Is Veganphobia Real?

Jordi Casamitjana, the vegan who secured the legal protection of ethical vegans in the UK, investigates the issue of veganphobia to find out if it is a real phenomenon

My name is sometimes associated with it.

Since my involvement with the legal case that resulted in a judge in Norwich, in the East of England, ruling on 3^rd January 2020 that ethical veganism is a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010 (what in other countries is called “protected class”, such as gender, race, disability, etc.) my name often appears in articles that also contain the term “veganphobia”. For instance, in a 2019 article from INews, you can read, “An ‘ethical vegan’ is set to launch a legal battle this week in an attempt to have his beliefs protected from ‘veganphobia’. Jordi Casamitjana, 55, was sacked by the League Against Cruel Sports after he told colleagues the company had invested its pension funds in companies involved in animal testing…Mr Casamitjana, originally from Spain, has crowdfunded his legal action and says he hopes to prevent vegans from facing “veganphobia” at work or in public.”

In a 2018 article from the Times titled “Law must protect us from veganphobia, says campaigner”, we can read, “Rising ‘veganphobia’ means that vegans must be given the same legal protection from discrimination as religious people, a campaigner has said.” The truth is that, although I have used the term occasionally when talking to the media, it’s normally the journalists who mention it, or paraphrase me as if I had used it when I did not.

There was an article in The Times published after I won my case which was about veganphobia, and the journalist tried to quantify it. The article, authored by Arthi Nachiappan and titled “Experts Get Their Teeth Into Idea of Vegan Hate Crime,” claimed that, according to responses from 33 police forces across the UK, a total of 172 crimes relating to vegans took place over the previous five years, one-third of which occurred in 2020 alone (with 2015 only having nine crimes against vegans recorded). The story was also picked up by the Daily Mail on 8^th August 2020, with the headline “Police Record 172 Vegan Hate Crimes in Past Five Years After Dietary Choice Won Same Legal Protections as Religion – as 600,000 Britons Are Now Totally Meat-Free”.

I wonder if now, four years later, the situation has changed. I have often said that hate crime comes naturally in a sequence, which starts with ignorance and ends with hate. This is one of my quotes for the Times article: “I wouldn’t be surprised if, the more veganism becomes mainstream, more veganphobes become more active and commit crimes…Research demonstrates the general population don’t know about vegan people. This creates pre-judgement. This pre-judgement becomes prejudice. This becomes discrimination, then becomes hate.” However, a way to stop this progression is to deal with the early stages by informing the population about what veganism is, and by holding those who discriminate against vegans to account. The latter point is what my legal case could have achieved, so I wonder if it did. I wonder if there are fewer hate crimes against vegans now, and I wonder if there is such a thing called “veganphobia” that explains why such crimes take place.

I decided to dig deep into this, and after months of investigation, I found some answers that I will share in this article.

What is Veganphobia?

If you google the term “veganphobia”, something interesting comes up. Google assumes that you have made a spelling mistake, and the first result shown is the Wikipedia page for “Vegaphobia” (without an “n”). When you go there, you find this definition: “Vegaphobia, vegephobia, veganphobia, or veganophobia is an aversion to, or dislike of, vegetarians and vegans”. This clearly cannot be right, as it puts vegetarians and vegans in the same category. That would be like defining Islamophobia as the aversion to, or dislike of, Muslims and Sikhs. Or defining “transphobia” as the dislike of trans and gay people. I have known of this Wikipedia page for some time, and it didn’t have all the different spellings at the beginning until relatively recently. I then assumed that, whoever had created the page, was making a distinction between vegaphobia and veganphobia, the latter being only the dislike of vegans, but the former the dislike of both vegans and vegetarians. Now that the different spelling has been added (perhaps by a different editor), the definition no longer makes sense to me. In the same way gay people can be transphobic, vegetarians can be veganphobic, so the definition of veganphobia should only refer to vegans, and be “an aversion to, or dislike of, vegans.”

I feel that this definition lacks something, though. You would not call someone a homophobe if this person only slightly dislikes gay people, right? To qualify for the term, such dislike should be intense, to the point the person expresses it in such a way that would make gay people uncomfortable or scared. So, I would extend the definition of veganphobia to “an intense aversion to, or dislike of, vegans.”

However, no matter how clear this is to me, if actual veganphobia does not exist, it matters little how it is defined. I wanted to know if other vegans defined it differently, so I decided to ask them. I contacted several Vegan Societies around the world (who are bound to know the term more than the average vegan) and I sent them this message:

“I am a freelance journalist from the UK, and I am currently writing an article about Veganphobia that has been commissioned to me by Vegan FTA (https://veganfta.com/).

In my article, I would like to include some quotes from Vegan Societies, so I was wondering if you would be able to answer four short questions for it:

1) Do you think that veganphobia exists?

2) If so, how would you define it?”

Only a few replied, but the answers were very interesting. This is what the Vegan Society of Canada replied:

“As a science-based organization, we adhere to established scientific frameworks, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), to inform our understanding of psychological phenomena. According to current scientific consensus, “veganphobia” is not recognized as a specific phobia within the DSM-5 framework or any other framework we are aware of including but not limited to ICD.

While there may be instances where individuals express aversion or hostility toward veganism, determining whether such reactions constitute a phobia requires careful consideration of various factors, including the individual’s underlying emotions and motivations. Phobia diagnosis typically involves the presence of excessive fear or anxiety, along with avoidance behavior, which may not always align with manifestations of aversion or disagreement. In non-clinical settings, it can be challenging, if not impossible, to accurately assess the mental states of individuals and distinguish between fear/anxiety-based reactions and those motivated by other factors such as anger or hatred. As such, while the term “veganophobia” is sometimes used colloquially, it may not necessarily reflect a clinically recognized phobia.

