Vegans are again protesting an Asheville-area whole-animal butchery class, attended by backyard farmers, professional chefs and amateur cooks.
Natalie Bogwalker, the woman behind the sustainable skills school at the heart of the debate, said she’s receiving emails and phone calls threatening her with physical harm, and even death.
“(There are) a lot of people hoping we die a painful death, wishing people would slit our throats, and saying that we’re sick and demented,” said Bogwalker, director of Wild Abundance. “I try to keep a good attitude about it, but it’s pretty challenging.”
Wild Abundance is a Barnardsville school teaching skills including carpentry, basket weaving, wild-food cookery and soap-making. In early November, the school plans to host a weekend class, Cycles of Life, that teaches students how to slaughter a 100-pound sheep and then use the entirety of the animal.
A release from the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which circulates statements from often-anonymous animal rights groups, earlier this month expressed outrage over the class.
“Innocent sheep will be coldly and cruelly murdered November 4th by two women who apparently are unfamiliar with the term oxymoron,” the unsigned release said.
The statement asserted that the idea of “humane slaughter” is a contradiction in terms, and positioned animal rights activists as coming from a place of compassion.
The release also urged other activists to “register disgust and outrage with the perpetrators of this senseless, needless and bloody violence,” publishing contact information for Bogwalker and others involved with the class.
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