It was perhaps only a matter of time in ultra-progressive California, but a luxury butcher’s shop is surprising patrons with a sign warning about the cruelty of eating meat.
“Attention: Animals’ lives are their right. Killing them is violent and unjust, no matter how it’s done,” reads the notice greeting patrons of The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley.
The business stuck the sign in its window as part of a “peace treaty” with animal rights activists in the left-leaning university town who have been picketing the store for the past four months.
Photo: AFP
Every Sunday as it opened for butchery lessons, it was besieged by demonstrators from rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DXE) — sometimes naked, dripping with fake blood and wrapped in cellophane.
Monica Rocchino, co-owner of The Local Butcher Shop with her husband, Aaron, was at her wits’ end and decided to meet with the protesters.
“They said they wanted Berkeley to become a meat-free city and they were ready to shut down our business,” Monica said. “We asked for actions we could do, and they said they’d think about it, but they kept protesting for 10 weeks. They made our neighbors mad, our neighborhood businesses were losing customers.”
Finally, DXE laid down its conditions for burying the hatchet.
“Either we had to become a vegan butchery or we had to stop giving these classes, or put up a sign saying that animals have rights,” Monica told reporters.
She says the sign has not impacted custom.
“We go to great lengths to make sure our meat is from local ranches, is raised as humanely as possible, free of antibiotics. We want ... this to be the ideal meat. Our customers know this and support us,” Monica said.
However, she acknowledges that the sign will not placate DXE, for whom the issue is black-and-white.
“For them, you kill animals or you don’t. I understand that belief, but it’s another thing to force your ideas on other people,” Monica said.
Berkeley, the cradle of the US universities’ free speech movement, has been the scene of regular demonstrations from the days of the anti-Vietnam War campaign to recent protests against visiting right-wing speakers.
Recently it has been criticized for chilling free speech after canceling an appearances by firebrand pundit Ann Coulter and right-wing provocateur and former Brietbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.
Berkeley also happens to be the epicenter of the US’ organic food industry, its reputation for being “green” sent up in the TV series Portlandia, in which restaurateurs provide photographic evidence that their meat is from ethically raised animals.
DXE organizer Matt Johnson said one of the group’s activists felt his blood chill as he saw “an advertisement for these courses where people are taught how to properly dismember the body of an animal.”
In line with the better-known Peta animal welfare association, DXE directs its protests “everywhere where violence against animals is normalized — rodeo, circuses, restaurants, the butchers,” he said.
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