We note the distinction between “veganphobia” and “veganophobia” in the nomenclature. Would it exist it would likely be named “veganophobia” in line with previous naming conventions of other phobias.

At present, we are not aware of specific research focused on “veganophobia,” but it is indeed an intriguing topic for future exploration that we have on our research list. Please do not hesitate if you have any questions.”

I did have a question indeed, because I was intrigued by the fact they interpreted the concept only from a psychological/psychiatric point of view, as opposed to a social point of view, where the term “phobia” is used differently. I asked: “Can I double check that you would have answered in a similar way had I asked you about homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, or xenophobia? I presume none of these are recognised as specific phobias within the DSM-5, but yet there are policies, and even laws, to address them.” I got this reply:

“That’s a great question. Our answers would have been different since there is much more research in those areas and in some of those cases, the existence of the phobia has been documented and scientifically acknowledged. We would have merely pointed out that most public use of the term is still somewhat of a misnomer in that it doesn’t strictly adhere to the clinical definition of a phobia. In psychology, a phobia is an irrational fear or aversion to something. However, for many, it is more accurately described as prejudice, discrimination, or hostility rather than a genuine fear.

Nevertheless, in the media no difference is made as to the motivation for those behaviors and whether they are or are not genuine mental disorders instead of something else. In some of those cases, it would be technically more accurate to describe as say ‘xenohatred’ or “Homonegativity” when motivated by other factors than fear or anxiety. It has been a wide subject of discussion for years, it is only that the media mostly ignore all of this for various reasons. Similarly, we could label ‘vegananimus’ the negative attitudes towards people who self-identify as vegan when motivated by anger, hatred, ill will, etc…

There has certainly been some limited research on this topic and it is something we are certainly aware of. ‘Vegananimus’ not being a mental disorder does not require clinical diagnosis and the mere existence of 1 instance is sufficient to claim its existence, and we are certainly aware of more than 1 case.”

Ok, that clarifies it. It is obvious that the term “phobia” has been used differently in a clinical psychological context and a social context. On its own, “phobia” is used only in the former context (the NHS defines it as “an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal”) but as a suffix in a word, it is often used in the latter context.  When meaning a strong dislike or aversion against a group of people, words either ending in “phobia” or “ism” are used, such as Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, interphobia, sexism, racism, antisemitism, colourism, and ableism (perhaps the only exception being “misogyny”). Indeed, we can see them used in this way in the Anti-Discrimination Code of Conduct of the Berlinale (The Berlin International Film Festival):

“The Berlinale does not tolerate any form of favouritism, hurtful language, discrimination, abuse, marginalisation or insulting behaviour on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, religion, background, skin colour, religious belief, sexuality, gender identity, socioeconomic class, caste, disability or age. The Berlinale does not accept sexism, racism, colourism, homophobia, biphobia, interphobia and transphobia or hostility, antisemitism, Islamophobia, fascism, age discrimination, ableism and other and/or intersectional forms of discrimination.”

The media, and policy documents like this one, tend to use words ending in “phobia” not meaning an actual irrational fear, but an aversion against a group of people, but it’s not just the media. The Oxford Dictionary defines homophobia as “dislike of or prejudice against gay people,” and the Cambridge Dictionary as “harmful or unfair things a person does based on a fear or dislike of gay people or queer people”, so the non-clinical social interpretation of some “phobias” is not just a misnomer, but a real linguistic evolution of the term. The concept I am exploring in this article is the social interpretation of the term veganphobia, so I will continue to use it because if I use the term vegananimus most people would get very confused.

The Vegan Society of Aotearoa also replied to my enquiries. Claire Insley wrote to me the following from New Zealand:

“1)    Do you think that veganphobia exists?

Absolutely! I see it all the time where I live!

2)    If so, how would you define it?

The fear of vegans or vegan food. The fear that you are going to be forced to eat plants! eg some kind of government or new world order conspiracy that will enforce vegan eating on the entire planet.

This is interesting, as it adds another dimension to the concept, namely that some of the reasons why people may become veganphobes are of a conspiracy theory nature. Others of the social “phobias” also have such a property, like in the case of some antisemitic people who believe in a conspiracy that Jewish people are trying to take over the world. However, there may be less extreme reasons for veganphobia. Dr Heidi Nicholl, the CEO of Vegan Australia, replied to me with some of them:

“I think, if defined as an extreme and irrational aversion to vegans, then yes, I think it does exist. The interesting question for me is why it exists. Vegans are, by definition, trying to either maximise the good we do in the world or, at least, minimise the harm. Why some people find this triggering for them to express such a deep-seated aversion seems really counter-intuitive to how we usually perceive people who are obviously doing good in the world. I suspect it links to our aversion to ‘do-gooders’ or people who are obvious about, for example, giving to charity. We always prefer the hero who hides their good works. It’s pretty much impossible for vegans to be silent about it – whether they’re activists or not – because people offer each other food all the time!”

The Vegan Society of Austria (Vegane Gesellschaft Österreich) replied to me the following:

ad 1) Within certain people or groups within society it might exist.

ad 2) I would define it as a dislike of the vegan or vegetarian lifestyle or people

It seems that they have interpreted it as vegaphobia, rather than veganphobia.

Dr Jeanette Rowley (one of the expert witnesses in my legal case) who works with the UK Vegan Society, replied to my question in her personal capacity:

“I would say that some of the issues I deal with include veganophobia in some way if we consider the definition in a broad sense from being unwilling to understand veganism/closed minded to the philosophy, or feeling threatened, through to ridicule to prejudice. Some cases I have dealt with are clear examples of prejudice and I find it is often the prejudice that is at the root of some of my work. I’ve written a bit about this issue in my new book which is in the printing process at the publishers.”

