Thursday Thoughts: The Antler and the Vegans

Eat meat or don't, who cares?

So by now, I’m sure many of you have heard of the clash between a small restaurant in Toronto, Ontario and a group of protestors. Essentially: a group of vegan activists started protesting outside the Antler Kitchen & Bar with the usual vegan talking points (“meat is murder”, “animals have feelings” etc.) and once the protests became disruptive to his business, restaurant owner Michael Hunter responded in kind by doing some of his prep work near the front window for the protestors to see, including butchering a deer leg.

Hunter appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast last month (clip below) and after finally sitting down and listening to him explain the situation and how it all started, I’m even more surprised that this story made national news at all.

Joe Rogan sitting down with The Antler Kitchen & Bar owner Michael Hunter

It all began with a chalkboard sign. The kind of sign restaurants have out front listing their menu, specials and maybe a playful message or joke. The Antler’s sign displayed five simple words that day: Venison is the New Kale. That’s it. That’s all it took for a nearby vegan to be bothered enough to begin a protest. I'm still kind of in awe that this is all it took to offend someone nowadays.

By all accounts, the protests began simply and peacefully enough, with a few people holding signs and trying to make their points known. But as it often happens, things got heated. As Hunter describes, more and more people began to protest and they became more aggressive with their tactics over time: heckling his customers and yelling things like “murderer” as they dined. So if you’re hearing that kind of thing at work as you’re trying to run your business and seeing your customers recoil in fear and confusion, can you really blame the man for responding the way he did?

I absolutely believe the vegans have the right to protest, I need to make that clear. I truly believe free speech is a fundamental right every human being should have. But as far as I’m concerned, they went too far in actively disrupting a small business from functioning by bullying customers and making outlandish demands, such as forcing the owners to post their slogans on the restaurant’s windows or they won’t stop protesting. As a business owner myself, I can’t help but empathize with the man’s position and honestly, his reaction was not only perfect but cathartic to read about. He didn’t give into their bullying or whining and he “got back at them” by simply doing his job.

I really don’t understand what these protesters are hoping to accomplish. If their problem was factory farming and the abuse of animals, why not protest big fast-food franchises like McDonald's that rely upon it? The Antler Kitchen prides itself on ethical, locally-sourced meat from animals that aren’t abused or mass-farmed in detrimental ways. But it appears many of these people truly believe that eating meat is inherently evil. If that’s your stance, that's your stance. But you are not going to convince someone to change their mind or make them see your point of view by yelling in their face about being a “murderer” for enjoying a steak or a burger. It’s just not going to happen and it comes off as childish.

Not to mention, I don’t think these protesters have ever heard of the Streisand Effect: the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove or censor something has the unintended consequence of publicizing it more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. I had never heard of this restaurant before, but after hearing this story, I’m making a point to stop there for dinner the next time I’m in Toronto and shake the man’s hand.

This or this, or both! Why not?

In conclusion, be a vegan, eat nothing but meat or find a balance between the two. Do whatever makes you happy and works right for your body and for your health. Just be respectful of other people’s choices in life and if you're going to protest something, be civil about it. What are your thoughts on the matter? Let me know in the comments below!

More to come
O.N.