VEGAN RESTAURANT OWNERS UNDER FIRE AFTER ADMITTING THEY EAT MEAT

The owners of Cafe Gratitude, the most prominent vegan restaurant chain in Los Angeles, were found to be raising and “harvesting” animals at their Northern California farm. Now Hollywood’s vegan community is angry, and death threats have been made. Matthew and Terces Engelhart own the restaurant chain. The trouble began last week when animal rights activists discovered and then widely circulated a 14-month-old blog post on the Engelharts’ Be Love Farm website, which mixed an announcement of their transition back into a meat diet again after nearly 40 years of vegetarianism with posted pictures of strained beef broth and a freezer full of pastured milk from their own dairy cows. Matthew Englehart said they have kept chickens on the farm for seven years “for eggs only,” along with the cows for five years for milk, cheese and butter that’s for sale. He claims they’ve “harvested,” or slaughtered, several cows in total and never sold the meat, only shared it with “our friends, neighbors and community.” The Engelharts frame their return to “sustainable, regenerative” animal consumption as the mindful culmination of years spent laboring on their farm. “We started to observe nature, and what we saw is that nature doesn’t exist without animals,” says Matthew. “Neither does natural farming. You know, you can’t buy organic vegetables that aren’t fertilized with animal residue. So that was our discovery. We aren’t on a soap box.” (* They also discovered they were sick of eating just vegetables!) Carrie Christianson, who started a Facebook boycott against the Engleharts, says, “The reason we’re so upset is that veganism is a belief system. You are patronizing a restaurant that you think has that philosophy, and it turns out it doesn’t. Vegans should know that this restaurant has a farm that slaughters animals.”
* So their vegan claims were a lot of bull!
* They’re getting death threats? So much for the peaceful vegan lifestyle.
* How tolerant. The vegans are saying, “Stop killing animals or we’ll kill you.”
* “Prepare to meat your maker.”
* This could be the perfect time to point out that if you just ate a vegan diet with no supplements, you’d die.
* I was on the owners’ side till I heard about their “Be Love Farm”. My, aren’t we precious?
* Let’s just say I’m not feeling the bliss with that name.
* “Cafe Gratitude,” as in, they’re grateful they were able to pull off this scam for so long.