I found a paper by Cole, M. and K. Morgan titled, “Vegaphobia: Derogatory Discourses of Veganism and the Reproduction of Speciesism in UK National Newspapers,” published in The British Journal of Sociology in 2011. The paper provides another potential cause of veganphobia: bad journalism and corrupted speciesist media. In its abstract, we can read the following:

“This paper critically examines discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers in 2007. In setting parameters for what can and cannot easily be discussed, dominant discourses also help frame understanding. Discourses relating to veganism are therefore presented as contravening commonsense, because they fall outside readily understood meat-eating discourses. Newspapers tend to discredit veganism through ridicule, or as being difficult or impossible to maintain in practice. Vegans are variously stereotyped as ascetics, faddists, sentimentalists, or in some cases, hostile extremists. The overall effect is of a derogatory portrayal of vegans and veganism that we interpret as ‘vegaphobia’.”

Interesting that the term “vegaphobia” is used, but in the title we only find vegans mentioned, suggesting to me that there is real confusion about what is the right term for this concept (vegaphobia, veganphobia, veganophobia, vegananimus, etc.). I will stick to “veganphobia” as I believe this is the easiest to understand by the word alone and is the term most used by the general public (including the media).

Having read all the replies, I agree that there is such a thing as veganphobia as a concept based on a real phenomenon, and my definition (an intense aversion to, or dislike of, vegans) still stands, but we can add that the reasons for such aversion may be based on several factors, such as unwillingness to understand the veganism philosophy, conspiracy ideation, aversion to “do-gooders”, or propaganda from speciesist media. We should acknowledge that it can also mean a psychological disorder based on an irrational fear of vegans, but this is a very niche interpretation likely to only be used in a clinical context, or when exploring the possibility of this being an actual psychological disorder.

When in 2020 I wrote my book Ethical Vegan, I had a go at defining what a veganphobe is (one of the three types of classic carnists I defined, together with vegan-ignorant and vegan-deniers). I wrote, “A veganphobe deeply dislikes veganism and hates vegans, as a homophobe does with gay people. These people often try to publicly mock, insult or ridicule vegans they encounter, spread anti-vegan propaganda (sometimes they falsely claim they were vegan before, and it almost killed them) or provoke vegans by eating animal products in front of their faces (sometimes raw meat).” I am glad that my investigation into veganphobia has not made this definition obsolete — as it continues to fit very well.

So, veganphobia and veganphobes do exist, but whether veganphobia has become a social problem that may include hate crimes against vegans, and therefore it is a “real thing” in today’s mainstream society, is something that requires further investigation.

Examples of Veganphobia

I asked the vegan societies I contacted if they could give me some examples of real cases of veganphobia from their country.  The Vegan Society of Aotearoa replied the following:

“I certainly know of people in my village who genuinely believe that the UN has an agenda to make everyone on the planet eat plants. This is seen as being against their rights and freedoms to eat what they want. Consequently, I am seen as an agent of this agenda! (I have not heard of it! I certainly wish it was true!!)… There was also a case last year of an MP who was quite aggressive and nasty about vegans on our FB page!

I also asked vegans I know — as well as people belonging to several Facebook vegan groups — for testimonials, and here are a few examples:

• “I was bullied, then sacked for being vegan by a major building society as were 3 other people who had worked there before and after me. The bank manager said to me she was going to offer tea or coffee at future interviews and if they don’t take ‘normal milk’ she won’t take them on to avoid employing any more freak vegans! I really wish I’d taken it all the way to court at the time but I wasn’t in a good place after all the bullying. Myself and my children were also threatened with death multiple times by a man living in the next street to me. I informed the police with evidence but they didn’t do anything. The first time he saw me in public with my brother after all the death threats, he absolutely *** himself, and hurried off down a side street. These verbally abusive bigots are always the biggest cowards. Threatening a 5-foot single parent and her small children is more his thing, but not when he discovers she isn’t alone!”

• “They curse me, they refuse to greet me, they hate me, they call me a witch, they refuse me to give any opinion, they shout at me, you vegan, you mad man, you ka small boy despite my age, they accuse me falsely, they refuse to help, they give me the food that I don’t like. If I refuse it I get called a witch, this is Africa they say ‘ God gave us permission to eat everything and subject all the animals, you pray to a small God or idols, that’s why they forbade you to take meat??’ Veganphobia is so bad. They feared me, my teacher and class monitor were fearing me, they used to deal with many other people and yelling Them to be careful with me. I got poisoned by veganophobic people in 2021.”

• “My auntie, who paid for my college tuition and has been a good supporter, blocked me on Facebook and hated me because of my vegan posts, the last message she gave me were bible verses about God approving of eating animals before blocking me, although she started reaching out to me last Xmas as my uncle, her husband just died, after so many years but I still remained blocked in her FB.”

• “The following is my first real experience of veganphobia. Although there have been many, this one hurt the most. It was my best friend’s (at the time) 30th birthday, and we all went to his house for a party. It was my first time seeing many of these friends since I went vegan, and I had noticed that many had distanced themselves from me already and had even unfollowed me on social media accounts – because I had begun speaking up about veganism on my social pages. To cut a long story short, at this party – I was constantly bombarded, ridiculed and harassed about being vegan, and about matters around the subject. Despite the many times throughout the night that I had asked not to discuss these issues, and that there was a better time and place – my requests were ignored, and there were significant portions of the evening consumed by these people ganging up on me, and making not only my experience unenjoyable, but I imagine the individual who’s birthday it was would have preferred alternative topics of discussion also… This was the last time I saw any of these people again, except for one or two – but even now those relationships have come to their end. These people once considered me a friend, maybe even a dear friend. As soon as I went vegan and spoke up for the animals, they were able to flick a switch on that and even resort to group ridicule, and disrespect. None of them have ever reached out to continue our friendship since.”

