The owner of a butcher shop in Rosemont says he's been threatened and bullied online by anti-meat activists.
Marc Bourg, the owner of Le Marchand du Bourg on Beaubien St., says after seven years in business, he's been getting waves of graphic photos from dead animals from self-identified vegan activists, and messages calling him a murderer and a Nazi.
Other, milder posts were of photos of fruit baskets and of the film Earthlings — a documentary film about humanity's use and abuse of animals which vegans often urge non-vegans to watch.
There were also several online reviews which claimed the shop was filthy, and sold meat with worms and even glass shards in it.
That, Bourg says, was most disturbing of all — he feels the activists are going too far by tarnishing his and his shop's reputation.
"There's a message that those people, they don't eat meat, they want to protect the world, the want to protect animals, that's okay. I respect," he says. "But to come on my place and burn my name, that's another point. You're not allowed to do that. I respect you, you're supposed to respect the people."
Several lawyers have come forward to figure out whether some of the posts constitute defamation.
One of the people responsible for the posts, a self-proclaimed vegan activist named Derek Rombeiro, explained why he did what he did in a Facebook video posted Monday morning.
"When people pay money to have their businesses promoted, it appears in your news feed," he said. "So I got a butcher shop that appeared in my news feed, and it was filled with dead animals. Filled. So what I did, was, I put a picture of the truth. Of a slaughtered cow, and told him, 'is your meat that fresh?', and so on and so forth."
He claims he, too, was a victim of online harassment from "carnist butcher shop people", including Bourg.