The California-based husband and wife founders of celebrity-endorsed vegan restaurant group Cafe Gratitude say they have received death threats after it was revealed last week that they are raising, slaughtering and eating animals on their farm north of San Francisco.
Matthew and Terces Engelhart, both in their sixties, who opened the first Cafe Gratitude in 2004 and whose celebrity followers have included Gwyneth Paltrow, Beyonc and Sacha Baron Cohen, countered the firestorm of criticism with a defense of the "regenerative agriculture" methods they now use on their Be Love Farm in Vacaville, calling it a personal choice made in the privacy of their home.
"We started to observe nature and what we saw is that nature doesn't exist without animals," Matthew Engelhart told the Hollywood Reporter last week after animal rights activists dug up and circulated blog entries from spring 2015 from the farm's website, including photos of a freezer full of pastured beef, jars of gravy and Matthew enjoying a hamburger, with posts on their "transition" into meat products after nearly 40 years of vegetarianism.
"People have taken up the mob mentality," he opined, after protesters gathered outside their restaurants holding signs such as "no animal is grateful to die", started a Facebook boycott page and frantically posted one-star Yelp reviews.
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Cows make an extreme sacrifice for humanity but that is their position in God's plan as food for the predators," Matthew Engelhart added in a statement about their decision. "We can be part of that sacrament."
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-meat-eating-owners-cafe-gratitude-california