You may not be convinced that all these incidents constitute examples of veganphobia because it is hard to assess how intense the dislike of the vegans involved was in all of them, but just imagine that we were talking about homophobia rather than veganphobia, and in this case how much easier you may have qualified the offending people as homophobes.

This already tells us that many people may not react to veganphobic incidents as, somehow, they may believe that the vegans deserve them, for talking too much about veganism, or for trying to convince people to adopt the vegan philosophy. If that is how you see it, read the incidents again but switch from veganphobia to Islamophobia, antisemitism, or any equivalent form of religious prejudice. In this case, the targets may indeed often speak about their religion, and they may even proselytise for it, but would you consider them “fair game” to become the target of prejudicial reactions and hate because of it? If not, you may then realise that the examples I showed may indeed fit the concept of veganphobic incidents — of different degrees.

I have had experiences of veganphobia of my own. Although I was fired for being a vegan (dismissal that led to my legal case), and though I think there were veganphobes among the staff of the organisation that fired me, I do not believe my dismissal was caused by a particular veganphobic individual. However, discounting the many occasions where I met people who seemed to dislike veganism but I would not be able to assess if that dislike was so intense that had almost become an obsession, during my vegan outreach in London I have witnessed at least three incidents that I would classify as veganphobic, and which, in my opinion, could even constitute hate crimes. I will discuss them in a later chapter.

Hate Crime Against Vegans

Hate crime is a crime, often involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or similar identity grounds. Those “similar grounds” could well be identities based on a philosophical belief rather than a religious belief, as in the case of veganism. There is now no doubt that ethical veganism is a philosophical belief as the judge in my case ruled so in Great Britain — and as the belief is identical anywhere, considering it a belief could not be denied in other jurisdictions, regardless of if such belief is deemed to be deserving of legal protection like in the UK. Therefore, theoretically, ethical veganism could be one of the identities the general understanding of hate crime refers to.

However, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the UK government’s department in charge of prosecuting crimes (the equivalent to a federal attorney in the USA), has a more restricted definition of hate crime:

“Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has either:

demonstrated hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity

Or

been motivated by hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity”

Although religion is included in this definition, philosophical beliefs are not, despite these being included in the Equality Act 2010 (which is part of civil legislation, not criminal legislation). This means that the general definition and the legal definition in each country may not necessarily be the same, and different jurisdictions may include different identities in their categorisations of hate crimes.

In the UK, these crimes are covered by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and section 66 of the Sentencing Act 2020 allows prosecutors to apply for an uplift in sentence for those convicted of a hate crime.

Based on the current legislation, the police forces in the UK and the CPS have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:

“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.”

There is no legal definition of hostility so the CPS says they use the everyday understanding of the word, which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.

Since my legal victory in 2020, ethical vegans (which has now become a specific legal term to mean people who follow the official definition of veganism of the Vegan Society, and therefore go beyond just being people who eat a plant-based diet) have been legally protected for following a recognised philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, so it has become unlawful to discriminate, harass, or victimise anyone for being an ethical vegan. However, as I mentioned earlier, this law is a civil law (which works by citizens suing others when the law has been broken), not a criminal law (which works by the state prosecuting those who break criminal laws), so unless the criminal laws that define hate crime are modified to allow philosophical beliefs to be added to the list (which should be easier as religion is already there), crimes against vegans are not currently recognised as hate crimes in the UK (and if they are not in the UK, where vegans have the highest level of legal protection, it is unlikely they would be in any other country for now).

However, this does not mean that the crimes against vegans are not crimes, only that they are not technically classified as “hate crimes” in terms of records, and in terms of which laws can be applied to prosecute the offenders perpetrating them. Indeed, there may be crimes where, in line with the CPS and police definition, the offender has either demonstrated or has been motivated by hostility based on the vegan identity. These are the crimes that I would class as “hate crimes against vegans”, even if the CPS and police only would class them as “crimes against vegans” — if they ever categorise them in any way.

My legal victory, though, could open the door to changes in the law and the police that would include crimes against vegans as hate crimes, if politicians felt that veganphobia has become a threat to society and many vegans are becoming the victims of crimes perpetrated by veganphobes.

In the 2020 Times article mentioned earlier, Fiyaz Mughal, founder of the No2H8 awards, called for a legal review of hate crime as a precedent for vegans to argue their beliefs should be protected. He added: “If someone is attacked because they are a vegan, is it different to them being targeted because they are a Muslim? In a legal sense there is no difference.” In the same article, the Vegan Society said: “Vegans are regularly on the receiving end of harassment and abuse. This should always be taken seriously by law enforcement, in line with the Equality Act 2010.”

Examples of Crimes Against Vegans

I have witnessed several incidents against vegans that I think are crimes (although I don’t believe they were pursued by the police leading to prosecutions). One happened a Saturday evening when I was doing vegan outreach at London’s Leicester Square in 2019 with a group called Earthlings Experience. Out of the blue, an angry man appeared and launched at the activists who were just quietly and peacefully standing with some signs, forcibly trying to take a laptop off one of them, and engaging in violent behaviour when the activists tried to get back a sign he took during the kerfuffle. The incident lasted for a while, and the suspect left with the sign, pursued by some of the activists who called the police. The police detained the person, but no charges were pressed.

The second incident happened in Brixton, a borough of South London, in a similar vegan outreach event, when a violent young man tried to forcibly take a sign off the hand of an activist, and became violent against the others who came to help. Police came but no charges were pressed.

The third incident also happened in London when a group of people harassed a vegan outreach team by eating raw meat in front of their faces (recording everything on video) and trying to provoke them (the activists remained calm not reacting to the provocation, but it was obviously upsetting to them). I do not believe the police were called that day, but I am aware that they had been on previous occasions that the same group had done the same to other activists.

