Those delicious looking photos of vegan dishes on Veg News? Turns out their not vegan.
Below, no bones in their "meatless" spare ribs:
The original spare ribs photo revealing bones, as found on istockphoto.com:
QuarryGirl.com was alerted by a Veg News reader that the recipe photos inside the popular vegan magazine are, in fact, of animal products. After reviewing tens of images of supposedly "meatless" burgers and “veganized” barbecue ribs, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese, one longtime reader discovered a startling similarity to photos he'd seen on the stock photography website, istockphoto.com. The images were identical and startling. Beef burger posing as beefless, cheese pretending to be dairy free.
To further investigate, the reader left a comment on Veg News' burger recipe, alerting them to what he thought to be an error in photo usage. His comment was removed almost immediately and after re-submitting his original comment a few times more, the reader received an email from Veg News:
“Thank you for your interest in VegNews. However, your inappropriate and mean-spirited commenting has violated the policy of VegNews, and we have and will continue to remove any future comments. Please know that we welcome constructive criticism from all viewpoints, and rarely unpublish comments from readers.
Should you have any constructive feedback, feel free to email me directly. I’d love to hear from you.”
Further commenting on the usage of animal product photos from istockphoto have similarly vanished from the Veg News site."
Other attempts to comment on Veg News regarding the misuse of photos have also been promptly removed by website editors.
The question that arises, then, is one of morality and editorial ethics. Is a company that strongly opposes the consumption and often widespread mistreatment of animals maintaining any integrity by featuring photos of animal meat and by-products?
What do you think?
Photos from QuarryGirl.com
Read more about the discovery and see additional photo examples at QuarryGirl.com
