Dead animals are not art
Lie down with roadkill, wake up with fleas.
It will be interesting to see how The Vegan Society responds to this situation.
BrewDog is expanding rapidly and part of that expansion involves raising equity in the USA. Long story short, the company’s equity scheme likes to reward investors with rewards such as discounts at their bars and so on. They had also promised a very special money-can’t-buy gift for their top investors in the USA.
Fast forward to today and the company posted details of the special reward on social media platforms as well as its website.
I’m going to leave a bit of space before I post the photo as a buffer zone for anyone who would like to check out now before they are faced with a dead animal.
Do not scroll down if you don’t want to see dead animals.
f
u
c
k
i
n
g
d
i
s
g
r
a
c
e
f
u
l
Yep. The special reward for top investors is a limited beer housed inside an animal corpse.
The company explains on its website that roadkill has been used. Listen, I’m not here to debate if this is ethical or even in good taste. I know some people think animals should not be glorified as decorations or trophies and I also know some people are fucking horrendous pieces of shit who can fuck off.
You know which side of the line you fall.
Now, the real reason for this blog post is to ask The Vegan Society to rapidly and loudly remove themselves from any association with BrewDog.
The beer company recently started using the trademark of The Vegan Society on all of its vegan-suitable bottles.
Surely The Vegan Society is not interested in taking money from, or promoting, a company that uses the bodies of dead animals as a marketing gimmick?
I think we are all looking for swift action here.
Also, that’s me done being one of the most vocal supporters of BrewDog. I’m out.
You can see the original tweet here.
You can read about the special gift online.
This is beyond absurd and it is neither clever nor funny. It makes me wonder whose idiotic idea this was, and also how it was, that in all the time from the conception of the idea to the actual implementation of the idea, that no-one said, “maybe this is not a good idea.”
I’m through with brew dog too.
Did you miss them dropping taxidermied cats out of a helicopter over London when ‘crowd funding’ in the UK?
The bottles above were first released in the UK in 2010 and could be bought for £500.
Their beer is fine but their marketing is vile, the shares are a scam and they have no respect for anyone – human or other animal alike.
I’m not impressed with this gimmick, and it certainly puts me off going there, but I don’t think expecting them to lose trademark status is logical.
The Vegan Trademark standards are about products, not companies. You can have the vegan trademark on one product, and sell dead animals, as long as you have hygiene standards keeping the twain apart.
And until it becomes possible and practicable for vegans to only patronise vegan businesses, that’s what we need to help us find tasty vegan products.
In fact, BrewDog already did that – they served meat in their bars. And that adds to the demand for animal farming – it actively causes animal suffering, in a way that this gimmick does not. This gimmick is in-your-face disgust-eliciting, and it harms animals through reinforcing their commodification, but the actual harm it causes animals doesn’t come close to their kitchens serving meat.
My question for you, Sean, is what other companies do you think the Vegan Society should “rapidly and loudly remove themselves from any association” with?
More to the point, what’s the objective rule that you think should be added to the trademark standards about corporate behaviour that would still allow the vegan mark to be a useful guide to vegan products from non-vegan businesses?
Maybe the cut off can be any company flippantly using corpses as props during marketing campaigns? But that is totally up to them where they draw the line with selling the use of their trademark. I can only illogically complain about my irrational disgust whenever I feel compelled.
That would also exclude company that served meat during PR events, effectively excluding almost all vegan products made by non-veg brands.
Roadkill my a**e – those poor animals haven’t been hit by a car/truck. Utterly disgusting and I’m shocked to hear they’ve been producing them since 2010.
There;s actually a form to report Vegan Society Trademark misuse: https://www.vegansociety.com/take-action/reporting-vegan-trademark-misuse.
I wouldn’t consider this product as adhering to Vegan Trademark Standards (https://www.vegansociety.com/your-business/vegan-trademark-standards) as the bottle contains Animal Ingredients & the Kitchen & Hygiene Standards have clearly been breached.
Plus it’s just a horrific item to produce & brings the good name of the Vegan Society into disrepute if they support a company that thinks this is in any form acceptable!
Oh no! I’ve been buying & enjoying brewdog beers thinking it was all good since turning vegan. I wouldn’t be comfortable drinking their beers now. So disrespectful to use these beautiful animals remains like that.
Doubt The Vegan Society will do anything. As long as the products are vegan they’re happy to take the cash, as they proved recently when responding to concerns about Alpro promoting animal products as part of a healthy diet.
I’m not sure how I feel about it to be honest… I agree that it’s deeply offensive, unnecessary and gratuitous purely for the sake of marketing. Not to mention disrespectful to the animal, regardless whether it was roadkill or not.
However, they brew a milk stout and no one has complained about that previously? We all know how cruel the dairy industry is. Plus there’s a beer with honey in too. Ian’s comment about them serving meat in their bars rings true as well.
What about Alpro? They have the same accreditation by the Vegan Society, but are now owned by Danone a huge French dairy company.
The problem is they add their accreditation to products, not companies. I know they take a stance if the logo is used in marketing that endorses meat or animal products.
It’ll be interesting to see what the response is, from both BrewDog and The Vegan Society.
It’s all a bit of a mess by BrewDog and typical of their controversial and gung-ho marketing. I do hope some resolution can be achieved though as their beers are wonderful (when not served from dead animals!) and they did make the effort to get much of their range accredited when so many other breweries are afraid to associate themselves with the word vegan. Perhaps for fear of mistakes such as these…
I think it would diminish the power/credibility of The Vegan Society endorsement if they were to ignore this. This isn’t the same as a non-vegan company making both vegan and non-vegan products. This is a company using dead animals as props in a marketing campaign. Not sure if anything could be more at odds with the end goal of the society or veganism.
https://www.change.org/p/the-vegan-society-remove-the-vegan-society-trademark-from-brewdog-s-products
Signed. I was unhappy with the pat responses I received from both BrewDog & the Vegan Society. Comment I placed on the petition:
“As a long-standing member of the Vegan Society, I was upset & dismayed to see that BrewDog produce ‘novelty bottle holder’ items incorporating animal corpses with their beers placed inside. Being against cruelty and exploitation of animals, I find these offensive & insensitive to the vegan community to whom they are seeking to sell products. Having written directly to the company, their response was it is ‘a “marketing scam” to get the attention of the public’ and that ‘we are in contact with the Vegan Society on almost a daily basis and they are aware of this bottle’.
“This is not merely a company who are also producing goods that use animal by-products, which I can understand the Vegan Society would be keen to encourage, as they wish firms to seek the vegan trademark & make products that are vegan-friendly. But one employing unpleasant & disgusting shock tactics to gain publicity, using animals in an insensitive manner completely at odds with vegan principles.
“Any company glib enough to think the use of taxidermy is a good ‘gimmick’ & isn’t concerned about the offence it is causing to a significant part of their customers is unsuitable for being permitted to retain the trademark, which is synonymous with an authentic vegan standard built on the good reputation of the Vegan Society, who treat all living creatures with kindness and dignity.
“Moreover, the Vegan Society has a moral duty to listen to its members – in an exceptional case like this where members object to the company holding the vegan trademark for having a legitimate anti-vegan stance, the matter should be discussed and trademark removed. The ethics of promoting a cruelty-free lifestyle has to come above profits.”
I’m a bit late in seeing this promotional campaign by brewdog and I’m lost for words that someone even thought this was clever, it’s crossed a line for me. Just don’t buy their products. There’s plenty of choice out there. It’s not the 80’s when vegan options were limited. They should loose the vegan trademark as it’s something my non-veggie friends and my mum look for on products when I’m going round there’s for dinner.