That day is when I learnt from a fellow activist of a much more serious veganphobic incident he had been the victim of. His name is Connor Anderson, and I recently asked him to write down for this article what he told me. He sent me the following:

“This was probably around 2018/2019, not sure of the exact date. I was walking home from my local train station, having spent the evening at a vegan outreach event (I specifically remember that it was a Cube of Truth in Covent Garden, which has been an incredibly successful event). As I was walking towards the alleyway down the side of the station, I heard the words “f*cking vegan c*nt” shouted from a few metres away, followed by a sharp blow to the head. Once I’d gathered my bearings I realised that I’d had a metal water bottle thrown at me by whoever shouted it. It was too dark and I was too disoriented to see the face of the person responsible, however as I wasn’t wearing any vegan clothing, I assumed it must have been someone who had seen me at a local activism event in the past. Thankfully I was okay, but had it hit a different part of my head it could have been very different.

Another incident that comes to mind is what happened outside a slaughterhouse called Berendens Farm (formerly Romford Halal Meats) in 2017-2019. Myself and a few others were standing on the side of a lane outside the slaughterhouse gates, before a van then drove past and we had a liquid thrown in our faces, which at first I thought was water, until it started to sting my eyes horribly. It turned out the van had belonged to a cleaning company, and it had been some kind of cleaning fluid. Thankfully I had enough water in a bottle to wash it off of all of our faces. One of my fellow activists caught the name of the company, and sent them an email to complain about this, but we never heard anything back.

I didn’t report either incident to the police. For the water bottle incident, there are no security cameras in that alleyway so I thought it would have ultimately been useless. For the incident outside the slaughterhouse, the police were there and saw the whole thing, and didn’t bother to do anything about it.”

There have been some cases of crimes against vegans that led to convictions. I know one which made it to the press. In July 2019, two men who ate dead squirrels outside a vegan food stall in protest against veganism were convicted of public order offences and fined. Deonisy Khlebnikov and Gatis Lagzdins bit into the animals at the Soho Vegan Food Market in Rupert Street, London, on 30^th March. Natalie Clines, from the CPS, said to the BBC, “Deonisy Khlebnikov and Gatis Lagzdins claimed they were against veganism and were raising awareness about the dangers of not eating meat when they publicly consumed raw squirrels. By choosing to do this outside a vegan food stall and continuing with their disgusting and unnecessary behaviour despite requests to stop, including from a parent whose child was upset by their actions, the prosecution was able to demonstrate that they had planned and intended to cause distress to the public. Their pre-meditated actions caused significant distress to members of the public, including young children.” These were not the same people I witnessed eating raw meat, but they might have been inspired by these offenders who posted many videos about their persecution of vegans.

As I mentioned in my introduction, we know that the Times reported that at least 172 crimes against vegans took place in the UK from 2015 to 2020, one-third of which occurred in 2020 alone. Are these enough for politicians to begin to consider whether they should add crimes against vegans to the hate crime list? Perhaps not, but if the trend continued upward, they might look into this. However, perhaps my legal case, and all the publicity it brought, had the effect of reducing the number of crimes against vegans, when veganphobes learnt that they had to be more careful from then on. I wanted to see if I could quantify if there has been a change in the number of veganphobes and veganphobic incidents since 2020.

Is Veganphobia Increasing?

If veganphobia has become a social problem this would be because the number of veganphobes and veganphobic incidents reported has increased enough to become a concern of sociologists, policymakers, and law enforcement. Therefore, it would be good to quantify this phenomenon and try to identify any upward trend.

First, I could ask the vegan societies I contacted the question of whether veganphobia is increasing in their countries. Felix from the Vegan Society of Austria replied:

“I have been vegan for about 21 years and an activist in Austria for about 20 years. My feeling is that prejudice and ressentiments are getting less. Back then nobody knew what vegan meant, that you will die soon of deficiencies and that veganism is too fanatic. Nowadays it is quite normal in urban areas. Still, some people have prejudices and behave unfairly, but it is far more accepted I feel.”

The Vegan Society of Aotearoa said:

“It’s becoming more vocal. I don’t know if it’s really increasing, but as someone who has been vegan for nearly a quarter of a century, I have seen a lot of changes. The abundance of vegan food now compared to even 5 years ago is a good thing and should be taken into consideration when weighing this up.”

The Vegan Society of Australia said:

“It is probably increasing in line with the greater public understanding of food production and the rise in plant-based diets.”

So, some vegans think that veganphobia may have increased, while others that it may have decreased. I need to find actual quantifiable data. There is one thing I could do. I could send a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) to all the UK police forces asking the same that the Times journalist asked in 2010 for the article that mentions the 172 hate crimes against vegans, and then check if that number has now increased or decreased. Easy, right?

Wrong. The first obstacle I encountered was that the journalist, Arthi Nachiappan, was no longer working for The Times, and she did not have the data of her article or even the wording of her FOI request. She told me, though, that if I searched the police disclosure logs in their FOI pages, I may find it, as many keep the records of previous FOI requests public. However, when I did that, I did not find it in any. Why was there no public record of those requests? I decided to send, on 5^th February 2024, an FOI to the Metropolitan Police (which deals with most of London), one of the forces that Arthi remembered contacting (the UK is divided into many police forces, roughly one for each county) with these questions:

1. The number of potential offences recorded where the word “vegan” was used to describe the victim, and/or one of the possible motivations for the crime was the victim being vegan, for the years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 (calendar years).

2. The results of any Freedom of Information request sent to your force from 2019 to the present day related to crimes against vegans in general, or specifically hate crimes against vegans.

