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  • Kelly O / The Stranger

Vegan blogger quarrygirl noticed something smelled funny in vegan magazine VegNews—they've been using photoshopped stock photos of meat.

Hell hath no fury like a vegan who's been fooled into looking at meat, so there's been an uproar on the internet, and VegNews posted a response—short version, it's expensive to run a magazine, but we've won awards!, and "we have resorted to using stock photography that may or may not be vegan." VegNews did not apologize, though "The entire VegNews family is deeply saddened with the dialogue that has transpired over the last 12 hours." Nor has the vegan magazine said it will stop publishing photos of meat, saying only, "we hope to be there soon."

Reached by phone in San Francisco, VegNews publisher Joseph Connelly said, "On occasion, we've used some stock photos that may or may not have been—it's a photo of a homemade burger, we don't question what it is." And a stock photo of a burger could be of a veggie burger—highly unlikely, but possible. But according to the screen-grab examples on quarrygirl's post, they've used stock photos labeled "chicken breast soup" to go with their vegan "Soul-Satisfying Stew."

"It is not our policy to use meat," Connelly said. "We just do the best we can." He described VegNews's awards, and said, "We do phenomenal work." Indeed, it is a phenomenon.

Connelly's version of an apology: "I'm sorry that our readers are upset about this, obviously."