
‘I think everyone is vegan deep down. No one wants to harm animals. But, unfortunately, there’s still a lot of propaganda and lack of truths, which fail to expose what’s really going on.’
He says people suffer from cognitive dissonance when it comes to animals they eat (Picture: Mercury Press)
Since news of Marc’s stickers started circulating on social media, his actions have attracted comments such as ‘Steak for dinner!’, ‘self-righteous tree hugger’, and ‘bacon’. But Marc’s not put off.
He said: ‘People who describe me as militant and radical… that’s up to them. Everyone has their own perception of what’s militant and what’s radical. It only draws attention to the activism.
‘I personally don’t feel it was militant – the stickers were not graphic.
‘People can get on board with stickers as part of popular culture – and that’s what I want veganism to eventually become part of.’
He also left labels pointing out food that’s ‘accidentally vegan’ (Picture: Mercury Press)
But he added that things are getting much easier for people who are plant-based, as vegan products and ideas are becoming far more mainstream now.
‘The stigma is fading slightly,’ Marc continued. ‘People are starting to realise that you don’t have to dress head to toe in hemp and hug a Douglas Fir in order to be vegan.’
Marc has apparently had a lot of positive reactions to the ‘This is Vegan’ stickers – which could also be because it’s Veganuary this month.
As Clea Grady, Veganuary’s marketing manager, told Metro.co.uk that ‘56,000 people have already felt encouraged enough to take up the Veganuary challenge’, and more are expected to try it before the end of the month.
When asked about Marc’s stickers, Elisa Allen, director of Peta UK, told Metro.co.uk: ‘If companies won’t show how cows and pigs become chops and mince, then hats off to someone who will.
‘We all have a right to know the truth behind the products we buy. Obviously, sales would plummet if packages showed scared animals strung up by a leg and how their throats are cut or even how, wide-eyed and cold, they’re transported on a lorry to the butcher. So the meat industry has a vested interest in keeping us disconnected from who is in those neatly shrink-wrapped packages of bodily parts.
‘Good for Mr. Gurney for pointing out, truthfully, that each packet contains the dismembered corpse of an animal who didn’t want to die and may even have cried out loud.
‘As Paul McCartney said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian”. And if meat, eggs, and dairy products were made to carry a label with the face of the victim inside, most people would be sprinting to the “free-from” aisles, where vegan sausages and Fakin’ Bacon as well as soya, almond, and coconut milk and other vegan products abound – all delicious and none causing suffering.’
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