I know I was over-ambitious with the first question, but I did not expect that I would be that much. I got this reply:

“The MPS is unable to identify within 18 hours, the answers to your question. The MPS use various systems to record criminal offences that have been reported within the MPS district (the area policed by the MPS). Principally, a system called the Crime Report Information System (CRIS). This system is an electronic management system that records criminal offences on crime reports, where actions related to a crime investigation can be documented. Both Police Officers and Police Staff are able to document actions on these reports. In responding to Freedom of Information requests the MPS often task MPS analysts to review and interpret the data acquired, this would be the same requirement necessary for records found on CRIS.

There is currently no coded field where reports can be narrowed down to the term ‘vegan’ within CRIS. The specific details of an incident would only be contained within the details of report, but this is not automatically recoverable and would require a manual search of each report. All crime records would need to be manually read and due to the vast amount of records that would need to be read it would far exceed 18 hours to collate this information.”

I then replied: “Would the time limit needed to reply to my request be within the acceptable limits if I amend my request to the following? The results of any Freedom of Information request sent to your force from 2020 to the present day related to crime against vegans in general, or specifically hate crime against vegans.”

That did not work, and I got this reply: “Unfortunately we are unable to collate this information because there is no flag for the term ‘vegan’ within CRIS that would allow for this information to be collated.”

In the end, after more communication, I did get some info from the Metropolitan Police, so I thought I would try the other police forces too, with this FOI I sent them in April 2024:

“In line with the legal recognition of ethical veganism as a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010 since January 2020, and in the context of veganphobia or hate against vegans, please provide the number of incidents logged in your force of hate crime where it is mentioned that the victims or complainants were vegan, for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.”

The responses varied considerably. Some forces just sent me the information, most of them saying that they could not find any incidents, and a small minority that had found some. Others replied the same that the Metropolitan Police did, stating that they could not respond as it would exceed the maximum number of hours they could invest in answering my request, but in these cases, I sent them the following amended FOI: “Please provide the number of incidents logged in your force of hate crime which contain the keywords ‘vegan’ or ‘vegans’ in the MO for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. With this amendment, you would not need to read any incident and you can only do an electronic search on one field.”, This led to some forces sending me the information (but accurately warning me that the incidents did not necessarily involve the victims being vegan, or that there were veganphobic incidents, only that the word vegan was mentioned), while others were still not responding.

In the end, in July 2024, more than three months after sending my FOIs, all 46 UK police forces had replied, and the total number of incidents where the term “vegan” was found in the Modus Operandi field of the forces’ electronic database from the years 2020 to 2023 (minus those which, based on the information provided, could be discounted because the mention of the term vegan not being related to the victim of the crime being vegan), was 26. Following are the positive responses I got which led to this number:

• Avon and Somerset Police have searched our crime recording database for crimes with a hate crime marker which contain the word ‘vegan’ or ‘vegans’ in the MO field for the timeframe requested. One occurrence has been identified in 2023. No occurrences identified for 2020, 2021, 2022.
• Cleveland Police. We have conducted a search of the keywords provided within any violence, public order, or harassment crimes and have only located one incident in which the victim mentions ‘vegan’. Another search was conducted under Hate crimes and this came back with Nil results. ‘Veganism’ is not a protected characteristic for hate crime.
• Cumbria Constabulary. Your request for information has now been considered and I can advise you that a keyword search of the Opening Remarks, Incident Description and Closure Summary fields of incident logs recorded on the Constabulary’s Incident Logging system has been undertaken, using the search term “vegan”. This search identified one incident log which I believe may be relevant to your request. The incident log was recorded in 2022, and relates to a report received by the Constabulary which related, in part, to views expressed by a third party, about vegans, although the incident log does not record if the caller was a vegan. No other information relevant to your request was identified by the keyword search.
• Devon and Cornwall Police. There are two hate crimes recorded where ‘vegan’ is mentioned. 1 is from 2021. 1 is from 2023.
• Gloucestershire Constabulary. Following receipt of your request, I can confirm that a search of the crime recording system has been conducted for all substantiated crimes recorded between 01/01/2020 – 31/12/2023. A filter has then been applied to identify records where a hate crime tag has been added and then a further filter has been applied to identify records of the hate crime strand of Alternative Subcultures this has resulted in 83 crimes reported. A manual review of the MOs has been conducted to identify any records where it is mentioned that the victim or complainant were Vegan. The results are as follows: 1. There has been 1 recorded crime where the victim has mentioned to be vegan.
• Humberside Police. Following liaison with the relevant department Humberside Police can confirm that we hold some information in relation to your request. Vegan is not one of the five types of hate crime recognised by law, and as such it is not flagged in our systems. However, a keyword search has been conducted of all crime MO’s for ‘vegan’. This returned three results: two in 2020 and one in 2021. Therefore, none of these are classed as a hate crime, but all three victims are vegans.
• Lincolnshire Police. Our response: 2020 – 1, 2022 – 1, 2023 – 1
• Metropolitan Police Service. 2021, Harassment , Bag of meat left outside ex-girlfriends’ residence who is a Vegan. It must be noted that only the primary offence recorded can be searched upon therefore any results cannot be considered exhaustive. Alongside this keyword searches are entirely dependent upon the data quality of information entered into the free text field and spelling used. Therefore, this also cannot be considered an exhaustive list. Finally, a person’s philosophical belief is not mandatorily recorded unless relevant to a specific crime.
• South Yorkshire Police. Veganphobia or hate against vegans is not one of the 5 hate strands nor an independent offence that we record. I did a search looking for the term “vegan” through all recorded. We do not record dietary needs as standard, therefore, to see if a victim is/was vegan or not, would require manual review of all crimes & cause a S.12 exemption. Q1 In total there are 5 crimes that were returned: Of the 5, I manually reviewed the MO summaries and found the following: 2 – Involve the mention of the victim being vegan, 2 – Involve the theft of a vegan breakfast sandwich from a shop, 1 – Regarding a protest.
• Sussex Police. Searching for all recorded crime between 1st January 2020 and 31st December 2023, containing one of the following Hate Flags; Disability, Transgender, Racial, Religion / beliefs or Sexual orientation, and which contains the term ‘Vegan’ or ‘Vegans’ in the occurrence summary or MO fields, has returned one result.
• Thames Valley Police. A keyword search is limited only to searchable fields within our crime recording system and so are unlikely to give a true reflection of data held. A search of all occurrences with a hate crime flag selected returned no data for the given keywords. A search of all occurrences for the keywords returned 2 occurrences. These were checked to ensure the context was that the victim was vegan.
• Wiltshire police. Between reported years 2020 – 2023, there was 1 hate crime incident logged in 2022 which contained the word ‘vegan’ or ‘vegans’ in the occurrence summary.
• Police Scotland. This system does not have the facility whereby a keyword search of reports can be carried out and unfortunately therefore, I estimate that it would cost well in excess of the current FOI cost threshold of £600 to process your request. I am therefore refusing to provide the information sought in terms of section 12(1) – Excessive Cost of Compliance. To be of assistance, I have carried out a search of the Police Scotland Storm Unity Command and Control system for any incidents of relevance. This system records all incidents reported to the police, some of which may go on to result in the creation of a report on iVPD. Between January 2020 and December 2023 inclusive, 4 incidents which have an initial or final classification code of ‘Hate Crime’ include the word ‘Vegan’ in the incident description.
• North Wales Police. There is a tag on our crime recording system – ‘Religious or Belief Anti Other’ which is where occurrences of this type would be recorded. We have checked data for the years using this tag and there are no cases linked to veganism as a protected philosophical belief. The below information has been returned by carrying out the Keyword search “Vegan” within occurrence summary of all Notifiable Offences 2020-2024: “Calendar Year NICL Qualifier Hate crime Summary 2020; Prejudice – Racial; Racial; Offenders have targeted family in the home, which was motivated by the house occupants nationality, veganism and opposition to the Falklands war. 2021 Unknown male has entered the store and filled a bag with 2 trays of coke, 2 fruit shoots and some vegan items – £40, the male made no attempt to pay for the items before leaving the store 2022; Domestic abuse; Mental health; DOMESTIC – IP REPORTS HIS SON HAS RETURNED FRO UNIVERSITY AND HAS STARTED TO BECOME VERBALLY ABUSIVE TOWARDS FAMILY MEMBERS FOR EATING MEAT AS HE IS NOW A VEGAN. OFFENDER HAS LOCKED I.P. IN BEDROOM AND SHOUTED AT HER. 2023 IP reporting that the Vegan Student Group have placed promotional stickers on his car that have marked the paintwork after being removed.”
• South Wales Police. A search has been conducted on our crime and incident reporting system (NICHE RMS) for all crime occurrences containing one of the following keywords, *vegan* or *vegans*, recorded with a hate ‘qualifier’ and reported throughout the specified time period. This search has retrieved three occurrences.”

