There’s nothing wrong with being a veggie

I found this brief reference in the South African daily newspaper Business Day. The story is about how the U.S. Army reported that Twitter could be used for terrorist activity. The report apparently says that Twitter has become an activist tool for socialists, communists, human rights activists … and vegetarians. What?!?

The Business Day writer writes, “The Insider couldn’t help but wondering what those pesky vegetarians would be doing to warrant a terror warning. Freeing cows destined for the slaughterhouse or putting soya bean in the water hardly seems like much of a threat.”

I thought this was funny, so I went searching Google for “anti-vegetarian.” Of course many things popped up, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the Anti-Vegetarian Society of Meat Eaters. The name of the group doesn’t even really make sense, especially when AVSME says they aren’t opposed to vegetables or to vegetarians. Maybe I’m elitist or bias, but this group just seems idiotic. AVSME has a store on its site where you can get very clever slogans put on T-shirts, buttons, etc. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Very hilarious and so clever! (Please understand the sarcasm there.)

After I found the AVSME group, I also found a story from about a week ago about a Republican candidate for governor of the state of Montana who was very upset that Democrats spread a rumor that he was vegetarian. The Billings Gazette reported that candidate Roy Brown said, “I am not and have never been a vegetarian. I am disgusted by the baseless allegation that I am a vegetarian and that my personal eating habits should somehow be construed as opposed to the economic interests of Montana’s livestock industry.”

He seems so ashamed. I mean, if you have to issue a statement to specifically let people know that you are NOT a vegetarian, you must dislike vegetarians alot…but I guess it is Montana. And I have to admit that if someone spread a rumor about me that I was a meat-eater, I’d be kind of irritated.

The idea with all of this though is that there’s no shame in being a vegetarian. Vegetarians clearly represent a minority in America, so I urge vegetarians or people interested in becoming vegetarian to ignore anti-veggie groups and people; it just further separates an already small community of non-meat-eaters.