“Vegan. Eat. Think. Thrive.” -VegNews motto

To many vegan bloggers, VegNews stepped away from their motto when they used countless pictures of meat that were photo-shopped to look like vegan food, like seitan, in print and online photographs.

Discovery

Who began to question the ribs photo in the edition of VegNews this month? A blogger, who else?

“It’s sad, then, that the pictures we’ve been drooling over for years are actually of MEAT! Veg News has written tens (possibly hundreds) of articles extolling the virtues of a vegan lifestyle, while purchasing rock-bottom priced stock photos of MEAT, EGGS, DAIRY and other completely non-vegan things,” according to quarrygirl.com.”

Quarrygirl said most of the pictures of “vegan hot dogs,” “meatball hamburgers,” and “chicken stew” looked exactly like photos of the same dish, but with meat, on istockphoto.com.

Through the eyes of VegNews

On April 14, 2011, VegNews released a letter to faithful VegNews readers asking forgiveness, but bringing up some touchy issues.  Instead of apologizing and reaching out to those readers who are offended by VegNews’ ethics, they basically informed readers that they are they saddened by the dialogue instigated by the scandal and tried to improve their image by listing their accomplishments.  Finally, they said, sorry we’re broke, we can’t afford to take vegan pictures.

Really.  So, they can’t afford ethics either?

“In those rare times that we use an image that isn’t vegan, our entire (vegan) staff weighs in on whether or not it’s appropriate. It is industry standard to use stock photography in magazines—and, sadly, there are very few specifically vegan images offered by stock companies,” stated VegNews in their letter.

Not only do they specify that they are just like every other industry, but they overlooked the fact that pictures of vegan ribs are everywhere online.

See vegan ribs pictures in the next post.