Considering the lack of details in many of the responses, it is quite possible that not all the 26 incidents mentioned are cases of veganphobic hate crime. However, it is also possible that incidents of veganphobic hate crime were not recorded as such, or the word “vegan” was not used in the summary, even if it may have been in the records. It is obvious that for not being a crime that the police can officially record as a hate crime, assessing the number of vegan hate crime incidents with the police database is not an accurate method. However, this is the method The Times used in 2020 to get the 172 number from 2015 to 2020 (5 years), compared with the 26 number I got for 2020 to 2023 (3 years). If we assume that in the last five years, no significant change occurred in both the incidents and their recording, the extrapolation for the 2019-2023 period would be 42 incidents.

Comparing the two FOI requests, the number of incidents from 2015-2010 could be more than four times the number of incidents from 2019-2023 (or even more considering The Times did not manage to get replies from all forces). This could mean three things: The Times overestimated the number (as I cannot check its data and there does not appear to be a public record in the police forces about those requests), I underestimated the number (either because the police changed how they recorded the incidents or they made less of an effort to find them), or indeed the number of incidents have gone down, perhaps as a consequence of a positive effect of my legal victory.

With the current information I could find, I cannot tell which of these three explanations is right (and several or all of them could be). But I do know this. The number I found is not higher than the number The Times found, so the hypothesis that the number of incidents of veganphobia has increased since 2020 is the one with less data to support.

Do the Authorities Take Veganphobia Seriously?

By dealing with the police with my FOI I often got the feeling that they did not take seriously the fact that veganphobia not only is a real thing but could constitute a social problem. I wonder how the police reacted to my legal victory, and even whether they found out about it (considering that the Equality Act 2010 is not a law they have to enforce).  There is one last thing I could do to find out more about this.

In the UK, the priorities of policing are set by Police and Crime Commissioners (PPCs), who are democratically elected officials who oversee each police force and kind of set where resources should be invested in combating which crimes. I wondered if when the news of my legal case happened, any of the PPCs communicated with the forces they oversee and discussed whether my case should have any effect in policing, whether they should add crimes against vegans as hate crimes in their records, or even whether they should begin adding references to the vegan identity in their reports. So, I sent the following FoI request to all the PPCs:

“In line with the legal recognition of ethical veganism as a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010 since January 2020, any written communication from 2020 to 2023 inclusively between the Police and Crime Commissioner office and the police, regarding veganphobia or hate crime against vegans.”

All 40 PPCs replied saying that they had no communication with the police discussing crimes against vegans or even using the term “vegan”. It seems that either they did not find out about my legal case, or they did not care enough. In any event, no PPC was worried about crimes against vegans to discuss the issue with the police —which would not be surprising if none of them are vegan, as I assume is the case.

The chances are that crimes against vegans are hugely underreported (as the testimonials we have shown suggest), if they are reported are hugely under-recorded (as the responses from police forces to my FOI requests suggest), and if they are recorded, they are not treated as a priority (as the responses from PCCs to my FOI requests suggest). It does feel that vegans, despite having increased in numbers and now having reached higher numbers in the UK than other minority groups (such as Jewish people), and despite having been officially recognised to follow a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, may have been neglected by the authorities as potential victims of prejudice, discrimination, and hate, who need the same level of protection as the victims of transphobia, islamophobia, or anti-semitism.

We also have the problem of the wild internet, which is not only fuelling veganphobia via social media posts but also by spreading anti-vegan propaganda and by platforming veganphobic influencers. On 23^rd July 2024, the BBC published an article titled “Influencers driving extreme misogyny, say police”, which could have been extended to other forms of prejudice. In the article, Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth said, “We know that some of this is also linked to radicalisation of young people online, we know the influencers, Andrew Tate, the element of influencing of particularly boys, is quite terrifying and that’s something that both the leads for counterterrorism in the country and ourselves from a VAWG [violence against women and girls] perspective are discussing.” Like the convicted veganphobe Deonisy Khlebnikov mentioned earlier, there are Andrew Tate types out there spreading hate against vegans that the police should also pay attention to. We even have members of mainstream media showing themselves as classical veganphobes (such as the infamous anti-vegan TV presenter Piers Morgan).

It’s not that the news of people hating vegans would be a surprise to the authorities. This phenomenon is often discussed in mainstream media (even in comedy), although watered down as somehow less serious than actual veganphobia. The slur “soy boy” is now casually cast against male vegans by misogynist macho carnist men, and accusations of vegans pushing veganism down people’s throats are now cliché. For instance, on 25^th October 2019, the Guardian published a very informative article titled Why Do People Hate Vegans? In it, we read the following:

“The war on vegans started small. There were flashpoints, some outrageous enough to receive press coverage. There was the episode in which William Sitwell, then editor of Waitrose magazine, resigned after a freelance writer leaked an email exchange in which he joked about “killing vegans one by one”. (Sitwell has since apologised.) There was the PR nightmare faced by Natwest Bank when a customer calling to apply for a loan was told by an employee that “all vegans should be punched in the face”. When animal rights protesters stormed into a Brighton Pizza Express in September this year, one diner did exactly that.

A charge commonly laid against vegans is that they relish their status as victims, but research suggests they have earned it. In 2015, a study conducted by Cara C MacInnis and Gordon Hodson and published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations observed that vegetarians and vegans in Western society — and vegans in particular — experience discrimination and bias on a par with other minorities.”

Perhaps the veganphobic wave peaked in 2019 (parallel to the veganphilia wave the UK experienced then), and after ethical veganism became a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act, the most extreme veganphobes went underground. The problem may be that they may still be out there waiting to surface.

Veganphobic Hate Speech

The authorities may not care much about veganphobia, but we vegans do. Any vegan who has posted any post about veganism on social media knows how quickly they attract veganphobic comments. I certainly post a lot about veganism, and I get many veganphobic trolls writing nasty comments on my posts.

A vegan on Facebook started to collect some. She posted,“ I’m gonna create a post, and at some time in the future when I have gathered enough screenshots of death threats or violent bullying towards vegans, a friend and I are going to write a letter to the Vegan Society, to see if they can do anything about the prejudice and verbal violence we deal with as vegans. Save this post, so you can just find it again easily, and please post anything you feel is relevant in the comment section, however many times you need to.” On 22 July 2024, there were 394 comments on that post, with many screenshots of veganphobic comments people found on their social media. Most are too graphic and explicit to post here, but here are some examples of the milder ones:

• “I would like to enslave vegans”
• “All vegans are dirty evil people”
• “I never met a vegan I wouldn’t want to urinate all over. Why can’t we use them for medical experiments?”
• “Seems like an inordinate number of vegans are effeminate sodomites. I guess they like calling unnatural things natural”
• “Vegans should be sent to the g@s chambers”
• “Vegans are disgusting subhuman hypocrites at best”

I do not doubt that most of the comments collected on that post are forms of hate speech of a veganphobic nature, many of which may come from veganphobes, or at the very least people who don’t think there is anything wrong by making veganphobic remarks. I know that people can make veganphobic comments on social media because they are just young trolls looking for arguments or are generally unpleasant people, but I honestly think that many may well be full-blown veganphobes because it does not take that much to make violent bigots from toxic ignorant thugs.

Regardless of whether the incidents of crimes against vegans are increasing or decreasing, the fact that crimes against vegans are still being reported (and some have led to convictions) shows that veganphobia is real. In addition, widespread hate speech against vegans in social media is also proof that veganphobia does exist, even if it has not reached the worst possible level in many people, yet.

The acceptance of the existence of veganphobia should lead to the recognition that veganphobes exist, but that is something more difficult for people (including politicians and policymakers) to digest — so they would rather look the other way. But here is the thing: it’s much worse if we underestimate veganphobia than if we overestimate it because remember, the discrimination, harassment, and crimes that may come from it have real victims — who do not deserve to become targets just because they try not to harm anyone from any species.

Veganphobia is real. Veganphobes are out there, in the open or the shadows, and this is something we should take seriously. If the recognition of ethical veganism as a protected philosophical belief has reduced the incidence of veganphobia, that would certainly be a good thing, but it has not eliminated it. Veganphobic incidents are continuing to upset many vegans, and I imagine the situation is much worse in countries where the percentage of vegans is very small. Veganphobia carries a toxic potential which is a threat to everyone.

We all should stand against veganphobia.